Welcome to the quarterly MOBI newsletter for Spring 2021. Our hearts go out to the regions and countries around the world facing intensified devastation due to Covid-19 in recent months, especially India. Together with the global community, we offer our prayers for recovery, safety, and wellness. We send thoughts of courage and strength amid this crisis.

Each quarter we reach out to our alumni and readers to share important highlights from Santa Clara University’s MOBI program. We hope you will enjoy these updates and continue your relationship with MOBI on your path toward entrepreneurship!

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Thank you from MOBI!

In April MOBI introduced our new MOBI Entrepreneur Starter Kit! The Entrepreneur Starter Kit provides links to our most popular resources to help you take those first steps to start your business.  

The MOBI Entrepreneur Starter Kit includes:

• MOBI’s Free Business Plan Template
• Template to Evaluate a Business
• Home-Based and Freelance Business Readiness Checklist
• Businesses You Can Start for Little or No Money
• 12 Steps to Prepare for a Small Business Loan
• 5 Steps to Build a Website
• Top Ten List for Starting a Business

To access the MOBI Entrepreneur Starter Kit, click this link.

MOBI is excited to announce we will be introducing an update to the Opening & Marketing session in our Starting a Business course later this month! 

The new Marketing session covers the “7 P’s of Marketing” to help aspiring entrepreneurs create comprehensive marketing plans for their businesses. The session also discusses the importance of market research as well as tips, tools, and guidance for both traditional and online marketing. You will learn steps to build a website and how to get started with social media marketing. The session also discusses the fundamentals of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), and why you shouldn’t overlook email marketing. Stay tuned for this exciting update in June!

We are so proud of the accomplishments of our MOBI students around the world. Each quarter we will share the story of one MOBI entrepreneur. This quarter we feature Tometi Gbedema of The Otwetiri Project.

MOBI partners are an important part of the MOBI program!  By forming partnerships with diverse communities of students around the world, MOBI can inspire entrepreneurship in ways that best meet the specific opportunities of each group, and always for free. 

This quarter MOBI features the Community Economic Development Fund (CEDF), located in Meriden, CT. CEDF's mission is to strengthen neighborhood economies by providing flexible financing, technical support, and educational opportunities to businesses, community organizations, and initiatives in communities throughout Connecticut. CEDF recently began offering a new course with MOBI curriculum entitled, My Business Jump Start. Frederick Welk, Business Advisor and Director of Business Education & Communications shared some thoughts about the program.

Why you chose MOBI?

Using MOBI for this project was a natural choice because the content was comprehensive, high quality, and the course mechanics through Moodle were proven and already in place. Trish was very enthusiastic about supporting our project and allowing us to localize the content to Connecticut-specific references and details. We set aside about 2 1/2 months to promote the online portion, and we relied on our entrepreneurial ecosystem partners to boost referrals.

How is MOBI making a difference for your students?

Here is what some of our participants had to say:

“My Business Jump Start has proved to be an informative & valuable starter program that will set entrepreneurs on the right path in establishing their business.” 

“The CEDF MOBI class was able to help us reevaluate our businesses after a pandemic. I had a twenty-year-old business that was shut down due to the pandemic. The class opened my eyes to the possibilities for me to take my personal training business into a new direction with educational videos and providing online resources.”

Anything else?

By pairing the program with a series of six webinars, we addressed the interaction that is missing for a lot of students with online learning under COVID. And many of our participants were not used to online learning tools at all. A competition with an impressive prize pool offered by Citizen's Bank really created motivation for many. Our 80 registrations and 12 graduates pleased the bank and all of our partners.  We couldn't have done it without MOBI and Trish's help.

Do you know an organization or school that might be interested in partnering with MOBI?

Here are a few events from the past few months.

MOBI highlights one theme every week on our social media platforms. We post blogs, videos, lists, and articles on a variety of topics relevant for aspiring entrepreneurs. Based upon reader activity, here are some top stories from the past quarter. Be sure to also check out #MOBIPartnerFriday posts each week.

We wish you good health and all the best in business success!

The MOBI Team