3 Free Online Classes Every Business Owner Could Benefit From

Photo: Christina Morillo for Pexels

As a small business owner, what are your resources? Do you feel like you have everything you need by way of information or inspiration? What if you simply want to be better at business? More nuanced. Or learn a new skill?

We all could stand to take a course or two, to keep ourselves on track and create the optimal business paths for ourselves, especially now that most of us are staying home to flatten the coronavirus curve. After all it was Albert Einstein who said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Luckily, there are a number of free online courses to enroll in to continue learning, growing, and honing your skills. 

With many top universities—including Duke and Northwestern—offering free courses online right now, you can gather insights from the experts who are at the forefront of innovation with courses that can take you, your team, and your organization to the next level. They are making it super simple to connect to the future of business—and open yourself up to a transformative experience. 

Here are three online courses any business owner would benefit from taking right now. 

University of California, Berkley: The Foundations Of Happiness At Work

We all know that happier employees are more productive and innovative. But, what does happiness mean? How can we create it at work? And how can we analyze the effects of happiness on our businesses? This course is here to answer those questions. Whether you’re hiring your first employee or want to make sure you have the best possible company culture, this course is a must for any business owner. Learn from the very best on how to bring happiness into the workplace.

Enroll for free. Course starts April 29, 2020.

Northwestern University: Social Media Marketing Specialization

Social media is essential to marketing these days, but it turns out many businesses don’t use this tool effectively. Whether you are struggling to gain followers, not sure what content to post, or don’t understand how to read the analytics, this social media course will help you grow your business. From content to engagement, this 6 part series covers it all. Step your marketing game up and make your time spent on Instagram worth your while.

Enroll for free. Course starts April 29, 2020.

Duke University: Entrepreneurial Finance: Strategy and Innovation

Creating a financial strategy for your business can feel really overwhelming if you lack the right tools. If you are looking to raise capital, need help build a cap table, or analyze market risk, this course pack is for you. This will give you real tools you can use in every phase of your business. A good founder should have their finger on the pulse of the financials of their business, regardless of the help you hire. Make sure you have all the tools you need from the best minds at Duke University.

Enroll for free. Course starts April 29, 2020.

This post was published on March 3, 2018, and has since been updated.

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From Scratch: How This Founder Turned Her Passion for Fashion Into Financial Success

Written by Jackie Sedley.

We know how daunting it can be to start a new business, especially if you’re disrupting an industry or creating an entirely new one. When there is no path to follow, the biggest question is, where do I start? There is so much to do but before you get ahead of yourself, let’s start at the beginning. To kickstart the process (and ease some of those first-time founder nerves) we’re asking successful entrepreneurs to share their story in our new series, From Scratch. But this isn’t your typical day in the life. We’re getting down to the nitty-gritty from writing a business plan (or not) to sourcing manufacturers and how much they pay themselves, we’re not holding back. If you want to know how to start a business, you’ve come to the right place.

Photo: Courtesy of Printfresh

The world of fashion is ever-changing. Just ask Amy Voloshin, the creative director and co-founder of Printfresh; she has been immersed in the world of style and design since early childhood. After studying textiles and fine arts in college, Voloshin took her knowledge of design and her eye for aesthetics and turned it into a stylish and über-successful textile company.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Voloshin’s design company. While she makes it look easy, putting out fashionable accessories, cozy sleepwear, and beautiful stationery is hard work but Voloshin has mastered the art of leadership through years of experience in her field.

Thankfully, Voloshin let us pick her brain and learn more about how her company came to fruition, what she’s learned along the way, and how important it is to keep up with the constant shifts in the world of business.

CREATE & CULTIVATE: Did you write a business plan?

