Students say YES to experience

karen herland

Seventy per cent of new businesses don’t survive their first year.

Students at the John Molson School of Business (JMSB) are taught how thousands of variables from location to customer loyalty to quality control might throw them off the path to success.

Add external factors like changes in the cost of raw materials, and “there’s always a reason not to start a business,” said Tom O’Connell, of JMSB’s Management Department.

O’Connell watched students in the program become more cautious as they neared graduation. “They are strongly socialized with logical, rational thinking.”

A few years ago, O’Connell was invited by Youth Employment Services (YES) to lecture to beginning entrepreneurs. YES is a local non-profit service whose mandate has expanded from job-search programs for English-speaking youth to include support for entrepreneurs and artists. When he spoke to budding businesspeople full of enthusiasm, O’Connell saw the potential for a match. Last summer, he paired YES entrepreneurs with third-year students who would do their market research and help them develop a concrete business plan.

The experiment was so successful that now about 100 students in five sections of the course are busy meeting future moguls for the first time.

Students select projects from a list of hopefuls that are screened by YES. “The entrepreneur needs to be beyond the exploration stage and should have done some work ahead of time,” said Louise Anne Côté, Entrepren-eurship Program Director at YES. Students work in teams of four or five and complete a series of assignments after an initial meeting with their chosen entrepreneur.

The pairing is not always seamless.

“The entrepreneurs just know it’s going to work and the students think they are too quick, and don’t do their research,” O’Connell said. “But after a while, the entrepreneurs see the value of research and the students can understand instinct and the power of a compelling vision.”

Lisa Knight has been working with YES since last year, when she first dreamed up the idea of renting baby gear to people with young children who are temporarily in Montreal for their work.

“I knew I needed a business plan. But I’d get home and have a lot of trouble pinpointing the points I needed to know,” Knight said. She is eager to meet with her student team, who will develop a plan tailored to her needs.

“It will help guide me in the direction I need. Even when I expand, I don’t want to lose the vision.”

O’Connell said that some entrepreneurs stubbornly hold on to key elements of their business vision (a location close to their homes, for instance) despite student research that suggests it won’t work.

“It’s frustrating, but learning comes from frustration,” he said. The students cannot simply document the original vision of the entrepreneur in the business plan; the plan must be academically sound, based on solid research and a market-driven need. The entrepreneurs are free to use the material produced by the students as they see fit.

“We want people to participate who will be able to learn from the process,” Côté said.

François Desmond’s T-shirt screen-printing and embroidery company, Silver Tiger Printing, was one of the first projects to benefit from the arrangement.

He has since opened up a loft space, and used the students’ business plan as the basis for a funding request for startup cash.

“I definitely recommend the program. It’s great to get input from people who are studying this full time.” Desmond said.

He was impressed with the marketing and promotional ideas the students presented, as well as with the students themselves.

In fact, some of them expressed interest in working with him, and he said he would seriously consider them when he gets to the hiring stage.