Inside B-School - Part 2

Before B-School, There Is a Step Most Reviews Skip

Start The Right Business

A note before we start: I am not a B-School affiliate.

No link in this post, no commission, nothing for me to gain if you enroll. Not because I am against affiliate partnerships, quite the opposite. Recommending what you genuinely believe in and earning a small commission is a model I like, and it will become part of how The Swan Chapter grows. It just is not the case here at this time. What follows is simply what I found, written for a woman 50+ who is deciding whether this is for her.

If you have been circling the idea of building something of your own, here is the thing almost nobody tells you about B-School: it does not start where you think it does. The main program assumes you probably already know what your business is. It moves quickly to your ideal customer, and by the fourth lesson you are positioning a brand. That is useful, and it is also useless if you are sitting with a blank page.

Which is why the piece that matters most for women at our stage is the one almost nobody reviews: Start The Right Business, an eight-lesson course that comes with B-School enrollment. I checked with them, and it is still part of the curriculum next time around. It exists for one reason, and it is the reason most of us stall. You do not yet know what the thing is.

What you do know is that you are craving professional and financial freedom. The flexibility to keep working on your own terms, on something more aligned with who you have become over the years, rather than the job or the career you chose decades earlier. Some people are genuinely content with the path they took and are happily planning a full retirement. But if you are reading this, I suspect you are asking yourself a different question: whether it is too late to choose a different path this time.

What the course is for

Marie Forleo's promise is simple: a roadmap to find clarity, take action, and build momentum, so you can finally start the right business for you.

I will admit I stopped at that line, because clarity and momentum were the two things I was missing entirely in the months after my corporate chapter ended. Not information. Not ambition. Clarity, and something to move toward.

She names three ways people get stuck:

• You want your own business but you have no idea what it should be, and it feels like everything worth doing is already taken.

• You have too many ideas and you are afraid of choosing the wrong one.

• You have an idea, but you are not confident it will actually work, so you have not started.

If you have read anything else on this site, you know I described my reader in almost exactly these terms: an idea you have carried for years, several ideas with no way to choose among them, or nothing yet but a strong sense that you are not done. Marie built a lesson for each of them. That is not a small thing, and it is the first reason I would point a woman in a career reset here.

The question underneath the question

Marie also names the anxiety of watching time pass while a voice repeats, I should be further ahead by now.

At our stage, the question is a different one. It is not about being further ahead. It is whether there is still time to start something more meaningful, something that actually feels like mine. There is. But that question deserves an honest answer rather than a motivational one, and this course is one of the few places I have found one.

She does not soften it, and that is the point

Here is where I expected to disagree with her, and did not.

Marie is blunt right from the get go. This is not a get-rich-quick course so you can quit your job and start your dream business. If you decide to start that right business for you, you will most likely work longer hours for less money, possibly for an extended period. There will be rejection, self-doubt, and loneliness. And there are no guarantees at the end of any of it.

This is very different from all the posts I see from influencers my age working from a beach, having found financial freedom. That contrast is exactly why I took this program more seriously.

I will admit, though, that for a while I read it as a red flag, a sign that this program was not for me, especially for a woman who has just walked away from a career that already asked too much. Then I understood. It is not about less work. It is more about the work that YOU choose.

Freedom is the word that keeps coming up when women at our stage talk about what they want next (see my reference above to the woman working from a cruise ship or a beach!). Not freedom from work. Most of us like working, and we are good at it. It is the freedom to finally choose the work: what it is, who it serves, what a good day looks like (and sure, why not on a beach), and where the hours go.

For more than twenty-five years, the standards were high, and the goals belonged to someone else. This asks more of you, in both hours and risk. What it gives back is the part that has been missing: the work is yours, and every hour goes into something you actually want to build.

That is what Marie Forleo is really offering. Is it worth the hours she is preparing you for? That is the question this course exists to help you answer, and it is why I would rather you read this before you decide.

And if the answer turns out to be no...

Yes, you might go through this and discover that you are not willing to give it the hours, the energy, and the money. If that happens, good. Truly. You will have found out in a few weeks rather than a few years, and you will stop wondering what if for the rest of your life. All of that attention goes back to whatever matters most to you instead. And yes, that absolutely can be pickleball or mahjong (nothing wrong with this by the way, as I am a huge fan).

Kidding aside, I am not lowering the stakes. It is me telling you that a clear no is a real result, and at our stage a fast answer is worth a great deal. This course is designed to give you one either way, which is more than most programs can say.