AMY VOLOSHIN: I’m a planner so I always write a business plan for my new ventures. It helps me think through a lot of the details that I’ll need to tackle to get going. I think it’s important to jot down the basic outline of what you are selling, how and where it will be sold, who will be on your team and what roles you will need to fill in your first year. If you self-fund like I’ve done,  it’s really just whatever will be helpful to you and to those helping. I also use the business plan as a place to store a lot of research—I love researching, so it’s a great place to collect ideas and thoughts on how other companies are executing similar businesses. 

How did you come up with the name? What was the process like?

Our name came from our first business, Printfresh Studio. That business is all about designing prints for the fashion industry.  As that business matured and everyone kept asking us “Where can we buy your prints?” we always had to shrug and tell people we don’t know or couldn’t tell them due to the non-disclosure agreements we signed.  So when we decided to take the plunge and start our brand, we brought the name along. When we started out we thought we could put crazy prints on everything but instead decided to stay focused around our love of textiles - hence all the sumptuous velvet journals.  Now that we are expanding into pajamas, I’m really excited to use more prints in our collections.

What were the immediate things you had to take care of to set up the business?

Getting the name sorted out was really the first part since so much of the branding and design can’t begin until that is set. In this day and age of social media, having a good handle is important for social marketing.  Getting the domain is important too, but with the new suffixes that are out there now, there’s more flexibility than there used to be when everything was only .com. Trademark is something we worked on as well, but that can wait till you get things into the market. Definitely get your website up and a fun splash page and start collecting emails. You never know when things will change with social media, but email has been a really consistent place for us to get information to our customers about new products and sales.

What research did you do for the brand beforehand? Why would you recommend it?

I’m what my business partner would describe as ‘an exhaustive researcher,’  which is funny since he worked in clinical pharmaceutical research before teaming up with me. I sometimes research something to a point that might be inadvisable! But, there is so much product out there and so many companies, so it’s important to find ways to stand out in a positive way. It’s important to answer some questions—is someone out there already doing what I want to do? Is what I’m going to do providing something different and exciting that doesn’t exist already at a good price? It’s also important to know when to stop researching. With all the online resources out there it can be easy to research too much and delay the fun parts like designing.

“I’ve learned that listening to the expertise of others can help you avoid making costly mistakes and can also help open doors that may otherwise have taken forever to get open. ”

How did you find the manufacturer/production facility that you use? Did you have any bad experiences?

Being alumni of Urban Outfitters and calling Philadelphia home, we are blessed with a great network to tap into.  We had a lot of friends that were able to make connections to some fantastic factories in India and China. There are so many factories out there but it’s important to find ones that have experience making the type of product we are looking to develop, and that their ethics in terms of labor and environmental concerns are the same as our own. I travel to India and spend a lot of time meeting new partners, working in factories, and ensuring that the partnerships are the right ones. For example, we were able to find a factory for our pajamas that do so many great things environmentally, like use solar power and recycle gray water for use in their garden.  

Did you self-fund the company? Did you raise seed money or initial investment money? What would you recommend?

We self-funded the company and had some help from our family. We’ve always self-funded our ventures—I like the freedom of being able to find our own way. It’s something I’m open to in the future, but I wanted to develop the company independently and experiment. If we pursue investment money in the future, it would probably be to invest in advertising and marketing to help expand the brand and become more known in the US market.   

How much did you pay yourself? How did you know what to pay yourself?

Haha, yeah, that’s a tough one. In my first business, I started, it took about six months to be able to pay myself a small income. We’ve reinvested all of the money that we are making back into the company. Fortunately, we have some real estate ventures that help us live modestly while the business grows a bit bigger. It’s one of those things where it’s just a moment in time and hopefully, through working really hard we will see a return in a few years on our investment of time, energy, and money. 

How big is your team now? What has the hiring process like?

Printfresh is a small team of five and we all work across some of the other companies we operate (like the fashion line Voloshin). We’ve been hiring for over a decade for Printfresh Studio, so I feel like I’ve learned a lot along the way.  One book that helped me figure out how to hire better is The Who Method by Geoff and Randy Smart—it really helped us set up our hiring process and we use that methodology all the time. It’s helpful to have a set way of interviewing for the team to follow.

