Small Business and Micro Enterprise

Consulting Services for Small Businesses, Micro Enterprises, Free Agents, Consultants, and Other Entrepreneurs

Claude Whitmyer and other FutureU associates have been leaders in promoting entrepreneurship and small business for more than 35 years. We offer consulting services and learning opportunities for people who are in business for themselves-or who want to be.

Good Business Advice

Some of Northern California's most highly respected small business consultants are longtime associates of FutureU. They are known around the world, in fact, for their adherence to socially responsible and sustainable business management practices developed over two decades by members of the Briarpatch community, an international association of business colleagues who are committed to social responsibility, environmental protection, and open-books management. We are pleased to introduce these consultants to you for assistance with all your small business matters. For more information, please email us.

Claude Whitmyer is among the best consultants in the field and he has served thousands of clients ranging from small manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers with under 100 employees to hundreds of one-person businesses including, but not limited to, accountants, acupuncturists, archivists, artists, body workers, bookkeepers, coaches, consultants, dancers, doctors, editors, financial planners, floor finishers, historians, librarians, lawyers, martial arts instructors, musicians, painters, plumbers, photographers, publishers, stock brokers, software programmers, teachers, trainers, and writers. A representative list of Claude Whitmyer's Clients. A description of Claude's Good Business Advice™ approach ot entrepreneurship.

Online Business Advice

Online consulting sessions are available for individuals and entrepreneurial teams, based on the same consulting methods our we pioneered with hundreds of socially responsible businesses in face-to-face sessions across the last 35 years. If this interests you, please email Claude Whitmyer.

Planning To Stay Together

The Mom and Pop store and the SOHO (small office/home office) are thriving as more couples than ever before are finding ways to work together. Such couple-owned businesses have their share of rewards—and challenges—as FutureU co-founders Gail Terry Grimes and Claude Whitmyer well know. To help others meet the challenges and make the most of the rewards, they have adapted the Future Search methodology of large-group facilitation (developed by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff) as a planning tool for couples.

Entrepreneurial couples report especially dramatic results when they join Ms. Grimes and Mr. Whitmyer for a three-day private retreat that culminates in a comprehensive action plan for their own future. Plans are now underway for a lower-cost, one-day workshop in which couples will learn how to carry out the process on their own without facilitation. To express your interest in either of these versions of Planning to Stay Together, please telephone Gail Terry Grimes at (415) 824-7726. (Couples of all orientations are welcome.)

Online Learning for Enterprise Builders

In 1995, longtime FutureU associate Paul Terry was named Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year by Inc. Magazine and the Kaufman Foundation. Now he is helping FutureU to create a series of online training courses for active or would-be entrepreneurs. These courses are based on courses taught for many years by Mr. Terry and FutureU co-founder Claude Whitmyer that have been well received by hundreds of small business owners of all types and sizes. Here are some courses we are working on now to offer online in the coming months:

Program Tracks

  1. Career
  2. Business Start Up
  3. Business Growth
CAREER TRACK: THE PATH TO MEANINGFUL WORK
  • Finding the Sweet Spot: Discover Where Your Talent, Your Passion, and the Needs of the Real World Intersect.
  • Do What You Love and Still Pay the Bills: Mastering the Entrepreneurial Mindset Even as an Employee.
  • Finding and Keeping Meaningful Work: Even in a Recession.
BUSINESS START-UP TRACK: LAUNCHING YOUR ENTERPRISE
  • Do You Have What It Takes? Finding Your Entrepreneurial Sweet Spot: Where Your Gifts, Your Passion, and Your Purpose Intersect.
  • Solopreneur I: Launching a Solo Enterprise.
  • Alternative Finance I: How Do I Finance My Start Up?
BUSINESS GROWTH TRACK: GROWTH OR STEADY STATE?
  • Solopreneur II: How Can I Grow My Business Without Taking On Employees?
  • Growth Management I: Am I in the Right Business?
  • Growth Management II: What Stage Of Growth Am I In and What Should I Do Next?
  • Growth Management III: When Should I Stay Small, Go Big, or Go Public?
  • Growth Management IV: When Should I Hire Employees And How Do I Manage Them?
  • Alternative Finance II: How do I finance my growth?
  • Grassroots Marketing I: Customer and Stakeholder Driven Marketing and Sales—the Keys to a Recession-Proof Business.
  • Grassroots Marketing II: Internal Marketing—How Do I Engage Managers, Employees, Suppliers and Other Important Stakeholders To Help Grow My Business?
  • Grassroots Marketing III: Should I Market On the Internet and How?
  • The Importance of Fun in Business

If you're looking for a learning experience that is more effective than just reading a book but takes less time than going to an evening class, you may want to enroll in this forthcoming online program, based on our unique values-based approach to finding good work as an entrepreneur.

Receive the study materials by email or online, with optional online discussion groups. Proceed at your own pace with the reading and assignments or join a group and participate in collaborative learning. Enroll for the entire program at once or each of the courses as they occur. To learn more or put your name on the waiting list, click here.

Books on Free Agentry and Entrepreneurship

Browse or buy in our online bookstore, where you will find descriptions of dozens of books and tapes that can help you make meaningful choices about your career and life.

Of special interest are two books written by business consultant and career guide Claude Whitmyer, co-founder of meaningfulWork.com:

If you have your own business or wish you did, read Running A One-Person Business (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1994, 2nd edition). To review or buy this book, click here.

If you wish your work had greater meaning, read Mindfulness and Meaningful Work: Explorations in Right Livelihood (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1994). To review or buy this book, click here.

 

 

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