Toolkit Home | Business Support | Training & Mentorship
Providing training and mentorship as part of your legacy business program.
Including opportunities for training and mentorship is increasingly common in legacy business programs. Programs in Boston, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have included one-on-one counseling training and mentorship as part of their offerings to legacy business owners. Because legacy business owners face new challenges, regulations, and technologies that may not have existed when they started, making these offerings available through your program can be crucial to their long-term success. Your legacy business owners may be unfamiliar with topics such as rapidly evolving digital marketing or improved financial planning and management tools. Be sure to talk with them to identify these and other areas where training and mentorship will help them stay competitive and succeed.
This is another aspect of your program where existing partners or programs may be the best way to support your owners’ needs. Most cities are already offering these services to small businesses through their economic development or small business department, or more commonly through an EDO. Regional, state, and federal agencies that focus on small businesses are also good training resources. Many local and national nonprofits also provide mentorship opportunities to small business owners. See the Where to Look and Who to Talk Tosection for more training partnership ideas.
Current Training & Mentorship Initiatives
Boston offers a workshop series tailored to legacy business owners, with one-on-one support in digital marketing, legal, and business strategy. While not specific to legacy business owners, the Allapattah Collaborative CDC has created a program called Small Business Resiliency Cohort (SBRC) that offers free business coaching and mentorship, along with training modules on financial management, access to capital, and networking.