What the course actually asks of you

Marie is specific about what you need to complete to move through the program:

1. Understand and articulate your purpose

2. Write down your ideal business vision, your perfect picture

3. Understand, and commit to, the people you want to serve

4. Choose your business model

5. Generate ideas

6. Narrow your ideas

7. Test in the marketplace

8. Make growth inevitable

Read that list again and notice that finding an idea is step five. Four steps come before it. That is the part most of us get wrong, and it is the reason so many career resets stall on the question of what I should do, when the real question underneath is who am I now, and what do I actually want this to look like.

One thing I did not expect and ended up loving: the amount of additional material woven through the lessons. Marie links out to videos, podcast episodes, books, TED Talks, and more, organized within the relevant sections rather than dumped into a resource list at the end. You can spend hours in there. If you know The Swan Chapter at all, you know how I feel about a good book or podcast recommendation, so this was my kind of rabbit hole.

Lesson 1: Why do you actually want this?

The first lesson is not about business ideas at all. It is about your why.

Marie's argument is that when the work gets hard, and she is unambiguous that it will, a clear why is what carries you through. She walks you through a series of questions to find it. The one that resonated with me was this: what are you taking a stand for?

My answer came out faster than I expected. I am taking a stand for women my age and older who have had a career setback and are quietly asking themselves, is this it for me? I want to tell them two things. First, that they are not alone. Second, and this is the part that matters more to me, that there are concrete steps to take, not just motivational talk. That is why The Swan Chapter exists, and I did not have it worded that clearly until this lesson.

The line from Marie that I keep coming back to: none of these exercises are about getting it perfect. They are about getting started. If you never start, you never find out.

Lesson 2: How big does this really need to be?

This is the lesson I most wanted to see, because it answers the question I left open earlier: does this course make room for a woman who wants something meaningful without rebuilding a life that consumes her? I do not want to be the next Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx.

Starting a business does not have to mean building a company and hiring people. Solo entrepreneurship is having a real moment, particularly among women over fifty, and Marie treats a deliberately small business as a legitimate choice rather than a lesser one. The lesson asks you to decide whether you are building something big, small, or micro, and provides exercises to work through it.

In my case, the answer was immediate. When my corporate career ended, I already knew that managing people would not be part of my next chapter. Not because I didn't enjoy it or wasn't good at it, but because I had done it for a long time and wanted something different. Having that named as a valid option, rather than a failure of ambition, mattered more than I expected. If you are earlier in this than I am, Lesson 2 is the right place to sit with it. And as Marie keeps reminding you, this is about progress, not an irrevocable decision carved in stone.

Lesson 3: Who do you actually want to serve?

Inside B-School, you will spend a great deal of time here, so treat this lesson as a preview of what is coming. It is still a valuable place to start thinking about who you actually want to help.

For me, this one is honestly still in progress, because I am still early. Yes, I know my reader is a woman 50+ in a career reset. But I am still learning what she really believes and values. I cannot assume that because I am also a woman in a career reset, everyone wants the same things I do. What keeps her up at night may be nothing like what I struggle with. That is work in progress, and I am enjoying every bit of it, because I am learning constantly.

Lesson 4: How will you actually make money?

This is where Marie declines to let you off the hook. You need some idea of what you are selling. "I don't know how I'll make money yet; I just want to start a business that empowers and inspires women like me in a career reset" is a lovely sentence and, as Marie would point out, it does not pay the bills.

What this lesson does instead is teach you how to research the business model behind the thing you want to build: who is already doing it, how they earn, and what you need to learn to do it yourself. That is the piece a long-employed career never teaches you. You can deliver strong results inside someone else's business model for twenty-five years and never once have to choose your own.

It is also why The Swan Chapter has a dedicated Resource section for learning: read, listen, do. If you are going to build something, you have to become a student again first.

Lesson 5: Where do good business ideas actually come from?

This lesson is about how to brainstorm properly and then organize what comes out of it.

The prompts are practical rather than theoretical. What problems can you actually solve? What do you bring to the table in skills, strengths, and experience? And, importantly, how do you get past the thought that stops most of us before we begin, which is it has all been done already, and better.

If this part interests you, Suzy Welch's Becoming You goes deeper on exactly this question of identifying what is genuinely yours to build.

