The first session is dedicated to the welcoming of participants (meet, greet and treat). It will be a great opportunity to learn about each trainee’s vision and plan for their business venture. This will help us refine our program to provide personalized training for the group. We will also introduce the program, its methodology, tools, systems and additional material that may be needed during or after training. It will include the training outline and objectives.

The first hour of this session is dedicated to understanding the personal traits of the entrepreneur.  It will help the trainees appreciate the attributes of successful entrepreneurs and compare them with themselves.  This will assist them to identify the areas they can work on to move forward with their goals. The second hour of the session is dedicated to a comparison of the different methods to start a business—e.g., starting from scratch, acquiring an existing business, or starting in a partnership with another entrepreneur.

This session will help you understand the various modes of self-employment—independent contractor, sole proprietor, partnerships etc.. The session then kicks into higher gear with the participation of a guest such as a business lawyer/SME, who will present the legal aspects of various official structures and their legal and tax implications (Sole Proprietorship vs. Partnership vs. Corporation and their variations).  The session will conclude with the trainees presenting their own preliminary selections for their businesses and justifying those selections based on the acquired concepts.

In this session, trainees will be trained on branding their business and on evaluating the potential market for their product/service. Basic usable notions are introduced, such as type (B2B vs B2C), location, size, competition and targeting. The session then kicks into higher gear with the participation of a guest marketing entrepreneur/SME, who will present the steps necessary to develop a marketing plan.  Trainees will then work in groups to develop marketing plans for their own businesses.

The first part of this session focuses on the understanding of the constraints on the capacity of a business to satisfy its customer needs, and how it impacts the long-term relationship with both their customers and suppliers. Trainees will work on simulated case studies and present their findings. In the second part of the session, the topic of business ethics is introduced and trainees are presented with dilemmas related to their own businesses that they must analyze and present.

Here trainees get introduced to different methods of determining the price for their product/service—e.g., cost-based, market-based, value-based—and how those prices are calculated through various practice exercises. The session then focuses on their own business and trainees choose one of the methods and calculate the price of products/services that they want to offer to their clients/customers. They will then present their approach to the other trainees, using the participating group as a platform for practicing their offerings and getting preliminary feedback.

This session builds on the principles acquired during session 6 by introducing more advanced pricing models, such as tiered pricing, time-based dynamic pricing and freemium models.  Trainees will also be focusing on a more detailed understanding of business costs and will subsequently use all the new concepts to refine the pricing models for their businesses and present them for discussion with participants.

In this session, a main marketing SME guest speaker introduces the key notion of CAC and how to calculate it.  He/she presents what strategies to use to reduce the CAC with real-world examples from different SMBs in a variety of industries. Then trainees will work in groups on hypothetical scenarios to estimate the CAC for different kinds of businesses and are encouraged to apply the concepts to their own businesses.

Trainees are introduced here to the various components of marketing costs, such as advertising and promotional campaign activities. They are encouraged to apply all the principles learned in prior sessions to construct a solid marketing budget for their business and present them for discussion with participants.

Here trainees are introduced to a variety of potential funding sources for their business and the pros and cons of each method. In the second part of the session, the training will expand on the use of funds with the concepts of business budgeting and cash flow planning. Trainees are subsequently tasked to create a budget and cash flow plan for their own businesses.

The main guest in this session is an SME from the Ontario Employment Standards Office, who will explain the various laws and regulations related to the hiring of employees. Trainees will then be introduced to different hiring concepts, such as how to know when to hire the first, second+ employees, the various sources of human resources that are available, and how to evaluate the budgetary impact of hiring decisions. For example, hiring a contractor might be a better choice than hiring an employee, or even a combination of both could be considered. The trainees will get all the insights for all combinations and understand the pros and cons of each.

In this session, trainees work on various supplier evaluation criteria and understand how to evaluate and rate them based on their business needs. The session then kicks into high gear with the presentation of a guest business negotiations expert/SME who will present a case scenario and possibly create a participatory role-playing exercise for the trainees.

This session focuses on a very important cost element for a new business—the commercial lease of a business location. The concept is explained to the trainees by a commercial lease expert SME, who will provide the necessary details of what the main types of leases are—gross leases, net leases, shared/sub leases, percentage leases etc. The second part of the session is an opportunity for the trainees to zero-in on the negotiation elements of a commercial lease and practice them.

In this session, trainees are introduced to the importance of risk management and the different types and categories of business insurance. The second part of the session is dedicated to understanding the three main business reports—income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement—and will be presented by a guest business accountant SME. Every businessman must understand the basics of these financial reports to make sure their business stays healthy at all times.

In the first half of this session, the trainees are introduced to the various types of business taxes and what their obligations are towards the various levels of government. The second half of the session is dedicated to optimizing their operations to meet the needs of their sales revenues, profit targets and customer care costs.

The Art of Selling is the most important element that every entrepreneur needs, because he/she is constantly engaged in it with all stakeholders.  This session is dedicated to driving home that concept and to prepare all the elements for a successful participation in the Special Capstone Event (Session 17).

A special networking event where various SMEs and business leaders will judge the trainee’s business idea and entrepreneurial performance in a real business networking environment.