Entrepreneurship program surpasses expectations.

• Author: Migneault, Jonathan
• Position: NEWS

First-time filmmaker Amanda Darling never expected she would become an entrepreneur one day.

"I'm not business-focused, mostly" she said.

But to produce her first movie, A Lot Like Marriage, Darling knew she would need to hire a cast and crew and become an employer, at least for a short period of time.

To prepare for that new role. Darling enrolled in the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology's (NOR-CAT) inaugural Entrepreneurship 101 program last year.

"So many places that say they're there for beginners actually aren't," she said. "These guys really understand what it means to be an absolute beginner and they have a lot of respect for the learning process."

The free program ran from September to May, and featured around 30 one-hour lectures every Wednesday evening, mostly from local successful entrepreneurs who shared their business knowledge and their own experiences.

Darling was able to find answers to all the questions she had before shooting her movie in February and March.

"One of the things that I was concerned about was how to hire someone, and how to work with people whose speciality is not your speciality" she said.

She learned to get recommendations from people she trusted in the industry when hiring employees. She also learned to hire people who could communicate their jobs to her, especially if that job was something she was not very familiar with.

The Entrepreneurship 101 program started at the Toronto-based MaRS Discovery District around eight years ago, where NORCAT CEO Don Duval worked as an executive.

Any regional innovation centre that is part of the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs can offer the program, and use the curriculum already developed in Toronto.

While NORCAT asked local entrepreneurs to present most of the content, some of the lectures were presented through live webcasts from a MaRS Discovery District classroom in Toronto.

Duval said the program was designed to give would-be entrepreneurs the fundamental knowledge they need to start their business.

Lectures cover how to write a business plan, how to market their business, how to raise capital, how to do a market segmentation, and a host of other topics.

"Starting a...