For the past six weeks, we have been teaching a business launch program on a structured schedule: two days a week in a virtual classroom with a group of people who each want to start a project, and three days on individual calls, one project at a time.
The program is the ASP Lancement d'une entreprise, an attestation de spécialisation professionnelle from Quebec's vocational training system. We teach it for the Centre de services scolaire de la Pointe-de-l'Île, at the Centre de formation professionnelle Calixa-Lavallée in Montréal-Nord, and it is offered in partnership with Osmose Formations. We teach the entire program, from start to finish, and coach every student on their own business project.
The program remains little known, including to us before this spring. Here is how it works and what we have observed so far.
How does the ASP Lancement d'une entreprise work?
The figures first, since they are frequently requested. The program totals 330 hours over 12 weeks. Of those hours, 240 cover the trade competencies, the business side, and 90 cover general competencies. It is delivered fully online. Students commit five days a week: two days of virtual class with the teacher and three days of coaching and work on their project.
The program is free for students and eligible for Quebec's loans and bursaries. This second point is more important than it may appear, since a person starting a business must continue to meet ongoing expenses such as rent.
There are no admission requirements: no diploma and no prerequisites. All that is needed is an idea and the willingness to work on it for three months. The official description is on the CFP Calixa-Lavallée page for Lancement d'une entreprise (in French).
The content covers, roughly in this order: whether entrepreneurship suits the student's profile, building a business model, market research, marketing and sales, the technology tools a small business needs, planning resources such as money and time, and the legal and administrative aspects of starting and running a company in Quebec. Everything leads to a business plan at the end of the program.
What do students work on?
Their own business project. This is the most valuable aspect of the program. There is no case study about a fictional bakery: every exercise applies to the student's actual project.
During market research, students study their own market. When pricing is discussed, it is their price, for their product, and they must justify it. At the marketing stage, they work to reach their own customers, with their own budget, which is often close to zero.
This approach changes the group dynamic. No exercise is done for its own sake. If the numbers do not add up, it is their business that does not add up, and they see it immediately.
It also makes teaching more demanding. A single group may include a food product, a service business, an online shop and an entirely new kind of project. It is impossible to prepare one example that suits everyone. Class days therefore teach the method, and coaching days apply it, one project at a time.
Why does coaching time matter as much as class time?
The program provides three days of coaching for every two days of class. This ratio may seem high at first. After six weeks, we consider it the most effective element of the program.
In class, the concepts are clear and everything appears logical on a slide. Then, when building the cost sheet for their own business, students discover that they do not know what their supplier charges, whether they need a permit or exactly who their buyers will be. This is where difficulties arise, and where coaching delivers its full value.
Most of the time, the coach's role is not to provide answers, but to ask the next question and point to where the answer might be found: who could tell you that? Have you contacted them? What changes in your plan if the answer is no?
Our experience building websites and marketing for other businesses, first with Raincity Studios in Vancouver and later with dive operators in Asia, leads to a consistent conclusion: business problems are rarely solved in a presentation. They are solved when a person examines their own numbers long enough to assess them clearly.
The fully online format also works very well. After the past year, video calls have become routine, and students can join from anywhere in Quebec. Sharing a spreadsheet on screen and correcting it together proves more useful than a whiteboard.
What is the role of the business plan?
The business plan is the goal, but the thinking is the real work. At the end, each student leaves with a business plan. It is the deliverable, and it is valuable: a bank, a local fund or a future partner will want to review it.
We nevertheless remind students that the document is the least decisive part. What matters is what they had to understand in order to write it: who the customer really is, why that person would pay, what delivery costs when their own hours are included, and what happens if sales reach only half of the forecast.
It is possible to write a polished business plan without honestly answering a single one of these questions. Templates make it easy: fill in the boxes and add a few charts. The result is an attractive document and a business that is not viable.
Which tools help students?
Here are the tools we rely on most:
- The Business Model Canvas, used early, on one page, before a single paragraph of the plan is written.
- A simple spreadsheet for costs and prices that the student builds personally, in order to understand every cell.
- Short conversations with real potential customers. Five of these conversations teach more than a week of desk research.
- A running document in which the student records every decision and its rationale. It becomes the backbone of the plan.
What does teaching entrepreneurship reveal?
First, how much participants want to hear that their idea is good. This need is understandable: starting a business is intimidating, and everyone wants to feel supported.
That support is real. However, supporting someone sometimes means asking where the funding will come from, several times, until there is a concrete answer. The role involves both encouraging and rigorously checking the numbers, and balancing the two requires constant attention.
Second, how much students already know. Many have worked for years in the field where they want to start a business. They know the product and the customers better than anyone. What is usually missing is the structure: pricing, administrative requirements, marketing and the plan.
Twelve weeks is a short period, but it is enough to move from an idea to a plan tested against reality, provided the student does the work. Observing that process, whether or not it succeeds, is also an important source of learning for us.