YLAI COURSES — Tailor-made training videos on Leadership+Business and Entrepreneurship.

YLAI Network online courses provide access to tailor-made training videos on leadership, business and entrepreneurship, civic leadership, and public management featuring U.S. university professors and experts in their field.

Through YLAI Empowers, YLAI Network members have access to an array of online courses and training materials. These courses are available to take at any time individually or as part of a group.

This is a documentation of my journey into learning from this resources.

Courses list

• Management Strategies for People and Resources ✓
• Fundamentals of Business Expansion ✓
• Strategies for Personal Growth
• Community Organizing for Action
• Fundamentals of Starting and Running a Business ✓
• Responsible Leadership on Transparency and Good Governance

FUNDAMENTALS OF STARTING AND RUNNING A BUSINESS

This course explains critical aspects of entrepreneurship, from the process of developing a business, to how to identify and expand in the marketplace, and how to pitch to new investors. >> Link

“HELLO written on a door with an arrow over it that says "This way."” by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

1 Developing a Business Model > Link

Develop a business model that includes>

• Description of the target customer
• An outline of an identified problem
• Explanation of how a product/service will solve that problem

2 Creating a Business Plan > Link

The first and most important step in launching a business. The key elements of a business plan that will attract the right investors and help you recruit the right team.

3 Identifying a Markets > Link

To develop a successful product > one must have to examine the market in which the entrepreneurs want to operate. Be able to identify their potential customers and their personal strengths and weakness, then structure their business accordingly.

4 Pitching the Business Idea for Investment > Link

Best practices for developing the elevator pitch to potential investors.

• Identify potential business partners
• Look at the key elements of a pitch
• Craft and deliver a pitch
• follow up

QUIZ

1 a business model should not include > a detailed forecast

2 a scalable business model is one that becomes less profitable as it grows > false

3 a great pitch should include > characters, challenges and solutions

4 a solid business plan will help an entrepreneur > secure capital and attract team members

5 a business plan should explain your idea, its market potential and risks associated with your venture and how you intend to reduce them > True

6 a business plan should always begin with the number of employees you intend to hire > false

7 What is the single necessary and sufficient condition for a business > paying customers

8 Market segmentation involves researching and identifying a product or a service that will appeal to a potential group of paying customers. When researching potential customers for your idea, you will to know > how many there are, their geographical location and how much they will spend

9 when performing market research for your idea, you should only ask the opinions of your friends and family > false

10 when choosing a business partner, you should look for someones who brings a different skill set to the business than your own > true

11 a good pitch will include why a business is worth investing in and why the target customer is willing to pay for the product or service > true

12 the objective of a pitch is to get an investor to > commit capital to the business

13 after delivering a pitch to an investor you should never follow up > false

MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR PEOPLE AND RESOURCES

This course outlines the essential skills required in leading individuals and organizations, whether it’s solving problems, creating the optimal team, or maneuvering through difficult situations in management

“Hikers with backpacks summiting peaks of mountain” by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash

1 Leading People and Change > link

Leaders act as the head of corporations and governments. But they also must address and solve a multitude of problems at any point and place in those environments.

Presenter: Dr. Christopher Kayes, Professor of Management, George Washington University.

• Leadership as the process of helping create a positive change.
• How can leadership can occur anywhere individuals find creative solutions to problems.
• Four factors that all leaders need to understand.

Leaders are everywhere. At all corners of the globe, in all types of organizations, doing all types of work. Anyone who seeks to make the world a better place is a leader.

1Find out ways to learn new skills. Learning skills such as communication, networking, writing a vision statement are all useful skills for leaders.

2 Find other s to mentor you and others that can mentor. Other people may have a skill that you admire. Learn from them. Be generous with your knowledge and teach other people what you know

3 Understand your own faults and your own strengths. Seek out ways to improve your faults. I.e. if you do not like public speaking, actively seek out opportunities to practice public speaking.

4 Talk to leaders in your profession, community and organization. Learn their stories, and some of the hardships that they overcame and the opportunities that they took advantage of in their quest to become better leaders.

Leaders are those who seek to make change. In politics, in business or society, leaders always find themselves at the heart of change. Leaders help people, organizations and societies navigate this change and help people find a better way to do things.

