Block 2: Price, demand and margin
Learn how to set a price that covers your costs and still fits your customers, what to do when costs rise, and how to check a discount or a price rise with numbers before you try it.
You will be able to:
- Tell markup from margin, and turn one into the other.
- Explain why sales usually fall when a price rises, and judge how sensitive customers are from the data of a case.
- Calculate how many sales a discount needs, or how many sales a price rise can lose, to keep the same total margin.
- Choose a response to rising costs and explain the trade-off: margin per item against the number of customers.
- Calculate a freelancer's lowest hourly rate from the income goal, business costs and billable hours.
5 sessions, about 85 min. Final case: Kofi's Coffee Cart. New task: Iris, a freelance illustrator.
Block 3: Cash flow: profit is not cash
Learn why a business can make a profit and still be unable to pay its bills, how to see a cash gap weeks before it happens, and how to choose the cheapest safe way to close it.
You will be able to:
- Explain why a profitable business can run out of cash.
- Make a simple cash forecast week by week and find the week when cash is short.
- Estimate how many weeks your cash lasts, and what cash buffer you need.
- Compare ways to close a cash gap (a deposit, faster payment, delaying costs, a short loan) by cost and risk.
5 sessions, about 85 min. Final case: Rosa's Catering. New task: Omar, a freelance web developer.
Block 4: Customers
Learn who your best customers are and what they need, what one new customer costs you through each channel, what a customer brings over a year, and how to ask customers questions that give honest answers.
You will be able to:
- Describe a target customer by their situation and the job they need done.
- Compare offers by the customer's total cost: the price plus their time and effort.
- Calculate what one new customer costs through a channel, counting money, fees and your own hours.
- Compare the cost of a customer with the margin they bring over a year, and find how many orders pay it back.
- Write neutral survey questions and judge who the answers speak for.
5 sessions, about 85 min. Final case: Lina's Dog Grooming. New task: Theo, an online English tutor.
Block 5: People and time
Learn what one hour of your work is worth, which tasks to keep and which to hand over, what help really costs, and how to hand over a task and keep good people.
You will be able to:
- Calculate what one hour of your paid work brings, and say when freed hours are worth money.
- Decide who should do a task by comparing what each person gives up, not only who is faster.
- Calculate the full cost of help: pay, extras and your own time to train and check.
- Choose between doing it yourself, a tool, a freelancer and an employee, and find the break-even.
- Write a clear handover and name what keeps good people besides pay.
5 sessions, about 85 min. Final case: Sofia's Photo Studio. New task: Mei, a freelance bookkeeper.
Block 6: Decisions under uncertainty
Learn to compare options when you cannot know the future: name what matters, put rough chances on a few scenarios, look at the worst case as well as the average, leave out money already spent, notice thinking traps and test small before you bet big.
You will be able to:
- List options, drop the ones that break a limit, and compare the rest on what matters.
- Calculate an expected result from a few scenarios and their chances, and say what it does not tell you.
- Check the worst case against what you can afford to lose.
- Leave money already spent and costs that are the same in every option out of a decision.
- Spot four thinking traps and plan a small test with a stop rule.
5 sessions, about 85 min. Final case: Marta's Taco Truck. New task: Hugo's Bakery on Sundays.
Block 7: The economy around your business
Learn what inflation, interest rates and exchange rates do to a small business: how to tell real growth from growth in dollars, how to pass on rising costs, when borrowing pays, and how to protect costs or income paid in another currency.
You will be able to:
- Calculate an inflation rate from a price index or your own costs, and say why your costs may rise faster or slower.
- Tell nominal from real: take inflation out of a change in sales, prices or wages.
- Find the price that keeps your margin share when costs rise, and say when it keeps what the margin buys.
- Calculate what a loan and a rate rise cost, and compare the return of an investment with the interest rate.
- Calculate a cost or income in another currency at a new exchange rate, and weigh the ways to protect it.
5 sessions, about 85 min. Final case: Ines's Tea Shop. New task: Tomas, a freelance translator.