Once the brainstorming is done, Marie gives you her Clear Idea Matrix to organize everything: the problem, the solution, who else is doing it, and where you might fit, to name a few. For anyone who has ever left a brainstorm with twelve pages of notes and no decision, this is the part that turns noise into something you can actually look at.

Lesson 6: What if you have too many ideas to choose from?

This lesson is where you begin to evaluate rather than generate.

Marie's line here is one worth sitting with: just because you are passionate about a topic, a skill, or an activity does not mean you should, or even could, build a business around it. That is a harder thing to hear than it looks, particularly if you have been carrying an idea for years.

And once again, it comes back to action steps. Not dreaming about it, not thinking about it, doing something about it. Not the whole thing. One small step. Jim Collins writes about exactly this kind of small stepping, and I reviewed his book here.

This is also the lesson where you get real. There is one question in here that landed differently for me than it would have at thirty-five, and I suspect it will land the same way for you: Ten years from now, will I regret not having pursued this?

At our stage, that question is not hypothetical. It is arithmetic. And it is remarkably good at separating the ideas you actually want from the ones you only like the sound of.

Lesson 7: How do you know if your idea will make money?

This is where the rubber hits the road, as Marie puts it, and it is the strongest lesson in the course.

The goal is to choose one idea to move forward with, understand the playground you would be competing in, and get real feedback from the actual world rather than from your own head. She gives you a series of questions that function more like a checklist, and this is where research and learning become essential.

In my opinion, this is the most robust and most useful part of the course. Every other lesson is a prerequisite for this one. This is where you get really hands-on, and not just answering questions in your journal sitting at home with your coffee. It is where the value is concentrated.

This lesson alone is worth the whole course, because it is the point where you take real action and she shows you exactly how.

Lesson 8: What really determines whether this works?

The final lesson is about beliefs, vision, habits, and rituals. What you hold to be true, what you are building toward, and the small repeated things that either carry you there or quietly stop you.

It also lands on something I care deeply about, and which is the entire foundation of The Swan Chapter: never stop learning. Read the articles and the books. Listen to the podcasts. Do the programs, including this one.

Finally, it circles back to what the course promised at the start. Clarity.

It delivers on that big time, and it delivers in the way I trust most. Not by thinking or talking your way to clarity, but by doing the work until clarity arrives on the other side.

Questions you are probably asking

Do I need a business idea before starting this course?

No, and that is the entire point. This is the course for the blank page and for the crowded one. Lesson 5 helps you generate ideas, Lesson 6 helps you narrow them, and Lesson 7 helps you test the one you choose.

How long does it take?

Eight lessons, each with five to eleven sections, plus a substantial library of linked videos and podcast episodes if you want to go deeper. You could move through the core material in a few focused weeks. You could also spend months in it. The exercises reward time rather than speed.

Can I buy it on its own?

It comes with B-School enrollment. That is worth knowing before you go looking for it as a standalone purchase.

Is this the same thing as B-School?

No, and the difference matters. This course helps you decide what to build. B-School helps you build it. If you are still deciding, start here.

Is it just motivational?

No, and that was my main worry going in. Every lesson ends in an action step, and Lesson 7 will not let you off the hook without going out and talking to real people.

Who this course is for

• You have left a long career, by choice or otherwise, and something of your own keeps calling.

• You are still working full time and the idea will not leave you alone.

• You have carried one idea for years and never tested it.

• You have five ideas and no way to choose between them.

• You want something meaningful that does not consume your whole life, and you want permission to build it small.

• You are willing to do the exercises rather than just watch the videos.

Who this course is not for

• You want to be told what business to start. This gives you a framework, not an answer. The work is yours.

• You want a step-by-step plan to build and launch. That is B-School. This is the deciding phase, and mistaking one for the other is the most common way people end up disappointed.

• You are not willing to test anything in public. Lesson 7 requires you to go out and get real feedback, and without that step the rest is just very good journaling.

• You are looking for something passive. Marie says plainly in the introduction that this will ask for more hours, not fewer, and she means it.

• You are genuinely happy with the career you had and are looking forward to a full retirement. That is a completely legitimate answer, and this is not for you.

My verdict, for now

If you are a woman in a career reset who does not yet know what her next thing is, this is the most useful eight lessons I know of. It gave me language for my own why that I did not have before; it treated a deliberately micro or solo business as a real choice, and Lesson 7 pushed me into action rather than analysis.

I will keep reporting, as I am retaking B-School. But this part, the part almost nobody reviews, is the part I would send you to first