Free six-week training program helps students form new business plans

The coordinators at the Douglas C. Greene Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Southeast Missouri State University will offer a free training program called Operation JumpStart starting on May 14 at the CIE building. The program is a 36-hour non-credit course taken over six weeks designed to help potential business owners develop a feasibility plan to know whether or not their idea to start a business is possible.

This year the course has expanded to include participants through an ITV course at Southeast's regional campus in Sikeston, Mo., in order to include more people. There will be an instructor at the Sikeston campus to assist the participants.

Heather Holdman, coordinator at the CIE in charge of marketing, said the instructors don't accept everyone who applies since they have a limited number of seats available because they want to be able to help participants individually.

A student looks through a workbook while at the Operation JumpStart training program. Submitted photo

Holdman said people in the training program have a book they use, have homework every night and meet twice a week from 6-9 p.m.

"It's a big book that they go through, and it's like their workbook," Holdman said. "And some of them will write in it, or some of them say it's like their Bible and they don't want to write in it. They want an extra piece of paper to write on, so they don't have to write in it, so they can keep it pristine so they can keep going back and forth to it. So you get a whole mix of people in there."

The program at the CIE is free to participants because it is funded through a grant from the federal government. The CIE building has only been able to have one Operation JumpStart training program so far this year due to funds, although last year it ran 10 programs.

"The way we have done it here generally is that we have some guidelines, but we also have sponsors that also want to be in on it ... so on those, we could accept anybody that wanted to do it, so we would have people that had MBAs in this class," Holdman said. "They have a business idea, and they just don't know what the next step is. Or, they're just so excited about it, and they're in business, they may have an MBA, but then they never actually took the time to actually do a feasibility plan to see if it would go all the way through.

"You would be surprised how many people are in business and they don't have a plan in place. Or once they have a plan, once they get into business, it all changes, so they don't keep revisiting that plan. So this material causes them to think about it and go through all the steps and stuff."

The training program was developed from a curriculum called First Step, and, in 2011, the CIE received exclusive rights to the curriculum from the Kauffman Foundation. It renovated and renamed the program Operation JumpStart: First Step with a grant from the Delta Regional Authority.

When the coordinators first started the program and traveled to train people in other regions, they trained about three times as many people as they expected.

The coordinators at the CIE have trained individuals in communities to develop and facilitate their own Operation JumpStart programs over the last two years.

Holdman said the program has gotten a lot of positive feedback, and that students can go through the program as well.

Chris Carnell, a Southeast junior majoring in advanced administration and entrepreneurship, went through the Operation JumpStart program.

Carnell said he went through the program just to the get the experience of doing a business plan.

"It was great because you can just take whatever idea you want, if it's just an idea, concept or if it's a real business, and it helps you find the feasibility," Carnell said. "It helps you with research and actually putting it all on paper."

Carnell said that people who participate in the program find it helps them realize whether or not their ideas will work and those people are "actually taking a step forward."

"Students should do it even if they just have a general business idea or concept," Carnell said. "That's a lot of what us students have is we just have this idea we're tossing around with our friends or in our head. If you just take this course, it really helps you with direction, with this idea, with the market research, through even just talking with other people in the class, so it really helps you form the idea, even if it's not a concrete business run."

Anyone interested in applying for the program can fill out the application form online at semo.edu/cie. Deadline is the week before the first meeting.

"So many people have that idea, or they want to do something but they don't. But that really just makes you kind of do that, so that's what's great about it," Carnell said.