Preface
For the past three years, Rural Institute staff and consultants from Griffin-Hammis Associates have been working with organizations that support individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in Virginia, Kentucky, Utah, and Montana. The goal of this work has been to expand the capacity of these agencies to support people with Traumatic Brain Injury in self-employment enterprises. This manual and exercises evolved from that work.
Anyone—with or without a disability, with or without a brain injury—can benefit from following certain steps as she develops her small business idea. This manual outlines those steps and includes exercises designed to organize the details inherent in small business development. The more elaborate the business, the more elaborate the planning and financial foundation, but the steps necessary to refine the business idea remain the same.
We hope you find this tool useful as you begin to make your self-employment dream come true, or as you support someone with a Traumatic Brain Injury achieve his dreams.
This manual was funded by the Self-Employment Development for Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (SEDTBI) project U. S. Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation and Research (NIDRR) Grant #H133G020215, opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of funding agency.