The Entrepreneur's Toolkit

This course teaches you how to be an entrepreneur and how to think like one - skills that are essential whether you are starting a business, expanding an existing business, boosting your career as an employee, pursuing a social cause, or seeking to increase your impact as a teacher, coach, minister, or other professional. Packed with fascinating lessons from legendary entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Henry Ford, these 24 lectures are entertaining as well as practical.

You begin by investigating what makes a good business idea. Then you learn how to turn that idea into a successful enterprise by defining the market and the customers you will serve, attracting backers, building your brand, and growing your venture to the point where you can sell it, if you want, for an impressive profit.

Topics covered include market research, choosing a business structure, the all-important business plan, financial statements, running a home office, family businesses, franchises, intellectual property, employee and customer relations, and entrepreneurial exhaustion. Professor Goldsby also discusses different entrepreneurial styles, and he looks ahead to your career options after you succeed and are ready to try another challenge. He notes that entrepreneurs play an indispensible role in society: they are the ones who find problems, recognize the opportunities in those problems, then fix them and make the world a better place.