2 Creating and Managing a Team > link

Leaders must select, train, mentor, and manage a team that will perform optimally. They will bring the best out of each member of the team. It reviews what create a motivated and productive work environment.

Expert Advice: Sadhana Hall, Deputy Director, Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College

Learning objectives > DSD

Develop a deep pool of team members from which to recruit

• Advertise your positions through social media or through local or national newspapers.
• Ask a person you trust whether they know someone who meets your criteria.
• You can reach out directly to someone who has impressed you.
• Explore relationships with educational institutions and offer opportunities for students.
• You can also contact former colleagues with whom you have worked

Select team members

• Use a detailed interview process that allows you to asses your potential team member’s knowledge, attitude, skills and competences.
• Involve existing team members as well as partners in the interview process.
• People bring diversity of thought and perspective.

The ultimate question you want to ask yourself is this: I know this person has the required skills and qualifications, but will they work well with the rest of our team and will they be aligned with our outcomes and goals?

Develop a collaborative and productive work environment

• Build a high-functioning team. “Lead by example”. Be humble, transparent, honest, authentic — and demonstrate your passion.
• Learn how to monitor and evaluate individual achievements and give frequent positive feedback and credit to others.
• Do not be afraid to give constructive feedback.
• Having a strong, diverse team that you can trust and count on is a sure way your organization will be successful!

3 Managing Situations > Link

Management is a key component of leadership and what brings about change. Four essential skills that all people must master, even if you are a manager or want to advance in your career.

Presenter: Dr. D. Christopher Kayes, Professor of Management, George Washington University

Distinguish between leadership and management

Leadership =/= Management

Leadership is about change, creating a vision for the future, and bringing people together to create the change.

Management is about the process that the leader uses to create the change and solve the problem. Leaders motivate and inspire, where managers focus on getting the job done.

Understand the importance of management in problem solving

• Effective problem solving requires both leadership and management.
• The importance of management.
• Too many leaders in too many situations fail to achieve the change they desire because they have failed to properly manage their project.

Identify the four skills required for effective management

Effective management requires many different skills with the objective of achieving an organization’s goals:

1 Planning

Taking a step-by-step approach and requires making a fair estimate of what is required to accomplish a goal.

Even though plans will likely change throughout the process, putting a plan together helps the manager identify possible challenges and provides a way to explain to others the nature of the project or change that they hope to bring about.

For Network members, you can practice this skill by designing a plan to achieve something that is important to you.

This plan can involve creating daily goals, “to do” lists of activities, and weekly assessment of what went well and what did not go well.

2 Organizing

Putting your plans into action involves bringing together the right people and resources to accomplish goals.

This might also include designing jobs and roles appropriately, and implementing change in order to accomplish these goals.

Network members can practice change management in small ways.

For example, a member can decide on a small change, and seek out those people to help accomplish this change.

3 Influencing > TEAMWORK

Influencing, requires the manager to get individuals to participate in the project. It also, more broadly, means getting people to work together in the interests of the organization. This skill is also related to teamwork. Network members can practice their teamwork skills by building a shared purpose among people from different backgrounds with different ideas.

4 Deciding

Involves assessing resources and determining which courses of action to take.

In any project, a manager faces multiple choices — who should be involved in the project, what resources are needed, and how will the different aspects of a project be paid for.

Network members can practice this skill by purposefully selecting a course of action after considering a variety of alternatives.

This means that rather than making a decision quickly, a member can practice assigning different alternatives, and methodically weighing the alternatives, before selecting an action.

Some steps include recognizing a situation that requires a decision, then identifying alternatives, evaluating those alternatives, selecting the best alternative, implementing that alternative, and finally following up to evaluate whether the decision was effective.

Of the four management processes — planning, putting your plan into action, influencing and deciding — which are your strongest management skills?

