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AI Foundations for Small Business Owners course cover

Master AI Small Business Owner Certification · Digital course

MA-SBOC Level 1: AI Foundations for Small Business Owners

Self-paced enrollment in the 40-module MA-SBOC Level 1 curriculum, covering responsible AI across strategy, marketing, sales, customer service, operations, finance, hiring, training, cybersecurity, automation, and business growth.

Modules
16
Estimated time
40 hours
Access
Self-paced

Single-user enrollment

$199.00

One-time purchase
What Level 1 covers Review the complete curriculum The six-level program

Enrollment includes

Practical AI training built for small business owners

Evaluate AI tools for small-business value, affordability, limitations, privacy, security, vendor risk, professional-advice boundaries, and responsible oversight.

Create reliable prompts and verification procedures for planning, research, marketing, sales, service, operations, finance, hiring support, training, and reporting.

Improve customer and business workflows without delegating legal, tax, accounting, financial, employment, healthcare, engineering, safety, licensing, or regulatory decisions to a model.

Automate repetitive work with defined data access, permissions, approvals, exceptions, audit trails, output checks, human escalation, and documented limitations.

Curriculum at a glance

From AI fundamentals to responsible business growth

View all 16 modules
  1. Module 01

    Modern Artificial Intelligence for Small Business Owners

    What the things sold to you as "AI" actually are, and why the difference decides how you check them. This module separates rules, machine learning and generative AI, opens up how a language model builds an answer, explains what changes when a product can retrieve, call tools or act, and gives a vendor-neutral field guide to the tool categories an owner meets.

  2. Module 02

    What AI Gets Wrong, and How an Owner Notices

    Fluent writing and correct writing are different things. This module covers the failures an owner actually meets — invented sources and invented rules, stale prices, arithmetic that does not add up, wording that changes the answer, instructions hidden inside a forwarded email — and the discipline of doubt that catches them on a busy day.

  3. Module 03

    Reading the Evidence About AI and Small Business

    Before you repeat a number about AI, find out what it measured, of whom, over what period and by whom. This module works through two credible surveys that report very different adoption figures and are both right, shows who neither of them asked, and sets out what the productivity evidence actually consists of.

  4. Module 04

    The Size Gate: Which Rules Reach a Business This Small

    Some duties switch on at a headcount, a revenue figure or a record count. Others reach a two-person shop exactly as they reach a national chain. This module teaches the difference, works through the employment, privacy and data-security thresholds that are verified for this course, and builds the two-column list an owner keeps for their own size, states and trade.

  5. Module 05

    Checking Whether a Rule Is Still Current

    A confident answer about business regulation is usually a two-year-old answer. This module works through four real corrections — a narrowed reporting duty, a vacated amendment, a set-aside order beside an intact rule, and an executive order that preempts nothing — and turns each into the checking routine that would have caught it.

  6. Module 06

    Where a Licensed Profession Takes Over

    This is the line the course will not cross. A single state agency licenses dozens of ordinary trades, and where your work sits inside a licensed profession, that profession's own board sets the rules — not general business regulation and certainly not an assistant. This module maps the licensing landscape and teaches you to write the referral into your procedures.

MA-SBOC

Levels in this programme

  1. Level 1 MA-SBOC Level 1: AI Foundations for Small Business Owners You are viewing this level
  2. Level 2 MA-SBOC Level 2 — Certified AI Small Business Professional
  3. Level 3 MA-SBOC Level 3 — Advanced AI Business Operations
  4. Level 4 MA-SBOC Level 4 — Master AI Small Business Owner Certification
  5. Level 5 MA-SBOC Level 5 — AI Small Business Automation Specialist
  6. Level 6 MA-SBOC Level 6 — Certified AI Small Business Instructor

Independent professional education

MA-SBOC is an independent professional education program. It is not a business license, professional license, government certification, regulatory approval, or substitute for qualified legal, accounting, tax, financial, healthcare, engineering, safety, cybersecurity, licensing, or regulatory advice. AI-generated outputs require human verification, and business owners remain responsible for decisions made using them. Customer and employee information must be handled under applicable privacy and security requirements; marketing claims must be truthful and supportable; employment decisions require qualified human oversight; and financial and tax outputs require qualified professional review. The program is not endorsed by the U.S. Small Business Administration, Internal Revenue Service, any state business agency, chamber of commerce, professional association, accrediting organization, software vendor, regulator, or government agency. No professional education hours or approvals are claimed, and no revenue, ranking, funding, profitability, productivity, customer-growth, compliance, or return-on-investment result is guaranteed.