Starting your own business is easier than you think

Worried about employment prospects after you graduate? Why not create your own job by starting a business?

To help you get off on the right foot, Concordia’s Graduate and Professional Skills Program (GradProSkills) is offering a series of workshops specifically designed to provide you with the information and practical tools you need to take the first steps in starting your own business.

The Entrepreneurial Strategies workshop series is free of charge and open to undergraduate and graduate students as well as alumni. The workshop covers topics such as project management and leadership, business plan development and risk management.

“The trend of independent workers is growing and there is more and more contract work available for skilled consultants,” says GradProSkills director Laurie Lamoureux Scholes. “University graduates possess a lot of very valuable knowledge, it’s a matter of applying this in ways that will make you a valuable commodity.”

Workshops will be led by entrepreneurs who have successfully transferred the skills they learned while in university into viable businesses.

From researcher to online entrepreneur

Shawn Maloney’s business idea came to him while working in a lab during his graduate studies in pathology at McGill University.

Working primarily with international students whose mother tongue wasn’t English, Maloney was frequently asked for help in writing manuscripts. It dawned on him that there was a need for English language journal preparation and in 2010 he started a company called Journal Prep on a part-time basis.

From software development to independent consultant