QUIZ

1 To be a leader you must > seek to make the world better

2 Leaders > always find themselves in complex situations, must learn to work in situations of constant change , and always face problems that have never been solved before

3 You can improve your leadership skills by > finding others to mentor you and someone to mentor, finding your strengths and weakness

4 Several recommendations for recruiting potential team members were included in the video. Which of these items was not one of the? > Don’t require applicants to submit resumes

5 When selecting your team members, you should use a detailed interview process that allows you to assess your potential team member’s > knowledge attitude skills competences

6 When selecting individuals to join your organization or project, it does not matter if they get along with the other team members as long as the y have the required skills and qualifications. True or false? > false

7 when developing a collaborative and productive work environment for a high-functioning team, a leader must >establish clear individual and team performance goals, be clear about expectations for conflict resolution and feedback, give team members responsibility, encourage professional development

8 Leadership is about > change, a vision for the future, bringing people together to create change

9 Which of these is not a skill of management > Inspiring

10 > Leadership and management are the same thing? > False

FUNDAMENTALS OF BUSINESS EXPANSION

Learn how to raise capital and realize growth by using your business model to assess new markets and potential dates for expansion.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

1 Raising Capital > Link

The type of capital you need and where you get it depends on the type of business you run and the market you operate in.

Presenter: Evan Burfield, Co-Founder, 1776, Entrepreneurship

IDENTIFY THE TYPE OF CAPITAL

• Selling stuff, from e-bay, plain simple hustling
• Friends
• Family
• Bank Loan
• Crowdfunding / Kickstarter / IndieGoGo
• SEED INVESTORS > the term “seed” refers to startups in the early stages, more than just an idea, but not yet a fully developed business. SEED/ANGEL investors will ask though questions and dig into your DATA
• VENTURE CAPITAL > This type of capital comes from firms. VC will often need to see a mature product and compelling evidence that you have a great way to make a lot of money and grow really quickly.

UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS OF ENGAGING INVESTORS

If you have a product or at least a working prototype, and strong evidence that customers will use it and ideally pay for it, then you can approach seed investors

• Friends & Family > they invest in YOU and your IDEA
• Seed Investors > they invest in your process of experimentation to find a great business model
• Venture Capitalists > invest in great business models to help them grow
• Banks > might work for other types of solutions

Work to develop your pitch, or the story you tell investors about your business model and how you will grow a big business quickly. It takes a lot of time of diligent practice to get it right. Also, work on connect with potential investors. A great way to engage an investor is to let them know you will be raising soon, but would like to stat by getting their advice. This gives them an opportunity to get to know you over time and signal their interest before a formal pitch.

ESTIMATE THE TIMELINE FOR RAISING CAPITAL

Once your startup/business is ready, the pitch is strong, and you and your team are confident that there is a good pool of interested investors, then you actually go forward with a formal capital raise. The raise itself may only take a few weeks to a few months, but the overall process of raising capital should take as long as six months to do it right.

2 Growing your Business > Link

To grow a business, it is crucial to find the right product for the right market. Find, keep, and grow a customer base.

Presenter: Evan Burfield, Co-Founder, 1776, Entrepreneurship

WHAT IS PRODUCT-MARKET FIT?

Rapid growth is about developing the right processes. Before, you can grow, you have to have a product that users love and with the ability to generate enough revenue to make a profit, ideally a large profit.

Finding a business model that works — > finding “product-market fit”

A Lean Startup approach to building your business pairs an iterative, experimental approach to developing an in depth understanding of your customers — and their needs and wants — with a fast, flexible approach to building your product. The IDEA is that you build as little of your product as possible, test it with real customers, then make quick tweaks and changes to the product, and REPEAT.

BUTTER — > Build > Test it > Tweak it > Repeat

HOW DO YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS?

Is much easier to iterate and refine toward product-market fit at small scale than once you’ve started to grow. Strong evidence of product-market fit might be as simple as several hundred active users or a few key enterprise clients, but it might also require more extensive testing and growth to really validate your model.

The primary challenge is finding a repeatable customer acquisition model. Get really, really efficient at finding profitable customers for your product.

CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

The early adopters may very well come from the hustle, network and charisma of your founding team. This depends from each individual sale or customer relationship, and the nature of your relationship with your customers.

Find > Keep > Grow / Repeat

If the customers are BIG CORPS with each sale representing hundreds of $$$/year revenue — with each customer requiring a lot of attention, then you will probably hire people who will spend time in person with customers working to develop the relationship and close sales.

