Learn How to Learn
Our virtual challenges, simulations and case-based curriculum equip you with the ability to listen, think, and clearly communicate. Unlike narrow technical skills that rapidly become obsolete, “learning how to learn” will serve you for a lifetime.
Learn How to Make Money
Our curriculum arms you with the tools, skills, and judgment necessary to build a thriving business. In every class and in every case, you will be forced to make tough decisions until you have earned the skills, judgment and intuition of a master entrepreneur.
Learn How to Live A Life of Meaning
Companies cannot survive unless they make money, but life is about more than just maximizing your cash flow. Throughout your journey at Acton you‘ll learn to juggle the demands of family, business, and community while working to discover your calling in business and in life.
What to Expect
Ever feel like a misfit? So did many of the world’s leading entrepreneurs. When it comes to equipping world changing entrepreneurs like you, most programs miss the point. That’s why Acton teachers — all of them successful, working entrepreneurs —focus on what works in the real world, so you can start making your mark immediately. You’ll learn from seasoned entrepreneurs whose top priority is your growth, success and transformation.
Here’s how:
- You’ll be guided by entrepreneurs with battle scars.
- You will learn how to launch, build and grow successful businesses and become an entrepreneurial leader who inspires others.
- You’ll be treated not as a student, but as a valued customer.
- Our teachers sign a contract agreeing they’ll step down if they don’t deliver on their promises to you.
We work with:
- Bright, talented and driven individuals
- Dedicated and successful entrepreneurs who are proven in the boardroom and outstanding in the classroom
- Real-world cases, which participants analyze, argue and discuss throughout each 80-minute class session
- Experiential learning and simulations, including door-to-door sales, assembly line creation and other immersive, hands-on learning.
So that our graduates are prepared to:
- Listen, question, analyze and persuade like a master entrepreneur
- Use the tools and judgment it takes to run a real business
- Identify their calling
- Run a successful business, raise a loving family and contribute to their communities and the world in a powerful way
The Curriculum
Break out of structure, routine and theories — come to Acton for an experience that brings you into a community of exceptional leaders making an extraordinary impact on the world in less than half the time and a quarter of the cost of a traditional business school.
Acton starts with four months of blended learning experiences where you spend 30-35 hours each week tackling real world and virtual challenges– including cash and valuation, operations, customers and learning more about how to lead a valuable life – to prepare you for the rigors of in-person Socratic discussions.
A select group will be invited to the Acton Games, to cooperate and compete in a survival-challenge-themed contest to qualify for Acton’s Socratic courses on our Austin, Texas campus.
On campus we’ll offer 80 to 100 hour weeks in the Entrepreneurial Journey and Life of Meaning-Next Great Adventure series, with an option over time to take up to eight additional courses in subjects like Customers, Operations and Cash and Valuation, either on campus or in a hybrid format.
Individual Preparation
Acton Socratic entrepreneurship discussions are focused on real world cases, each of which requires hours of individual concentration and preparation beforehand. If you are invited on campus, plan on five to eight hours of study to analyze each case in depth. Any less and you’ll be left behind.
Study Groups
Study Groups are like prototypes for class. You’ll arrive at Study Group each morning fully prepared to stand in the shoes of an entrepreneur facing a real dilemma. Your group will choose a peer to open the case, and for over an hour you’ll describe and defend your positions with them. If you haven’t prepared, it’ll show.
Socratic Discussions
Classes begin with a “cold call,” a challenging question the discussion leader poses to a single student to open the case. What comes next is 80 furious minutes of analysis, argument, and fervent persuasion.