Going Back to School to Hone Business Skills

Chuck McCabe has been going to school to improve his business skills ever since he was a manager at H&R Block, looking for a better job.

BY JANET ROSENBERG The Salt Lake Tribune

McCabe, who was a high school dropout, got his associate and bachelor’s degrees and MBA and did doctoral work in business. And since founding his own company in 1987, he has kept studying, taking courses, seminars and just reading to learn ways to help his business grow.

"I really believe you’ve got to stay abreast of the latest developments in technology, management, organizational development, all of those things, in order to be successful," said McCabe, president and CEO of Peoples Income Tax Inc., a Richmond Va.-based tax preparation company with 21 offices.
McCabe is one of many small company owners who have found they need or just want to know more about business, and decided to go back to school. Often it’s the basics they are seeking, such as accounting, marketing and management; for other entrepreneurs, it’s how to work in an entirely new field.

Lisa Guida went back to school to learn the skills needed to start a company. Guida, owner of Booknote, a publicity firm in Branford, Conn., had worked in graphic arts and marketing and wanting to make a transition to the Internet. So for nine months, she traveled to New York to take courses one or two days a week.
Guida said it was a big investment of her time, but "it absolutely was worth it."

If you are not sure where to go for courses or seminars, the Internet or your local college or university is a good place to start. An industry or trade group can also be a resource, and some of the country’s biggest corporations also offer courses for small business owners. Among the courses McCabe has taken were some offered by IBM.

You can spend as much or as little as you want. The biggest universities have courses that run into the thousands of dollars, but schools that run U.S. Small Business Administration-sponsored Small Business Development Centers often have seminars and classes for well under $100.
There are nearly 1,000 SBDCs and satellite locations throughout the country, most of them at colleges, but also at vocational schools and chambers of commerce. A list of SBDCs can be found on the Internet at http://www.sba.gov/sbdc.

The SBA also offers seminars and workshops at its district offices. Schedules can be found online at http://www.sba.gov/calendar.
If travel is a problem, there are ways to study online, either with a college or university, or a company that offers studies over the Internet.

A search of the Internet will reveal hundreds of companies offering seminars and courses on marketing, accounting, management and other business skills. Of course, it might take some savvy shopping for a business owner to determine which ones are likely to be most helpful.
And what is the best kind of instruction, courses versus seminars for example, is also going to differ from one person to another.

Dan Seidman, owner of Barrington, Ill.-based Sales Autopsy Inc., a sales training firm, advocates investing time in an in-depth, structured course.
"The important thing to understand about going back to school is you have to have repetition for new things to stick in your brain," he said. "You can’t go to these weekend seminars — it doesn’t stick."

When Seidman was the general manager of a branch office of an executive search firm, he took a 12-week sales training course offered by a private firm and learned a different way of approaching prospective clients. He taught it to his staff and saw his branch’s sales pick up.
The seminar approach works for Randy Cohen, CEO of Ticketcity.com He’s in a three-year program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he and 60 other leaders of small businesses meet for several days each year.

The face-to-face contact is most important for Cohen.
"Any time you have the opportunity to get with a group of individuals and talk and brainstorm and learn, you can self-improve," he said. "The only way to be successful in a company is to learn by other people’s mistakes."

Cohen, whose Austin, Texas-based firm sells tickets online, said that by going back to school, "I’ve learned how to listen and train employees and run an operation."
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Joyce Rosenberg writes about small business for The Associated Press.

http://www.sltrib.com/2002/Dec/12222002/business/13487.asp