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Spotlight
PAGE: https://alison.com/course/small-business-management
PROMISE: You map your operations to standard stages and draft the documents that keep scaling orderly.
WHO: A small business owner who is scaling and wants a written operations base under their feet.
WHYNOW: Scaling makes the missing documents and cycles visible before the next hiring season.
DESC: If you're starting out or want to grow, this free diploma course in small business management will give you both sound information and much-needed inspiration.
BEFORE: Bookings are logged in three separate places and none of them feeds the others.
BEFORE: Hiring a new person feels like a series of ad hoc meetings with no sequence.
BEFORE: Marketing spend is split by instinct and there is no map of what is missing.
AFTER: A single booking flow is named by cycle stage and the others are retired.
AFTER: A written hiring checklist is used for the first new employee and kept for future hires.
AFTER: A marketing plan lists each component and the missing one is assigned a fix.
GAIN: A named stage for every quarter that drives staffing and inventory choices.
GAIN: A repeatable hiring path that survives the first new worker.
GAIN: A clear statement of value that guides pricing and sales language.
STEP: Your growth needs a second employee but you have no checklist for hiring. || Outline the necessary steps to take in employing your first worker || You walk through the hiring steps with a real candidate and track where each one lands.
STEP: You market on one channel and do not know why conversion stalls. || Define marketing and outline its components || You break your marketing into components and identify which one is missing.
STEP: Your pricing feels arbitrary when rivals change theirs. || Explain what a value proposition is || You write a one line value statement and test it on two real bookings.
NOTFOR: Who need a certified accountant or a legal review before moving forward.
NOTFOR: Who already run a formal operations manual and only need a tool change.
FACT: Average duration: 6-10 Hours
FACT: CPD-accredited certificate available
FACT: Advanced level
COVERS: Define a high-performance work system
COVERS: Outline the necessary steps to take in employing your first worker
COVERS: Explain the stages of group development
COVERS: Outline the dos and don’ts of writing a business plan
COVERS: Explain what a business plan outline is and its usefulness
COVERS: Define a business management plan
COVERS: Define marketing and outline its components
COVERS: Describe a marketing information system
COVERS: Outline the four stages in the business cycle
COVERS: Explain what a value proposition is
COVERS: Define a manager and the traits associated with leadership
COVERS: Recall how to write a marketing plan
MODULE: Managers vs. Leaders || Who Are Managers? | Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Strategy
MODULE: Leading People and Organizations || Trait Approaches to Leadership | Behavioral Approaches to Leadership | Contingency Approaches to Leadership | Contemporary Approaches to Leadership | Developing Your Leadership Skills
MODULE: Emotions and Succession Planning || Emotions at the Workplace | Emotional Labor | Designing a High-Performance Work System | Improving Organizational Performance
MODULE: Recruitment and Training || Hiring Your First Employee | Selecting and Managing Your Team
MODULE: Managing Groups and Teams || Type of Teams | Group Dynamics | Understanding Team Design Characteristics | Management of Teams
MODULE: Business Planning || Do’s and Don’ts of Writing a Business Plan | Developing a Business Plan | Writing, Organization, and Formatting | Identifying Potential Investors | Contingency Planning and Risk
MODULE: Business Plan Outline || Small Business Plan Outline | Business Operations
MODULE: Management and Costs || Developing a Management Plan | Calculating Start-up Costs | The Franchise Route
What you are probably seeing
You notice your profit margins shrink on Amazon orders even when sales volume stays high because fees and ad costs eat into each transaction.
Your team loses focus every time a customer calls to ask about inventory or book a service, and you see no record of that demand in your online store.
Why it happens
Marketplaces charge commissions and require paid placements to stay visible, so your effective price often exceeds the cost of serving a direct customer.
Without a direct channel, you rely on third-party platforms that control the customer relationship and your ability to capture repeat business or reservations.
What changed recently
Step by step
1. List the total fees and ad spend for your top five Amazon SKUs and compare them to your direct site costs for the same items.
2. Track phone and message interruptions for one week to estimate the labor time lost to manual booking or order questions.
3. Set up a simple online booking or inventory check tool on your direct site so customers can resolve common queries without calling.
4. Create a comparison sheet showing the net revenue per unit for Amazon versus direct sales to identify where a switch is financially justifiable.
5. Launch a small test of the direct site to a subset of customers and measure conversion rates and repeat visits before fully committing.
Ways to go further
Start here: Small Business Management For when you are scaling a small business and want to manage operations better. Open the free course on Alison ↗
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