Week 3 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 3 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 78–91 minutes for everything. Each group links back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–22 min total)

• Writing a business plan — Business Queensland
• The Essence of a Business Plan and Why You Need One — U.S. Small Business Administration
• How to Write a Business Plan — Business Wales/Busnes Cymru

① Who starts a business, and what happens next

Chapter 3, Section “Meet the entrepreneur: tendencies, not a checklist” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Who entrepreneurs are” · Remember: an entrepreneur starts and runs a venture and carries the risk that it fails.

• Entrepreneurship - the Entrepreneur — Council for Economic Education — a two-minute economics-education story of a teenager who turns garage cleaning into a small business, competes with a rival, and brings in two friends; it never names the risk the young owner carries, so name it yourself. This builds on Week 1's work with entrepreneurship as one of the factors of production. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
• Entrepreneurship and the U.S. Economy — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — the federal labor-statistics agency's page on new business establishments: how many open, how many survive from year to year, and how survival differs by industry; its data run through earlier years, so read it for the patterns and the risk an entrepreneur carries, not for the latest figures. (reading, 6–9 min)

② Writing the plan, long or short

Chapter 3, Section “Compare the two plan formats: traditional versus lean” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Two ways to write a plan” · Remember: a lean plan tests an idea fast, a traditional plan convinces a lender, and both get revised.

• Writing a business plan — Business Queensland — a state government's small-business guide to the sections of a full plan, a short one-page plan to start with, and how often to review and update a plan; compare its sections with the traditional plan's eight in the chapter. (reading, 10–14 min)
• The Essence of a Business Plan and Why You Need One — U.S. Small Business Administration — the federal small-business agency explains what a plan is for and who reads it; listen for the reasons a lender wants one. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
• How to Write a Business Plan — Business Wales/Busnes Cymru — a short government small-business explainer on what goes into a plan; as you watch, sort each part it names into one of the traditional plan's sections, and bring one to the Week-3 module overview. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)

③ Reading the industry and paying for the start

Chapter 3, Section “Read the industry: the five competitive forces” · Session 2, Segment 4, “The five forces on the cart's industry” · Remember: five pushes on a business, and only one of them is a rival.

• What Can You Learn from Your Competition?: Crash Course Business Entrepreneurship #4 — CrashCourse — a lively episode on studying the businesses and alternatives a new venture competes with; pause at each competitor it names and decide which of the five forces it belongs to. (video, 13 min) (captions: creator)
• Porter's 5 Forces EXPLAINED — Business To You — a clear walk through each of the five forces with examples; match each force to its fact on the coffee cart's corner. (video, 17 min) (captions: automatic)
• Calculate the start-up costs of your business — business.gov.au — a national government business site's guide to listing start-up costs, running costs, and assets before you open; read it for the method, and skip the tax and registration details, which are specific to another country. (reading, 6–9 min)
• Financing Options for Small Businesses: Crash Course Entrepreneurship #16 — CrashCourse — an episode on the ways a new business can be funded, from the owner's own money to loans and investors; listen for where the coffee cart's owner's money and equipment loan fit. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Plan your business: write your business plan — U.S. Small Business Administration — the federal small-business agency's planning guide, which this course returns to; read the business-plan section for the traditional and lean startup formats, and the startup-costs and funding sections if you want more, as general education rather than advice for your own business. (reading, 5–8 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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