I’ve just wrapped up my first week in the Ontario Self Employment Benefit Program which is helping me to build Clout.
Facilitated by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities and the Y Enterprise Center, I’m undertaking all kinds of courses, workshops, events, sessions and consulting (while receiving cash injections) over the next ten months.
Generous and remarkable stuff! The program had been put on hiatus recently but has come back this Spring renewed and ready to help Ontario’s entrepreneurs realize their dreams.
The consultants, speakers and my fellow entrepreneurs in the program have been outstanding. The mix of information, details, assistance and networking is already making all the difference in the world for me in launching Clout.
The difference in having a support team lighten the weight on your shoulders as a start-up, help you be a pathfinder and push/pull you along the way is tremendous.
It’s also a stunning act of fate that my personal coach in the program comes from the marketing world, too. How perfect is that? Being able to have a mentor who knows the people, companies, trends and techniques that I do is absolutely amazing.
The first week’s sessions covered topics like our strategies going into planning our businesses, client services, sales, human resources, market research and the like.
If you are starting a business in Ontario, I obviously can’t recommend applying for the program enough.
6 Comments
Hi there! I’m in the application phase right now and wondered how long after contract signing the payments start.
My intake began on June 3rd and I started to receive funding on June 30th.
Is this your first time apply for the OSEB? some pepole said it is quite hard to get in
Thanks for asking! Will have lots of advice and insight to share on it (when I have more time) in the days ahead.
I was accepted after my first time applying. I had heard that it was very competitive to get into and made sure to shape my application around a singular, monetized concept that was realistic and would be day-one ready.
Having asked those who had been turned down on their first attempt(s), the majority seemed to be due to applicants having a dithered idea (“we can do this, and this, and I’m good at this, and we’ll be a little of this and that, too”) or not a true concept for a business (just an idea or interest, “wouldn’t it be neat if,” and therefor all ends and no means).
Hi, I’m applying for OSEB presently, and was wondering how much work searching you had to do before you entered the program to prove that you were ‘unemployable’ in any other way. For example, how many jobs did you have to get rejected from in order to qualify for the OSEB? My councellor says I fit the bill in most other ways for the program and the only thing they may say is I haven’t looked for enough other work. I just want to make sure I do enough.
I don’t recall that being part of my process: I had been on EI and, after a short time looking at career opportunties, I knew that I wanted to start my own business; I got info on OSEB through a local employment agency and started the application process. Who I had spoken to about job openings, how many interviews I had gone to before making the decision to apply, never came up (to the best of my recollection).
Good luck!