Essential Analytics for Solo and Small Business Owners

Harness the power of Excel toolpak. ROCK your statistics! MASTER data driven decision making. Your success depends on it

Created by: Susan Kawa
Career scientist, bringing the power of simple analytics to the small business community

What Will I Learn?

• Build a basic analytics skill set crucial to small business success
• Learn and practice charting techniques to visualize data
• Understand variability - what it is, why it's killing your ability to recognize meaningful trends, and how to measure it
• Learn why the shape, or frequency distribution of data is important
• Practice finding frequency distribution of data sets using histogramming techniques
• Learn simple tips on data collection and organization
• Understand how to choose key performance measure(s) unique to your business
• Create a model by "characterizing" those key business performance measures
• Establish a performance baseline for your business
• Learn methods and strategies to plan and implement change
• Learn how to use a fishbone diagram proactively when planning change
• Mathematically predict how long it will take to get statistically significant results
• Learn to practice discipline and vigilance during change to reduce external influences
• Understand and internalize that correlation and causation are different
• Understand what "confidence level" means, and how much confidence is reasonable to expect
• Learn step by step how to conduct a t-test on before-and-after data sets to see if they are different in a statistically significant way
• Learn how to interpret t-test results
• Understand the Pareto technique to create a long term success plan by prioritizing change
• Understand why incremental failures can be constructive, and how to leverage that data to best advantage
• Practice all the skills and techniques taught, start to finish, on two project businesses (using workbooks)

Requirements

• Suitable for beginner Excel users.
• Ideal for students who learn quickly when shown, and who appreciate lots of examples.

Target audience

• Anyone thinking of quitting their day job to pursue a dream of self-employment
• Anyone concerned about the variability of demand for their product or service
• Anyone embarking on solo or small business ownership, but confused about how to predict performance in a volatile and ever changing market
• Small business owners ready to invest in marketing, but nervous about getting quantifiable results
• Anyone frustrated with advertisers who take your money and don't deliver on promises
• Anyone in a business rut, searching for ways to raise their game
• And also statistics students looking for less math and more context and examples in their instruction