Metropolitan Community College (MCC) is soft-launching its Business Development Center this fall at its former MCC IT Express location at The Ashton in Millwork Commons. The site will be a hub for entrepreneur-focused community education classes, free workshops and one-on-one coaching led by experienced business leaders. 

Classes begin Sept. 9 with limited capacity. The official launch of the center is scheduled for January.  

MCC considers entrepreneurship a form of workforce development, according to Marla Ashe, MCC’s executive director of business development. Entrepreneurship is the “trade equivalent for business,” and fostering opportunities to educate business owners on the skills required to succeed supports the region as a whole, Ashe said. 

Courses this fall designed for local entrepreneurs include topics on QuickBooks, building a brand on LinkedIn and legal fundamentals for small businesses. The MCC FastTrac Entrepreneurship and Business Development course will also take place at the Millwork Commons location. The course is aimed at early-stage founders and will focus on steps such as market research, developing a business plan and honing a business pitch. 

If participants want to, Ashe said the college would work with them in applying the courses they complete into transferable credits. Students could then decide to pursue a certificate or degree with the credits they earned while building their businesses. 

Daphne Cook, MCC’s director of business development education, said the classes are meant for working startup founders and small business owners to pick up the skills and then apply them right away in their daily functions. 

“It’s not the same curriculum over and over, quarter after quarter,” Cook said. “We’re engaging this population, and we’re asking what is it that you need, what’s coming up, because this environment is changing all the time.”

MCC offers founders and business owners in the community tools beyond education, from access to meeting spaces and mentors, to specialized equipment in the MCC Prototype Design Lab, Ashe said. Engaging with MCC’s programming is a way to help entrepreneurs network and no longer feel alone or “suffer in silence,” she said.

“At MCC, ‘community’ is our middle name,” Ashe said. “That unknown or that dream that you’ve been dreaming about for years that you’ve been deferring, we want them to know this is a safe place to bring it to and help manifest.”

You can learn more and register for business development classes by going to MCC’s website or reaching out to BusinessDevelopment@mccneb.edu. Ashe said the free one-on-one consulting is available now.