Walton County Economic Development Alliance

Most small businesses don't fail from a bad idea. They fail from a number nobody checked.

WaltonPreneurs Academy is twelve online lessons for the smallest businesses in Walton County — the ones with fewer than five employees, no line of credit, and no bookkeeper. Register with a name and an email, then work at your own pace. You finish with five instruments built from your own figures and a number you can defend.

Register and start lesson 1 See the twelve lessons ← Wonderful Walton

12Lessons

$0Cost, always

5Instruments built

—No deadline

Who this is built for

The business that fits in a truck, a kitchen, a booth, or a spare bedroom.

Federal law calls it a microenterprise: fewer than five employees, and generally shut out of conventional loans, equity, and ordinary banking services. In Walton County that is most of Main Street and nearly all of the north end.

A

Trades and services

Lawn care, cleaning, hauling, small construction, HVAC and handyman work, mobile detailing, hair and nails. Cash-heavy, seasonal, priced by instinct.

B

Food and farm

Growers, market vendors, food trucks, bakers, caterers, honey and value-added producers. An agriculture version of the money lessons runs with Harvest Hub farmer-owners.

C

Coast and creative

Charter captains, short-term rental cleaners, photographers, makers, retail booths. Six months of income compressed into a season that has to carry twelve.

The design argument

Financial literacy is not a session near the end. It is the spine.

The established national curricula treat money as one unit inside a business-planning arc — typically arriving well after the concept work is finished. That sequence assumes the student's constraint is clarity of idea. For a microenterprise owner it usually isn't. The constraint is household cash.

So we invert the order

Lesson 1 is the household floor: what the business must pay the owner every month for the owner to keep showing up. Every later decision — pricing, capacity, whether to hire, whether to borrow — gets measured against that number. Seven of the twelve lessons will not let you move on until you have entered the figure they produce.

And we change the output

The traditional finish line is a written business plan. Ours is five working instruments the owner can still use in month eighteen: a household floor, a unit-cost sheet, a price and margin model, a thirteen-week cash runway, and a borrowing decision memo.

Why that matters for funding Quantitative deliverables are countable. Every instrument completed is a documented technical assistance outcome, captured at the lesson where it is produced, in the fields SBA asks for. The measurement system is not bolted on after the fact — it is the gate the student has to pass to keep going.

Program at a glance

CORE

Twelve lessons, in order

Each lesson is a read of eight to ten minutes, a worked example from a Walton County business, and a five-question check. Four correct opens the next lesson. Seven of the twelve also ask for a figure you built in the tools.

ALONGSIDE

Money Ledger, six modules

Six financial literacy modules and five calculators, open to anyone in the county whether or not they register. No sequence, no check, no account needed. Use them on their own or beside the lessons.

AFTER

Coaching, if you want it

Finish the twelve and you can ask for one-to-one time with a local coach when the plan meets the season. Optional, still free, and documented to federal standard so it counts toward the county's service record.

The lessons

Twelve lessons, in order. Seven of them end with a number.

The order is not a suggestion. Each lesson's figure is an input to a later one, so lesson 6 cannot tell you anything useful until lessons 1, 4 and 5 have real numbers in them. That is why the next lesson opens only when the one before it is finished.

Growing something instead of selling something? Harvest Hub farmer-owners can take lessons 4, 5, 6 and 10 with agricultural substitutions: enterprise-budget and per-acre or per-head costing, cooperative patronage mechanics, and a growing-season cash curve. The figures asked for are the same, so both routes finish the same course. Ask for the agriculture version when you register.

Business financial literacy program

The Money Ledger

Six modules that run alongside the twelve lessons and stand on their own for anyone in the county who wants them. No registration, no sequence, no check — open any of them at any time. Each is roughly 45 minutes: a short read, one worked example using a real Walton County business shape, and one tool.

How competency is measured

A score nobody games, because it is the work itself.

The lesson checks decide only whether the next lesson opens. What the county records is different and harder to fake: whether the instrument was actually built, and whether the owner can explain the number out loud to a coach. Explanation is the test — a spreadsheet a student cannot narrate has taught nothing.

Competency	Demonstrated when the owner can…	Captured at
Separation	Show a business account distinct from the household account, and state last month's owner draw from memory	Lesson 1 · Module 1
Unit cost	Name the true cost of delivering one unit including their own unbilled time	Lesson 4 · Module 5
Margin	Explain what a price change does to contribution margin, without a calculator	Lesson 5 · Module 5
Break-even	State how many units per month cover fixed costs plus the household floor	Lesson 6
Records	Produce last month's income and expenses from their own system in under ten minutes	Lesson 9 · Module 3
Cash timing	Point to the week in the next quarter where cash goes tightest, and say why	Lesson 10 · Module 4
Credit	Convert an offered factor rate into an annualized cost and say whether the business can service it	Lesson 11 · Module 6

Working tools

Five instruments. Fill them in during the session, keep them after.

