At The Fortune Society, the Employment Services (ES) program equips participants with professional tools to help them successfully obtain employment and thrive in the workplace. Participants gain valuable knowledge from services like the three-week job readiness workshop, sector-based skills training and transitional work opportunities.  

The Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO) focuses on entrepreneurship, building upon these foundational professional skills to teach participants about starting and building a successful business.  

Upon enrolling in WIBO, Minerva, a former participant, already had two small businesses in the beauty and retail industries. She entered the workshop to learn more about organizing her finances, cultivating a network and, overall, creating a more structured brand.  

Before starting WIBO, enrolled participants must first attend several weeks of the pre-WIBO. There, they review more general professional skills and begin brainstorming business ideas. Minerva shared that throughout the course of the workshop, the facilitator acted as an incredible resource.  

“The facilitator gave us worksheets with questions to reflect on and identify our goals for why we wanted to start that specific business. He also broke things down like how to create a budget. I feel like he mentally prepared us for everything that comes when you start a business from the beginning.”  

Although Minerva entered WIBO as an established business owner, the workshop benefits entrepreneurs at all stages. They discussed the basics, like coming up with a business plan and establishing concrete goals for the business’s future. Minerva shared that, despite her previous experience as a business owner, she gained important insight that reaffirmed why she began her entrepreneurship venture in the first place.   

For Minerva, WIBO was inspiring, and it offered the opportunity to learn from the other entrepreneurs in the class. Each participant came with a unique business idea, and Minerva took lessons from the others in the workshop regarding marketing, management and other strategies.   

Since beginning WIBO, Minerva kickstarted her third business, a podcast called “Beauty in Pain,” that she records at Bluestone Studio in our Long Island City service center.  

“I recorded my first episode at the beginning of March,” Minerva shared. “I’ve wanted to do this podcast for so long, and now they have the studio here. It feels like everything I wanted is coming to me. First, this amazing workshop, and now the studio to record. It’s all here for me to take advantage of everything.”