Fanshawe’s Leap Junction is hoping to educate students about entrepreneurship and encourage more students to consider starting their own business. Beginning in November, Leap Junction is introducing a new talk series called Leap Talks. This talk series will feature young entrepreneurs, oftentimes Fanshawe graduates, who have an expertise in entrepreneurship and relevant industry knowledge.

According to Annette Markvoort, Leap Junction’s entrepreneurial animator, there were a few similar events last year but they have changed the way they will be operating this year. There are currently plans for Leap Talks for fashion students, entrepreneur students at the Woodstock campus and a storytelling series for the Lawrence Kinlin School of Business students.

“These will be conversations around entrepreneurship that are more connected to the school and what they are delivering,” Markvoort said. “We will set up a panel and facilitate a question and answer session and then afterwards we would open it up to students for questions. Last year we would coordinate this with profs so that they would guarantee that they would bring their classes to this so we would have attendance.”

Markvoort said that the aim of the Leap Talks is to spread entrepreneurship to as many Fanshawe students as they can.

“What we discovered was that we could run an entrepreneurship event but students wouldn’t necessarily identify with that because they wouldn’t think of themselves as an entrepreneur or that it was relevant to what they were studying,” Markvoort said. “We feel this is our best way to reach students and let them know about entrepreneurship on campus and that it is a viable option for them. This seems to be more topical when we are talking about entrepreneurship within the context of what they are studying.”

The first leap talk will take place on November 15 and it will be geared towards students in the fashion programs at Fanshawe. The topic of the talks will be pop-up retail which will feature young entrepreneurs in the industry.

One of the speakers at the popup retail talk is Fanshawe alumni, Nicole Snobelen. She graduated from the fashion design program in 2012 and went on to start her own company called Evelynn by Nicole Snobelen.

“A retail pop-up shop is using a space temporarily to showcase or sell your products. What I love about this process is that it benefits both the business and their customers,” Snobelen said. “It provides a business owner with the opportunity to test the waters before fulling committing to a brick and mortar. They can test their products, build a customer base and do research to see if their business model would work.”

Snobelen also said that since she has an ecommerce business, some people prefer to shop in person.

“By doing a pop-up, I am able to satisfy these customers and also attract new ones who I might not be able to reach online.” Snobelen said.

According to Snobelen, she took part in the summer incubator program, LeapIN, that is hosted every summer by Leap Junction. After receiving nine weeks of mentorship, advisement and funding, Snobelen said she continued to stay connected with Leap Junction.

“When I was a student at Fanshawe, we did not have this useful resource available to us. Back then, the fashion design program’s main focus was on line development and preparing you for a career as a fashion designer, not necessarily a business owner,” Snobelen said. “To now have a platform to learn from people who are doing both successfully and have them share their knowledge with the students, or answer their questions, is very valuable.”

Snobelen said that she has a lot of knowledge to share with Fanshawe students and is honoured to be a part of the leap talks.

“For me, I am very open about my struggles through my experience of building my business, it’s a part of my story,” Snobelen said. “I feel sharing my own experiences will benefit people who may be considering similar career paths. You often only hear the successes of people’s journeys, and not what it actually took to get to where they are.”

To learn more about Leap Junction and leap talks, visit leapjunction.ca. To learn more about Snobelen’s company, visit evelynnbns.ca.