CAMROSE, Alta. – Melanie Simmet thinks she has a good idea for her own business, but she doesn’t know how to get beyond that.
“I don’t know where to get started. How should I promote the business and how do I learn to do business books?”
The Camrose woman wants to design web pages for businesses on the internet. She’s already doing it out of interest, but she’s wondering if she could start a business using her skills.
Simmet hoped she’d find some of the answers during one of the Alberta Women’s Enterprise Initiative workshops being held across the province.
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It’s part of a $20 million Western Economic Development program designed to lend money to western Canadian women to start their own businesses.
The biggest drawback for many would-be businesswomen is access to money, said Corinne Tessier, executive director of the Alberta program. A recent survey showed it’s often difficult for women to get the initial money to get started.
“The survey showed the issue wasn’t interest rates, it was access,” said Tessier of Edmonton.
Each of the western provinces was given $5 million to loan out to women over five years. Already the Alberta association has lent $200,000, mostly to urban women who’ve started businesses in desktop publishing, a travel agency, microwave repair and manufacturing massage equipment.
There have been 8,000 inquiries in the first six months of the program in Alberta but most of those calls were from the city. Since the association began advertising and running workshops in rural communities, about a quarter of its calls now are from rural areas, she said.
During the initial workshops the women talk about what it’s like to be a successful entrepreneur, discuss their ideas and begin to develop a business plan. They have a hard look at their own idea. Sometimes they go the next step of getting the business loan. Other times the idea is shelved.
Not for everyone
Not everyone is cut out to run their own business, Sue Bannerman told the Camrose group.
“You have to be a self-starter. I know people who are wonderful employees, but the same people cannot work for themselves,” said Bannerman.
Being self-employed is often glorified, said Bannerman who took the jump from a full-time position as associate dean of program development at Olds College to her own consulting business three years ago.
“It gives you the freedom to work 80 hours a week.”
Need for friends
You have to want to be a leader, have plenty of energy and lots of friends to lean on during the down days, she said.
“And you have to be willing to do the tasks you don’t like.”
Despite the downside, Carol Okimaw wouldn’t go back to working for someone else. She recently started her own business, New Wave Fitness and Massage, a women’s health club in Camrose.
“If I work hard the benefits are mine. Before when I worked hard it was a little pat pat for Carol and a big pat for the boss,” Okimaw told the other women.
While the women have plenty of interest, a recent Angus Reid survey showed only four percent of women who show an interest in starting a business actually open one.
On the flip side, women who start their own business are five times more likely to succeed than men.
