Welcome to the first lesson of SteveBizblog.com’s Going Pro: Hobby to Business workshop.  In this lesson, Steve discusses facts about business and what enables them to succeed or causes them fail.  Steve shares the 5 things every business needs to be successful.

In this lesson, Steve dispels several popular myths many wantrepreneur state as reasons for starting a business and shares what he thinks are the best reasons to go into business.  He goes on to discuss some of the challenges hobbyist often face when converting their hobby to a paying business.

In this lesson, Steve discussed how new or novel products should be introduced by testing assumptions using Minimally Viable Products.  He discusses how crowdsourcing can be used to verify customers desires to exchange money for a product.

In this lesson, Steve discuss creating a worksheet to estimate a business’s pre-startup costs.  He discusses fixed vs variable expenses and how they can be used to create a break-even analysis to come up with the minimal sale price of a unit.  Finally, in this lesson Steve looks at what does onto a cash flow projection [...]

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In this lesson, Steve discusses what does onto a market analysis and reviews some popular B2B and B2C market research tools such as Reference USA and Business Decisions frequently provided through the local library.  In the end, we get to a “go/no go” decision on if the market is big enough and profitable enough to go pro. [...]

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In this lesson, Steve discuss how to develop a value proposition and then to develop a one page business model using the Business Model Canvas conceived by Alexander Osterwalder.

In this lesson, Steve looks at how to use the information collected in the financial and marketing threshold lessons to create a traditional business plan.

In this lesson, Steve uses the outputs of the business models and discusses how it is used to establish an economic model for the business.  He shares how revenue drivers, volume, margins, and operating leverage all relate to define the businesses economic model.

In this lesson, Steve discusses the differences between sales and marketing and looks at over a dozen pricing strategies to drive customer behaviors.

In this lesson Steve compares merchant accounts to payment aggregators like PayPal and Square.