I'm Interested in Being a Client
The Polsky Small Business Growth Program supports South and West Side entrepreneurs in growing their businesses through coaching and consulting work completed by top student talent under supervision of local business leader coaches and Chicago Booth faculty.
What You Will Get:
As clients, business owners receive free consulting services from teams of student consultants, supervised by Chicago Booth faculty. This work is organized into a 30-week engagement that includes in-depth research and analysis to build a unique strategy for the business, followed by strategy execution planning and plan implementation. Specifically:
- 10 weeks – Weekly meetings with coaches and MBA team to build unique strategy for your business growth (Discovery)
- 10 weeks – Introduction to service providers and strategy execution planning with continued advisement by coaches and students (Planning)
- 10 weeks – Deploy up to $5K in services to approved vendors, covered by the Polsky Center, for plan implementation with ongoing support from coaches and Polsky team (Implementation)
Who Should Apply:
South and West side business owners seeking to grow their businesses from six figures in annual revenue to over $1M who are seeking to secure larger contracts with corporations and are:
- Ready to make shifts in their businesses to achieve greater success;
- Seeking to grow their customer base;
- Prepared to spend time to work on their businesses (and not just in their businesses), i.e. step away from daily operations to grow the business; and
- Able to attend virtual meetings weekly with their dedicated teams, and an in-person gathering at the start and close of the program.
Application Process:
The application for the 2025 cohort of the Small Business Growth Program is now closed. If you have any questions, reach out to Isra Omar at isra.omar@chicagobooth.edu.