What I Teach Workshops Ways We Can Help About

Small business education in English and Spanish.

Avanza works with SBDCs, nonprofits, cities, lenders, and other organizations to provide workshops, advising, and small business programs.

Bring Avanza to Your Organization See what we teach

What we teach

We have existing curriculum and workshop materials across four main areas:

Starting a Business

Business setup, licenses and permits, entity basics, bookkeeping setup, and the basic systems a new business needs.

Understanding the Numbers

Financial statements, bookkeeping, cash flow, pricing, taxes, paying yourself, and understanding where the business is making or losing money.

Making Business Decisions

Hiring, borrowing, equipment purchases, pricing changes, expansion, and using the numbers to decide what the business can afford to do next.

Running a Better Business

Choosing the right tools, improving basic processes, using technology and AI, and building simple systems that make the business easier to manage.

Programs can be adapted to a specific industry, audience, or level of experience. We can teach a single workshop, build a deeper multi-session class, or develop a series around a particular topic.

Sample workshops

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Starting a Small Business: What You Actually Need to Set Up

The practical steps behind licenses, business structure, banking, bookkeeping, payments, and the basic systems needed to start operating.

Starting a Business

Setting Up Your Books From Scratch

How to choose a bookkeeping platform, separate business and personal finances, organize accounts, and build a simple routine for keeping the books current.

Starting a Business

Reading Your P&L Without Getting Lost

How to read an income statement, understand where the money is going, and use it to ask better questions about the business.

Understanding the Numbers

Pricing for Profit

How labor, materials, overhead, capacity, and margin affect what a business needs to charge.

Understanding the Numbers

Managing Cash Flow

A practical introduction to cash forecasting, reserves, upcoming obligations, and spotting a cash problem before it becomes urgent.

Understanding the Numbers

Where Is the Profit Going?

Follow the money from revenue through direct costs, overhead, owner compensation, and profit to understand what’s actually happening in the business.

Understanding the Numbers

Preparing Your Business for a Loan

What lenders typically want to see, which financial information to prepare, how to think about borrowing capacity, and what to clean up before applying.

Making Business Decisions

Can I Afford to Hire?

How to calculate the real cost of an employee, estimate the additional revenue needed to support the hire, and understand when the business is ready.

Making Business Decisions

Technology & AI for Small Business

How to choose useful tools for bookkeeping, customers, scheduling, payments, communication, and administrative work—and where AI can realistically save time.

Running a Better Business

Engineering a Profitable Menu

Recipe costing, portions, waste, margins, and pricing for food businesses.

Understanding the NumbersFood Business

What Does My Business Need to Sell to Hit My Goal?

Work backward from an income or profit goal to understand the revenue, customers, jobs, or sales the business needs to generate.

Understanding the NumbersMaking Business Decisions

Know Your Numbers Before You Buy Equipment

How to think through a major purchase using payments, utilization, added capacity, labor savings, expected revenue, and payback.

Making Business Decisions

When Is Your Business Ready to Grow?

How to evaluate hiring, equipment, new services, additional locations, and other growth decisions without stretching the business too far.

Making Business Decisions

From Owner-Operator to Business Owner

What changes when the owner starts adding employees or crews, including pricing, overhead, cash flow, management, and the numbers that become more important.

Making Business DecisionsRunning a Better Business

Business Tax Basics

How small-business taxes generally work, what owners should track throughout the year, estimated payments, common deductions, and how to prepare to work with a tax professional.

Understanding the Numbers

Bookkeeping for Food Businesses

How to organize the books, categorize common food-business expenses, and build a workable weekly bookkeeping routine.

Starting a BusinessFood Business

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Ways we can support your program

Workshops

Workshop series and cohort programs

Office hours

1:1 business advising

Curriculum development

Panels and speaking

All programming is available in English and Spanish and can be adapted to your audience, industry, and format. Organizations can bring Avanza in for a single session or work with us across a longer program.

Talk About Your Program

About

Joaquin Ortiz, founder of Avanza, speaking on stage at a fireside chat

I’m Joaquin, founder of Avanza and advisor to growing businesses.

I have worked directly with businesses at all stages to strengthen finance, operations, and technology to help make better business decisions. I bring that experience to the workshops I teach.

My work has ranged from raising several million with tech startups to helping new entrepreneurs get their first systems in place; independent food businesses engineering their menu for more profit to analyzing the impact of hiring, growth, and cash flow for multi-crew service businesses.

I speak fluent and professional Spanish and English and work with organizations who share the mission of supporting entrepreneurs at different stages of building a business.

If you’d like me to work on your business, get in touch below or check out our sub brands.

See sample workshops

Planning a workshop or small business program?

Tell me a little about your organization, who you serve, and what you’d like help with.