If the product you are selling is a mobile app to CUSTOMER, with each user representing a few dollars per year in revenue, then you will almost ccertainly need to find our customers online, with zero direct interaction between your team and your customers online.

If you are somewhere in between — perhaps you are selling an online tool for small business, who each pay you $1,000/year, then you may look toward a model where you are finding potential customers online but then having less expensive sales people call then on the phone to turn those potential customers into actual customers.

Work hard to REFINE your MODEL to make it as EFFICIENT as possible, so the CAPITAl you raise for GRWOTH can take you as FAR as possible.

3 Growing your Startup

Growth is the key to a successful business. Crowdfunding, business incubators, competitions, and small business grants are potential sources of funding.

Presenter: Saran Kaba Jones, Founder and CEO of FACE Africa

Growing your startup and get it to the next level. Raise additional funds, and move beyond your comfort zone.

Grow it and take it to the next level

More than 1/3 of all startups fail within 2 years

If you have a successful small business, now you have to know how to grow your business and when to grow beyond its current level.

Growth is the key to the success of any startup, but the best type of growth is one that is carefully thought through and planned out. Growing too fast without proper planning can harm and even destroy a business. Before we undertake any major growth initiatives, like launching a new product or opening a new store, you must first understand the future of the industry.

Ask yourself:

• Whether demand for your products or services are growing
• What your competitors are doing
• Whether you can continue to meet your customers’ demands at the same level of service

When business start expanding too fast -> quality of service often drops -> this can impact brand’s reputation

Sometimes you need to spend money to make money.

Ideas to grow your business

• Open another location > this will allow you to reach a new demographic and give exposure to your brand in an area that did not know you existed, but needs your product and services.
• Diversify > diversifying your product or service line is an excellent growth strategy, since it allows you to have multiple streams of income. For example, if GLL does water services (water well drilling), a way to diversify is to include services of sanitation and hygiene promotion services, which provides different opportunities to raise funds.
• Win a government contract > having the government as a customer will imply that you have one of the largest buyer of goods and services, and some even require their various agencies to allocate a certain % of their purchase to local business.
• Expand to the internet > Having a web presence is integral part in todays business environment. it also serves an online front store and acts as the conveyer of your business’ brand and message to the world. This allow you to go directly global with your products and services.

Raise additional funds

Do not limit yourself and get creative. Reach angel investors and traditional bank loans, crowdfunding, business incubators, competitions and small business grants.

Move beyond your comfort zone

No matter which sector you are in, networking is the fastest track to success and puts you in a position to meet the right people who can help you fundraise and deliver results. It is important to expand your horizon and move beyond your immediate network of friends and acquaintances and build a wider, global network of supporters and funders.

QUIZ: Lessons included on this quiz:

• Raising Capital
• Growing your business
• Growing yout startup

1 there are different types if capital available, depending on your business model > True

2 Which of these is not a source of capital? > a pond fund

3 When should you approach seed investors? > when you have more than idea and you have to refine your business model

4 It is easier to iterate and refine toward product-market fit at a large scale > false

5 The way you find, keep and grow customers depends on the nature of your relationship with your customers? > true

6 If you primarily sell expensive solutions to large organizations, you should > hire salespeople to cultivate the relationship

7 Before deciding to grow your business, you must first understand > the future of the industry

all of the above is wrong

8 Which of these ideas is not the way to grow your business? > be afraid to fail

9 Crowdfunding, business incubators, competitions, and small business grants are potential sources of funding? > True

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING FOR ACTION

Grassroots campaigns and volunteers are essential to the success of most nongovernmental organizations involved in community development. Learn how to inspire and engage volunteers to be proactive in their communities and organize grassroots campaigns.

Photo by Virgil Cayasa on Unsplash

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PERSONAL GROWTH

This course outlines the different ways you can develop your business, organization and personal skills.

Photo by Alan Godfrey on Unsplash

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RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP ON TRANSPARENCY AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

This three-part course examines the concepts of transparency and good governance and how their lack in both the public and private sectors can lead to devastating consequences for people and institutions.

Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash

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