Basic Professional Development and Business Skills

NOTE: This course requires compulsory materials to be ordered.

Creating a genealogical or personal historian business requires many steps. First, there is self-analysis to determine who you are, what you want, how to achieve balance in work and personal life, and what kind of business you wish to start. Next, you will need to conduct business and marketing planning, market analysis, and establish an overall business structure. Finally, you must consider what you need for your business including supplies, income, and marketing opportunities. A productivity tool chest will help round out your plans and get you off on the right footing. In this course you will learn the skills you need to accomplish all these things and prepare yourself for starting a successful business.

This course assumes that you have intermediate or advanced in either genealogy skills or personal historian skills (i.e. family history research, writing, photography, audio and video recording, and/or interviewing) and that you want to use those skills to create a business.

Approximate contact hours to complete this course: 18 to 24

Once you have set up your small business, it is not enough to simply sit back, wait for clients to come to you, and provide your services. In order to keep the business viable and successful, you must focus ongoing attention on its overall operation and growth.

This course will identify the various elements involved in keeping a business strong, and will educate you on how to accomplish these. Examples will be drawn from the businesses of providing genealogy and personal history services. Assignments and exercises will offer practical application of the material and opportunities to explore different methods and tools available to the small business owner.

It is recommended that the student complete the course, Business Skills: Creating a Genealogy Business first or have at least written a business plan and started a business before embarking on this course.

Approximate contact hours to complete this course: 18 to 24

NOTE: This course requires compulsory materials to be ordered.

Creating a genealogical business requires many steps. First, there is self-analysis to determine who you are, what you want, how to achieve balance in work and personal life, and what kind of business you wish to start. Next comes the business planning, market analysis, marketing planning and overall business structure to establish. Finally, considerations of things you need for the business from supplies, income, marketing opportunities, and a productivity tool chest will help round out your plans and get you off on the right footing. In Creating a Business, you will learn the skills you need to accomplish all these things and spend a lot of time thinking about the ins and outs of business.

Approximate contact hours to complete this course: 18

NOTE: This course requires compulsory materials to be ordered.

Finding your niches in the business of genealogy is something discovered over time. As new opportunities in the business present themselves, you will be faced with choices about which direction to take. Learn about additional niche opportunities in this course including Historian, Organizer, Social Media Marketer, Coach, and explore additional niches on your own based on what you have learned throughout the course. Use this knowledge to continue to grow your genealogy business.

Approximate contact hours to complete this course: 18

Marketing is the way to get the word out about your business, so that potential clients or customers will find you. As with most professionals, you may prefer to spend your time and energy doing what you do best—whether that is writing books of families’ histories, making video-biographies, or capturing oral histories for a business history—but in order to find clients, you must give adequate attention to marketing. In this course, we will present the basic methods and topics in marketing, geared toward a small business owner like a personal historian or professional genealogist.


It is recommended that you have taken the course, Business Skills: Creating a Business, or at least have written a business plan and started a business.

Approximate contact hours to complete this course: 18 to 24

A website is an important part of your overall business. But planning, creating and maintaining a website can seem overwhelming. What information should your website include? What should not be part of your website?

In this course we will start at the basics and discuss why you need a website, provide ideas for your website, and go through the steps of getting started. Using WordPress and Blogger for your website and blog will be discussed.

Approximate contact hours to complete this course: 18 to 24

NOTE: This course is classified as Basic Level in the Professional Development Certificate Program. Developed for individuals who are at or working in the Intermediate to Advanced Levels in our other certificate programs, we advise you complete the Analysis and Skills Mentoring-Part 1 course or have a working knowledge of the topics taught in that course prior to completing this one.

Brick walls are a reality in genealogy research, but fortunately there's hope. In this course, we look at a variety of strategies you can implement to help turn your research roadblocks into breakthroughs. We begin with a quick refresher of some key research concepts to help focus your research and prepare you for success. Next, we'll walk through some simple steps to get you prepared for the journey. Finally, we'll investigate four different approaches to do some brick wall busting. By the end of this course, you'll have some new ideas for researching brick walls and the inspiration to forge ahead.

Approximate contact hours to complete this course: 18 to 24