Learning Lab
Business FundamentalsUnderstand how businesses work.
An 8-week practical course for ages 14–18 covering how businesses make money, manage costs, serve customers, operate, and measure financial health.
Learning Lab
Learn what makes a business work.
Before asking students to start or manage a business, this course teaches them how one actually works through realistic scenarios, financial data, and evidence-based decisions. Students should have an interest in numbers, business, or money.
What students learn
Understand the numbers behind the business.
- Explain how a business makes money through products, services, customers, and revenue streams.
- Read a basic Profit & Loss Statement and understand revenue, expenses, gross profit, net profit, and margins.
- Use fixed costs, variable costs, pricing, and break-even to evaluate a business decision.
- Connect customers, competition, marketing, labor, payroll, inventory, and capacity to performance.
- Read a simplified Balance Sheet and understand assets, liabilities, equity, cash flow, loans, and debt.
- Evaluate business health and defend recommendations using financial and operational evidence.
Course structure
8 weeks of practical business literacy.
Week 1
How a Business Works
Products, services, customers, value, revenue streams, and the basic engine behind a business.
Week 2
Reading a Profit & Loss Statement
Use revenue, cost of goods sold, operating expenses, gross profit, and net profit to determine whether a business is actually making money.
Week 3
Pricing, Margins, and Break-Even
Use fixed costs, variable costs, contribution margin, capacity, and volume to recommend and defend a price.
Week 4
Customers, Competition, and Marketing
Identify target customers, needs, barriers, competing choices, value propositions, and marketing messages.
Week 5
Operations, Labor, and Capacity
Evaluate workflow, staffing, payroll, productivity, inventory, customer service, bottlenecks, and operating limits.
Week 6
Balance Sheets, Cash, and Debt
Identify assets, liabilities, equity, loans, interest, and cash reserves, then use them to compare financial strength.
Week 7
Profit vs. Cash and Business Health
Compare Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and cash flow information while using key metrics and trends to spot risk.
Week 8
Business Health Check
Analyze a complete fictional business, identify its strengths and risks, and defend what the owner should and should not change.
Tuition
Tuition covers 12 hours of instruction and course materials. No prerequisite is required. Boulders & Brews is an approved Arkansas Direct Pay EFA provider.
Course experience
One fictional business. Eight weeks of decisions.
Analyze Summit
Follow Summit Café & Climbing, a fictional gym and café with memberships, day passes, café sales, retail, classes, and events.
Calculate and decide
Use realistic financial and operational information to analyze problems, compare options, and choose a course of action.
Present and defend
Explain recommendations with evidence, answer questions, and identify what additional information is needed before a major decision.
Questions?
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