Rule29 Dreams with the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program

Over the course of four months in early 2018, Rule29’s principal and creative director Justin Ahrens had the amazing opportunity to partake in Goldman Sachs Foundations 10,000 Small Businesses Program hosted out of Harold Washington College. 10KSB is an intensive entrepreneur program developed and implemented by Babson College, a national leader in entrepreneurship education.

The 10,000 Small Businesses Program is designed to provide small business owners with a comprehensive and practical business immersion like no other. The program pushes business owners to dream more, lead better, plan strategically and focus on long term, sustainable growth. The collaborative cohort is completed once a five year growth plan is finished and presented. “I’ve always taken purposeful scheduled time to work on the business, but this experience showed me that in order to reach and exceed your goals you need be a student of your business everyday. Ideas from the class have already been implemented into R29 and the results are evident and exciting! This program is not only invaluable to Rule29 but it also strengthens our understanding of business and entrepreneurship even more which we can use to strengthen our deliverables as a creative agency.” states Ahrens.

In addition to providing superb educational instruction, the other two pillars of the 10,000 Small Businesses Program are extensive networking opportunities with other Program alumni from around the world as well as access to program partners and capital opportunities.