For a start-up especially, hiring those who have skill sets I don’t have has been important. Also, hiring for work ethic and the ability to finish projects independently has been critical for our start-up. When hiring, I like to spend a really long time getting to know applicants—typically, I’ll meet with them for 1-2 hours and really try to understand why they are leaving their current job, why this company is the right place for them, do our values synch up. I want to make sure that we will work well together since we will be spending so much time together. 

Photo: Courtesy of Printfresh

Did you hire an accountant? Who helped you with the financial decisions and set up?

We’ve been using QuickBooks for 13 years and have had our accountant for almost the same length of time.  When we first started, we used the accountant that my grandmother, and then my father, used in their businesses. Then, we got to the point where we needed someone who could come in and review the P&L with us on a quarterly basis. This has helped us really understand the numbers and trends in a way that allows us to make changes as necessary.

What has been the biggest learning curve during the process of establishing a business?

With this business, the greatest learning curve has been really learning to listen to our customers. We have never had the opportunity to work with consumers directly and seeing how people interact with our products and the reactions they have has been really informative. Really understanding why the consumer likes certain items has helped us continue to develop new and innovative products (like our upcoming mindfulness morning rituals and night time reflections guided journals).

How did you get retailers to start stocking your product? Were you told no? How did you handle that rejection?

I decided to take the plunge and signed us up for the National Stationery Show two years ago. We built an amazing booth with the help of our friend Luren and showed up at the show to try and get as many customers as possible. We printed a ton of tote bags and gave them away at the show and it got everyone talking about it. We picked up 30 stores at that show.  But more importantly, we met our real-life fairy godmother, Tara Riceberg, who has this amazing store in L.A. called TWEAK and she introduced us to Karen Alweil, who is now our wholesale sales rep. She’s gotten us into over 300 stores over the last few years. Rejection, though, is a daily constant for anyone in our business. As we go after bigger retailers, we just need to remember that ‘no’ usually just means ‘not now.’

“We’ve always self-funded our ventures—I like the freedom of being able to find our own way.”

Do you have a business coach or mentor? How has this person helped?

We have had some sort of mentor from the very early stages of starting our business. I’ve learned that listening to the expertise of others can help you avoid making costly mistakes and can also help open doors that may otherwise have taken forever to get open. Early on we used SCORE, which is a national organization with chapters all over the country. We have also used the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) at the University of Pennsylvania with a lot of success. Over the last few years we have been working with our mentor Steve Smolinsky—he has years of experience and a great perspective that helps us avoid obstacles before we even see them.

I was also able to find mentors through doing the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator, which connected me to some amazing industry veterans who have been very instrumental in helping me navigate areas of the business that I lack experience in. I highly recommend having a mentor—it’s amazing to have a life-line to reach out to during some of the challenges that arise when running a small business. There’s lots of information on the web, but not all of it’s perfect or right for your business. Having great mentors with real-life experience and who know you personally can really help you find solutions that you may have not arrived at otherwise.  

How did you promote your company? How did you get people to know who you are and create buzz?

We are definitely still learning! Marketing has changed so much in the last couple of years and I think all businesses are challenged by keeping up with the changing technology and the way it’s being used.  Printfresh Studio is so B2B (business to business) that we never had to market to the consumer. But we are slowly starting to figure it out. We spend a lot of time on getting great photos of our products and try to stay in touch with blogs and people who share our interests. Sending small gifts to people who you want to use your product and have a platform to share them on has been working as well. 

What is one thing you didn’t do in the setup process, that ended up being crucial to the business and would advise others to do ASAP?

If you are sure you have a great product, then getting it out to the media is important. Whether you find the time to do it yourself or you hire a great PR company (like Push the Envelope PR), it’s something that needs to happen ASAP.  We only recently focused our energy on it and are kicking ourselves for not doing it earlier. We didn’t really know how to go about finding the right PR company and didn’t know what to look for.  