Nothing here is a demo. These are the same calculators the lessons ask you to build, and the numbers you enter flow between them — your household floor becomes the target in the break-even tool, your unit margin becomes the input to the runway. Use the export at the bottom to hand your figures to a coach.

Reading the colors Red means one thing on every tool and chart here: money leaving the business, or a figure below zero. It sits deliberately outside the Wonderful Walton palette so it never competes with brand color for your attention. Green is money that stayed. Gold is a caution — you are above the line, but not by much.

1 · The Household Floor

What the business must pay you each month before anything else is true.

Housing — rent or mortgage, insurance, taxes Monthly, the whole household

Utilities & phone Food & household

Vehicles & fuel Personal use only Health & medicine

Debt payments Cards, personal loans Childcare, school, other

Other household income A spouse's wages, benefits, anything not from this business Self-employment tax set-aside Percent of owner draw. Start at 15.3% and adjust with a preparer.

2 · Cost of One

The true cost of delivering a single unit, including the time you never invoice.

What do you sell one of? A job, a plate, a cut, a case, an hour

Materials & supplies per unit Packaging, delivery, fees

Your hands-on time Hours per unit What your hour is worth

Unbilled time per unit Drive, setup, quoting, cleanup Paid help per unit Wages plus payroll cost

Equipment cost per unit Note, repairs, wear Waste or rework rate Percent of units redone or lost

3 · Price, Margin & Break-Even

Where the line is, and how many units a month it takes to cross it.

Your price per unit Variable cost per unit Carried from Cost of One. Change it if you want to test something. Fixed costs per month Insurance, rent, software, phone, licenses — costs that do not move with volume Owner draw target per month Carried from the Household Floor Units you actually sell in a normal month

4 · Thirteen-Week Runway

Profit is an opinion. Cash is a fact with a date on it.

Cash in the bank today

Typical weekly collections Typical weekly outflow

Season shape Walton runs two opposite curves. Pick the one your money follows. Starting week of the year 1 to 52

One-time payment coming due In which week? 1 to 13

5 · Loan Decoder

Translate any offer into one comparable number, then ask whether the business can carry it.

How is this offer quoted? Amount you receive

Rate or factor 8.5 for 8.5% · 1.32 for a factor Term Months

Origination & closing fees Total repayment Flat-fee offers only

Monthly cash left after all operating costs Before this new payment. Your break-even surplus.

Downloads a plain text summary you can email to a coach or print for session.

Your entries are kept on this device What you type into these five tools, the Vivid Vision and the one-page plan is saved in this browser as you go. Close the tab, come back next week on the same computer, and your figures are still here. They are not sent anywhere and they are not on your phone or any other machine — for that, and for a copy that survives a cleared browser or a new computer, use the export button on each tool.

A word on what these tools are not They are teaching instruments, not tax or lending advice. A factor-rate conversion here is an estimate for comparison, not a disclosure under the Truth in Lending Act. Take any real offer to a coach, and take any tax question to a preparer.

Register

Free. Not free to start, not free for some people. Free.

There is no fee, no income test, no card on file, and no paid tier waiting three lessons in. All you need is a name and an email address. Registration opens lesson 1, and each lesson after that opens when you finish the one before it.

Leave this empty

Start the Academy

Takes about a minute. Lesson 1 opens as soon as you finish.

Your name This is what goes on your certificate Email address How the Academy reaches you

Business name Leave blank if you have not named it yet Phone Optional. Only used if you ask for coaching

Where you work Where the business is

People working in it, including you Which version

Already started on another device?

Your progress lives in the browser you used. Open the transcript file you saved there and paste the whole thing here.

COST

Nothing, at any point

The county pays for this so the owner does not have to. There is no upgrade, no materials fee, and nothing to cancel. If anything on this site ever asks you for money, it is not us.

PACE

Your own, with one rule

Take a lesson tonight and the next one in March if that is how the season runs. The only rule is order: each lesson opens when the one before it is finished, because its figures feed the next.

PRIVACY

Your numbers stay yours

Your household budget, your costs, your prices and your cash position are calculated in your browser and never sent anywhere. What reaches the Academy office is your registration and, if you finish, your completion.