Entrepreneur school goes forth to profit

By Mario Toneguzzi, Calgary Herald November 1, 2010

CALGARY - While the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and thriving across the country, the sad fact is that many small business ventures fail.

One of the major reasons is many entrepreneurs, while they may have a technical skill and certain expertise, don't have the business savvy to make their venture successful.

Leslie Roberts, founder and president of GoForth Institute, recognized this issue, and problem, many years ago.

"There has been a need in the marketplace in Canada for a comprehensive, affordable, convenient solution for delivering entrepreneurship education to Canada's micro entrepreneurs," says Roberts, a former professor at the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business and Mount Royal College.

"I've been thinking about it for a long time and the opportunity for me came in 2009. I was teaching an MBA course in creating a high-potential, high-growth company and I took my own advice.

"I left my position at the University of Calgary to start a high-growth company and was supported by those seven MBA students, encouraged by those students, to do it and to stop teaching."

Today, GoForth has six employees. It is a national for-profit school for entrepreneurs. It has a comprehensive education program on a technology platform that allows it to deliver education anywhere in the country on demand.

Recently, it launched its new website, which is Canada's largest resource-based site for entrepreneurs.

In Canada, 98 per cent of businesses are small businesses and just over 50 per cent are micro-businesses with less than five employees. But nearly one half of all small businesses close within two years of startup.

Prior to launching GoForth, Roberts spent seven months talking to 200 of Canada's best entrepreneurs to develop a curriculum.

"Small business owners in Canada wanted education delivered by the private sector. They don't trust banks and they don't trust government," she says.

"The education is specifically targeted to the micro entrepreneur. Now a micro entrepreneur has five employees or less.

"What's significant about that population is that they represent over half of Canada's businesses and we call them the little engines of growth of the Canadian economy. Not only do they generate income, they generate taxation revenue.

"These are the dog walkers, the yoga studio owners, the coffee shop owners, the plumbers, the tradespeople. That's where the education is focused."

The education program is 10 hours of streaming on demand video for $295.

"By putting this education on a technology platform we were able to scale it and make it available across the country very inexpensively. We don't hire instructors. We don't have a classroom."

mtoneguzzi@calgaryherald.com