Learning to Earn : Training: The city-financed Entrepreneur Series aims to help small businesses grow and, it is hoped, create jobs.

A couple of years ago, Christina Riley went into business for herself because she didn’t like taking orders and wanted financial independence. A graphic artist, Riley managed fine for a while, but then her Los Angeles firm, Design in Print, began stagnating.

“I get the same number of new clients every month,” she said, obviously perplexed about her situation. “I really want to learn how to make my business grow.”

Riley’s story is all too familiar to about 30 small-business owners enrolled with her in the first class of the Entrepreneur Series--a new Los Angeles city-subsidized program aimed at helping fledgling companies like Riley’s grow and create jobs.

Administered by the Valley Economic Development Center, a private firm in Van Nuys that works with small businesses, the 10-week session costs $198 and includes lectures, workshops and mentoring by local chief executives.

The series began last month. Six more 10-week sessions are planned, with the next sequence starting in late July. Classes for this session--the first--are being held at the center’s offices in Van Nuys, but the next will take place in downtown Los Angeles. Then it will alternate between the two sites.

The Entrepreneur Series is one part of a four-part, $300,000 plan by the city to aid small-business operators and aspiring entrepreneurs in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

The city also has contracts with Los Angeles Mission College in Sylmar, Bethel AME Church and the Coalition for Women’s Economic Development Inc. to administer similar programs targeting different groups.

“Our basic objective is to get low-income people employed,” said Reynold Blight, a manager at the Los Angeles Department of Economic Development, the series’ funding source.

Blight said these programs couldn’t come at a better time. “They will help riot-hit areas.”

It’s not clear just how much it will help, however. Before enrolling in the Entrepreneur Series, participants must agree to hire at least one person within a year. But that appears to be more of a goal than a requirement. And given the shaky economy, participants acknowledged they may be hard-pressed to hire.

“I think it’s possible,” said Brian Bianco, who along with his father operates Peerless Travel in Sherman Oaks.

But Bianco said business has been unstable recently, forcing the layoffs of two of the firm’s 23 employees.

Still, Bianco expects the program to help his business.

“It can be a bit grueling,” he said during a recent class focusing on marketing strategies. “But I want to have a business plan. For the price, it’s a steal.”

Al Osborne, director of the Entrepreneurial Studies Center at UCLA, expressed skepticism that the program would create many jobs.

“If the city’s purpose is to increase employment, there’s more effective ways to do it than subsidizing education,” he said.

Yet after reviewing the program’s content, Osborne noted that it was better structured and more comprehensive than most others like it.

“This could be quite useful, and it’s really very, very cheap,” he said.

It begins with a full-day session in which a consultant helps participants develop a strategic business plan. Then, once a week, participants get together for three hours with Valley Economic Development executives and guest speakers--chief executives of small businesses, bankers and others in the business community--who show them how to formulate a marketing plan, recruit and train employees, manage finances and obtain financing.

Mentoring by outside executives and access to databases to do market research are also made available.

“I’ve been doing things by instinct and common sense, by the seat of my pants,” said Lee Bailey, president of Bailey Broadcasting, a Los Angeles radio production firm. “But there’s a science to business, a step-by-step process--and that’s what I want to learn.”