Training sessions help give small business owners a shot at success

PHILADELPHIA -- Sales of Beyond Knitting Concepts’ fashion merchandise total just $600. Yet Aisha Alexander, cofounder of the venture started a little more than six months ago with a knitting buddy, confidently describes herself as a successful business owner.

“It’s all about your state of mind,” the South Philadelphia resident explained.

Yuri Schneiberg sees it differently. In fact, he’s staking a new business venture on a belief that he’s right. Success as a small-business owner requires much more than a positive outlook, Schneiberg said -- it requires an education specially designed for entrepreneurs.

As executive director of LearnQuest in Bala Cynwyd, Schneiberg has spent the last 13 years conducting employee-training programs for large corporations. His new initiative aims to serve the opposite end of the business spectrum: the small operator.

Besides turning a profit, Schneiberg is out to improve what is a distressing statistic: that 50 percent of small businesses fail within their first five years.

Schneiberg attributes that to people launching businesses without a number of essentials, including a marketing plan, adequate financing, effective communication skills, and a wise physical location.

Small-business owners are often “driven by the skills they have,” but they lack the vocational preparedness to translate those skills into thriving enterprises, Schneiberg said.

LearnQuest’s new program, expected to seat its first class in September, will combine the traditional MBA curriculum with a hands-on learning approach characteristic of vocational education, plus one-on-one mentoring. That will be offered over 10 months for $14,500. (Details can be found at http://www.learnquest.edu/.)

At Beyond Knitting Concepts, the self-assured Alexander acknowledged that she may not have the skills needed to achieve her goal of starting a nonprofit that encourages youths to express themselves creatively.

Now 30, Alexander was a marketing and advertising major at the University of Miami, where her interpersonal skills were adequately developed, she said. The other stuff she needs to excel in business? Not so much.

“As far as financials, overhead, inventory, hiring employees, insurance … I am not too strong,” Alexander said.

Those sentiments were echoed by a relative business veteran compared to Alexander: Dahlia Wigfall. Her four-year-old Red House studio in East Falls teaches sewing and offers for sale the clothing and accessories made there. In a corner of the converted row house on Midvale Avenue, Alexander’s handiwork is also available.

“I’ve always been an artist,” said Wigfall, 34, holding a lampshade she was jazzing up with fabric flowers and dangling accessories. Her business is “kind of taking off now. I’m lacking the skills to really make it happen.”

For instance, Wigfall asked, how does she determine what to charge or how many pieces need to be made to make a profit?

“It’s a simple thing to a business mind,” she said. “But to a creative mind . . . it’s tough. I come in, and I just want to create.”