Don’t Let Your Business Idea Become a Money Pit

Build a business that works financially, operates efficiently, and fits within the life you actually want to live.

Ready to Start Building?

Get immediate access to Backbone America’s Business Lab: practical courses, books, tools, worksheets, and resources designed to help you make better decisions as you start, fund, build, and improve your business.

Start With the Problem in Front of You

You don’t have to work through the Business Lab from beginning to end.

Maybe you’re still deciding what kind of business you want to build. Maybe you’ve chosen the business and you’re ready to get it started. Maybe you’re trying to figure out whether the numbers work or how you’ll pay for it. Or perhaps the business is already operating and you’re trying to make it run better.

Then Backbone America’s Business Lab is the place for you.

Use the lessons, tools, worksheets, and resources that apply to what you’re working on now. When the business changes and new questions come up, you’ll have other resources to turn to.

The Business Lab offers flexibility for the business you’re actually building.

Why I Built the Business Lab

I’ve spent years looking at business from several different perspectives: as a business advisor, teacher, entrepreneur, and business process automation engineer.

As an SBDC business advisor, I worked with aspiring and existing entrepreneurs on business planning, financial projections, funding research, financing decisions, and the practical questions that come with starting and growing a business.

My work with those clients contributed to more than $1.15 million in capital infusion.

Teaching gave me a different responsibility. It wasn’t enough to understand something myself. I had to break complicated subjects into pieces someone else could understand, apply, and build on.

I’ve also been the entrepreneur making the decisions with my own time and money.

I’ve paid for certified coaching programs. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on advertising that didn’t produce a positive return. I’ve followed ideas longer than I should have, changed direction, rebuilt, and learned some lessons the expensive way.

Today, my work as a business process automation engineer adds another perspective. I look at how work gets done, where processes break down, what creates unnecessary effort, and what can be simplified, systemized, or automated.

Those experiences are the foundation of the Business Lab.

Business advising. Teaching. Entrepreneurship. Process improvement. Automation.

I built the Business Lab to bring those perspectives together in practical resources entrepreneurs can use while making real business decisions.

A better decision made early can save a lot of time and money later.

What’s Inside the Business Lab Right Now

These aren’t hypothetical future resources. They’re available inside the Business Lab today.

Business Clarity Blueprint

$79 Standalone Value

Get clear about the business you want to build and how it fits into the life you want it to support.

Work through why you’re starting, the time you realistically have available, your strengths and interests, the type of business that fits you, and the offer you want to build around.

Included with your membership

Business Fit & Feasibility Guide

$39 Standalone Value

A promising business opportunity still has to make sense for the person who will actually own it.

Examine the opportunity against your goals, strengths, resources, finances, and the life you want to live before making a larger commitment.

Included with your membership

31-Day Business Startup Challenge

$179 Standalone Value

Move from having a business idea to putting the pieces of an operating business in place through a structured series of daily actions.

Work through validating the idea, defining your customers and positioning, setting up the business legally and financially, developing your marketing, and preparing to launch.

Included with your membership

The Business Funding Blueprint eBook

$39 Standalone Value

Understand what your business will cost and develop a funding strategy based on what you’re actually trying to build.

Work through startup costs and working capital, financial projections, cash flow, funding options, lender expectations, business planning, and the pieces that go into a stronger funding package.

The book also includes practical worksheets, forms, and checklists you can apply to your own business.

Included with your membership

Work Less, Build Smart

$497 Standalone Value

Build better systems for the work that keeps your business running.

Identify repeatable work, map and simplify workflows, choose tools that support the process, build and test an automation, document what you’ve created, and establish a practical way to maintain and improve it.

The goal is to build one working system at a time so the business can accomplish more without requiring more of your time.

Included with your membership

$833 in Business Resources. Already Inside.

If purchased separately, the five products currently included would cost:

Get $833 in Current Business Resources With One Membership.

Active members also receive access to new Business Lab resources as they’re added.

Built to Help You Do the Work

The Business Lab isn’t meant to give you another collection of courses to watch and forget.

The resources are designed around work entrepreneurs actually have to do: evaluating opportunities, making decisions, working through numbers, setting up a business, preparing for funding, improving processes, and building systems.

You’ll find worksheets, exercises, inventories, checklists, calculations, examples, and tools that help you apply what you’re learning to your own situation.

You can come back as often as you need to. A resource that isn’t relevant today may become useful six months from now when your business reaches a different stage.

Learn what you need. Apply it to your business. Come back when you’re ready for the next step.

And the Business Lab Keeps Growing

I’m continuing to develop new Business Lab courses and tools, and active members will have access as they’re added.

Choosing Your Path to Business Ownership

Starting from scratch is only one way to become a business owner.

This course explores starting a new business, buying an existing business, and buying a franchise so you can compare the costs, flexibility, control, risks, advantages, and tradeoffs of each.

Currently in Development

The Business Funding Blueprint Course

The Business Funding Blueprint eBook is already included with your membership.

I’m expanding the material into a more interactive course so you can work with the financial side of your own business as you learn.

The course will include electronic resources for working through financial projections, cash flow, profit and loss, balance sheets, business assumptions, funding calculations, loan comparisons, and funding readiness.

Currently in Development

Come In and Put the Business Lab to Work

Your purchase comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

When you join, don’t just click around and look at course titles.

Pick something you’re working on and start there.

Work through a lesson. Use a worksheet. Run your numbers. Evaluate an opportunity. Map a process. Build a system. Take something from the Business Lab and put it to work in your business.

You have 14 days to explore the resources and start using them.

If you decide within those first 14 days that the Business Lab is not the right fit, contact us to request a refund.

Come in. Pick a place to start. Put it to work.

What Do You Want Business Ownership to Change in Your Life?

Maybe you want another source of income.

Maybe you want to build something that belongs to you.

Maybe you’re building toward the day when your business can replace your paycheck.

Maybe you want more control over your time, the ability to work from anywhere, or a business that doesn’t require your constant attention to keep operating.

Maybe you want to build something enormous.

Or maybe you want a profitable business that gives you more choices than you have today.

There isn’t one right version of business ownership.

Know what you’re building. Understand your numbers. Make deliberate decisions about where your time and money go. Build processes that can support the business as it grows.

Build the business that works for the life you actually want to live.

Let’s See What You Can Build.

Backbone America’s Business Lab