About 5-Minute Classes

Thanks for coming to visit our website…I hope you will take a 5-minute class, and then another, and another. Part of being a successful entrepreneur is always learning, always changing, always growing.

Why Just 5 Minutes
I intentionally designed each online class to be 5 minutes or less, so that you can really hone in on what you need to learn. Once you fully grasp the concepts that are taught in a class, you can then translate those concepts into “real-world practices” in your small business.

With each online class, there are recommended next steps, along with a list of related classes and worksheets, forms, or templates.

History Of The Curriculum For The 5-Minute Classes
I am the instructor on the classes, and I also designed the curriculum. Each 5-minute class can stand on its own, but is also part of a larger body of curriculum.

In 1996, I was hired by Mi Casa Resource Center in Denver, Colorado to teach women on welfare how to start and run their own businesses. They had no curriculum for me to use, so I had to come up with the teaching materials. I designed 108 hours worth of curriculum, including worksheets. Mi Casa later translated the curriculum into Spanish and also used it to land a $500,000 grant from the Small Business Administration (SBA).

In 2000, I started my own business in Denver, the Women’s Small Business Alliance, and I compressed the curriculum down to 18 hours.

In 2012, I edited the curriculum again, down to 10 hours, so that I could teach it in a weekend workshop for Colorado Free University (an adult education center in Denver).

You can probably tell where I’m going with this…

As people’s live became more overloaded, and their attention spans shortened by the minute, I thought the next move would be to distill my original 108 hours of curriculum into a 140 character tweet.

Fortunately, I stopped short of that, and instead created this cool collection of 5-minute online classes.

It represents the best of what I’ve learned in 30+ years of self-employment, and what the 3,000+ people that I’ve taught (in-person) have taught me about small business.

Structure Of The 5-Minute Classes
Back in the day, it took me about 20 minutes to record a 15-second voice mail message (ugh, and re-record it every time I went on vacation), because I needed it to sound perfect. I knew that bar of perfection wouldn’t work for these 5-minute classes, or I’d still be recording them, erasing, and rerecording them, as we speak.

Instead, I decided to record each online class in a single take (give or take).

As a result, you will get what you’d get if you were taking a class from me in person – my heartfelt attempt to make everything as easy to understand as possible, with anecdotes and real life examples and stories sprinkled throughout.

In each 5-minute online class, you can count on getting:
•“how to” pointers
•examples and formulas
•worksheets, forms, and templates
•recommendations for next steps

So, what are you waiting for – set aside 5 minutes, dive in, and take your first class!

Jennifer Croft
Founder, 5-Minute Classes