Macy’s Exclusive Workshop Schools Entrepreneurs How to Make ‘Magic’

Outler also says, “A lot of them may have great ideas, but have only been in business for a year, and can’t articulate best sellers, the core of the business and how to really take advantage of the materials in the class. We also encourage people to apply again, if they came close to being accepted over the last two years, but didn’t make it. There is a woman in class this year that didn’t make it last year. She didn’t have enough of a financial history, and didn’t properly grasp how to work with her customers and we encourage people to go back do some more work and apply again.”

Class in Session: Teaching creative talents to think like accountants.

Classes begin with a half-day session on a Monday and run until a final presentation and graduation ceremony on Friday.

According to Outler, “They start off in one place on Monday, teeming with confidence and then by Friday, some of them are suddenly not so sure. We do peel back the onion. Some of our grads find they might need an extra year to raise more capital, to add people to their teams or to build a better marketing strategy.”

The half-day session on Monday teaches a master class on how to move from conception to building a business and understanding the intricacies on how to work with major retailers.

The class objective is to, “Make everyone understand that you may have a great business today on your own, but when you’re working with a partner, there are other factors to be considered because you are in their house and that house is built a little bit differently.”

On Tuesday, candidates are subjected to their first full day of class.  They are taught about identifying the customer and sizing the market. How to understand the customers that a potential partner has and how they can align that with the direction of their respective companies. At the end of the class, candidates are expected to really get a sense of whether or not a business opportunity is big enough to invest in.