For those who haven’t started a business (or are about to) what advice do you have?  

My top tips would be to: write a business plan, read as many books as you can about the industry you’re getting into, figure out how you’ll be different, and get yourself in an incubator or something similar as soon as possible to start growing your network. 

View the new Printfresh collection at printfresh.com and throughout the U.S. in specialty boutiques. 

Photo: Courtesy of Printfresh

Create & Cultivate 100: Small Business: Chelsea Moore

Every successful business idea comes from a need, a gap. It's in this whitespace where Chelsea Moore and her two co-founders, Jenni Olivero and Sabena Suri stumbled upon the idea for their gifting company, BOXFOX.

After a close friend became sick, Moore and her cofounders, Jenni Olivero and Sabena Suri, realized there was a serious lack of options that could show you were “there” for someone even when you couldn't be there physically. “We wanted something that went beyond flowers and the typical overpriced (and wasteful) gift basket,” she tells Create & Cultivate. “Our standards were high: we wanted something presentable, personal, and with a purposeful product that was simple to send.”

So, they did some research and discovered a lot of people were also looking for a modern and seamless gifting experience, too. It didn't exist, so they built it and they’ve been disrupting the space ever since. Now, five years later, they have an easy-to-use consumer platform with a pre-curated ready-to-ship collection, a Build a BOXFOX platform where customers can build their own gifts and care packages from all the best brands in one place, and a corporate gifting arm called BOXFOX Concierge, with a dedicated sales team and a members-only platform.

Read on to hear more about how they are redefining the gifting model, how they work together as co-founders, and why they decided to bootstrap the business over raising VC.

CREATE & CULTIVATE: As the co-founder and CEO of BOXFOX you have your hand across all areas of the business—but for those of us who don't know what it's like to be a CEO or aspire to, can you share what your role entails? Can you give our readers a snapshot into what your day-to-day of a CEO looks like? Does the reality of your role stack up to your expectations?

CHELSEA MOORE: Here at BOXFOX, as co-founders, we lead equally, so we share a lot of the long-term planning, people management, and financial responsibility. However, we've all settled into the verticals we spearhead, with each other’s support, of course. As the CEO, I oversee all creative, marketing, legal, and web development. On a daily basis, I'm either diving right into emails, design work, photography, approving content calendars, web development projects, putting out fires, or planning meetings. Being our CEO is everything I expected, in that I believe there is sometimes stuff you want to do and stuff you have to do, and I was prepared for that roll-up-your-sleeves reality. The one aspect of the job I wasn't expecting though was how much more complex it all gets as you grow. There's more to oversee, more to manage, and more at stake.

Gifting is such a saturated space. What makes BOXFOX different? How have you differentiated the brand so it stands out above the competition and in a crowded industry? Why do you think BOXFOX has been so successful?

We didn't invent gifting, but we did make it modern in a way no one else was doing. We prioritized being a business built with scalable customization at its core, empowering customers to gift well and often. For B2B, corporate gifting lacked a ‘go-to’, elevated, all-in-one solution. BOXFOX has built a brand with a diverse, loyal following who seek approachable, no-fluff, tech-forward, personalized service to make life easier for everything from small tokens to grand gestures. We're proud to share an office space with our warehouse and be an approachable, authentic gifting resource for our loyal customers.

“Do your research, be prepared, and be ready to work 10x harder than you could have ever expected.”

You proudly run a self-funded startup, so can you talk us through the bootstrapping process? Would you recommend that route to other entrepreneurs? Do you have plans to scale? Do you have plans to raise?

For us, bootstrapping from the start was intentional: we wanted to prove the effectiveness of our business model, perfect our systems, and decide what type of company we wanted to build—how quickly or slowly, how much control we wanted to maintain, and what our priorities were. Early on, our goals were to achieve steady, organic growth, build a meaningful workplace, and reinforce the human side of e-commerce. We weren’t necessarily thinking about an exit strategy, which raising money would have necessitated, so it wasn’t the path for us.

Of course, there are so many businesses that raising makes sense for; the best advice I’ve ever gotten is to truly think about what your priorities are, and whether those objectives line up with taking on capital. It all comes down to what kind of business you want to run.

When you're a small business you have to fall in love with the numbers, what have been some of the hardest money lessons you've learned along the way? What is your #1 money tip for small business owners? Why?

Do not be afraid of numbers—run into their arms and embrace them. Understanding them is the key to really understanding your business. If they intimidate you, take classes on Skillshare or Lynda, find a family friend who will sit down with you for an hour and explain more advanced concepts. Don't just find accountants and bookkeepers who you delegate to, find ones that will educate you and make you a stronger business owner.

What were the immediate things you had to take care of to set up the business?

I'm not sure if there is a perfect order for these initial items, but we bought our website domain, went through the city/county/state to set up all business license documents, got a CA resale ID, and then started our social channels about six months prior to launch. Then in the meantime, we were building our website and coordinating our first BOXFOX box samples.

There are three co-founders at BoxFox—do you recommend having partners in business? Why? What is the secret to a successful working relationship?

I think every business can have different needs when it comes to solo founders versus co-founders, but for us, it has been such a blessing to have each other on this journey. We each bring complementary strengths to the table and different backgrounds which only bring out the best in each other and our business. The secret to our successful relationship is a shared long term vision for where we want this to go, respect for each other's personal and professional needs, and over-communication.

When you hit a bump or hurdle in your career, how do you #FindNewRoads + switch gears to find success

On a business level, there can be setbacks or mistakes and our company philosophy is always to analyze, find the silver lining, and never make the same mistake twice. When it's a personal bump or hurdle, like creative burnout or management overload, I've always believed in taking action. Identify the issue, come up with a plan, and move forward, because life is way too short. Before BOXFOX, I was so unhappy at my old job, but after a month-long pity party, I quit and we set off on this entrepreneurial journey.

You have had so much success, but if you could go back to the beginning with the knowledge you have now, what's one thing you would tell yourself and why?

We have such great lawyers, accountants, insurance brokers and outside partners that we rely on so heavily. It can be scary to reach outside of your immediate circle to find the experts you need, but if I could go back, I would have prioritized finding these superstars sooner.

“The biggest lesson we’ve learned along the way is that business is personal and management is a muscle that has to be strengthened.”

Creating buzz so people know about your brand can be challenging for small businesses. How do you market your business? How are people aware of your business? What are some unique social media and marketing tools you've used to grow organically?

We didn't have the money for digital marketing or PR in the beginning, so we got creative. We have a very strong visual identity, so we took the time to perfect that and lean into free tools, like Instagram and Pinterest. Beyond that, we leveraged our network and told everyone we knew and met about our company and mission. We definitely got lucky with some organic press hits in the beginning too. As we've gotten bigger, we've experimented with PR and digital marketing in small bursts of concentrated effort, but the overwhelming majority of our traffic is still organic or word of mouth.

What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the way and what have they taught you?

The biggest lesson we've learned along the way is that business is personal and management is a muscle that has to be strengthened. Leading a company requires empathy, interpersonal skills, a desire to connect with employees, partners, and vendors in a meaningful way. It takes practice, and it's never perfect, but the reinforcement of those skills has happily become a big part of my life.

What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who have an idea but don’t know where to start to execute it?

Do your research, be prepared, and be ready to work 10x harder than you could have ever expected. I always share with fellow entrepreneurs to just get started. Perfect those product samples, start setting up the business paperwork, test the software. Once you get going, it really will snowball from there. Also, never agree to start doing anything without a signed contract (you will thank me for this later, I promise!).

Photographer: Lexi Hatch

 VIEW THE FULL CREATE & CULTIVATE 100 SMALL BUSINESS LIST HERE.