It’s that time of year – school is over for many thousands of university, college and high school graduates, now going out in the world to seek their fortune.

This generation is increasingly looking to self-employment rather than an employee situation within a company structure. As one young entrepreneur says: “It’s nice to be in control of everything that we have, and everything that we do is ours.

“You have to be nervous about it because it is riskier than having a regular job, but so far, it has been going well,” says Rebecca Foster, who is one of five co-owners of the Little Creek Tasty Bit Mobile Food Concession.

Foster along with cousins (and twin sisters) Amber and Kerisa Denison are embarking on their first full summer of running the concession, an existing business they bought along with two silent partners, their mothers. Although the girls are only 18, Rebecca says: They’re “pretty responsible young girls, so we can handle that.”

Jan Mansfield photo, Business Edge
Amber Denison, left, and Rebecca Foster, both 18, are excited about their plans for growing their business.

Their customers are the people who attend sporting, cultural and music events where they bring their fully equipped mobile trailer. Their motto is: “We offer a healthy alternative to fast food.”

In keeping with the demands of today’s health-conscious consumer, they offer a menu that features salads, wraps and pastas. They purchase their produce fresh, from local farmers and farmers’ markets. “Everyone seems really excited and happy with what we are doing,” says Rebecca.

Although the three young businesswomen are in charge of their business venture, their mothers are there for guidance.

Donna Denison produces food products such as salad dressings in a certified kitchen at her Little Creek Gardens organic farm in Kelowna. The products are sold locally and through stores such as Capers in the Lower Mainland and are featured at the Tasty Bit.

“It’s just another way of showcasing the products,” says Lynn Foster, Rebecca’s mother, who is the business mentor to the group. An airline training instructor for more than 30 years and currently a program manager and chief instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in Burnaby, Foster says: “I want them to learn to run the business and be responsible for it, so I just give them advice and give them support.”

That includes helping them with their marketing and business plan, an expansion of a project Amber worked on at Camosun College on Vancouver Island, where she and her sister have just completed the travel and tourism certificate program.

They say they plan to expand and franchise their business with an eye to being substantial enough to bid for contracts with Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics. A successful bid to be one of 12 concessions serving the Heartland Music Festival in Kelowna at the end of July, where 30,000 people are expected, is the first major contract they have secured and one they think will give them experience in servicing large venues.

While Foster and the Denison twins are fortunate to have the financial participation and business expertise of their families to call on, many young entrepreneurs must look elsewhere.

A number have turned to the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF), a national organization that provides funding and mentoring to entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 34. Founded in 1996 by the CIBC, the Royal Bank and the Canadian Youth Foundation, with additional funding from Industry Canada, it is modelled after the Prince’s Youth Business Trust in the U.K. headed by Prince Charles.

Jaime Hurlbut, communications specialist at CYBF’s national office in Toronto. says that so far, the organization has provided startup financing for 991 business ideas resulting in 1,209 new business owners across Canada, serviced by a network of 31 sites, including Kamloops, Kelowna, Penticton and Victoria in B.C. and Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta.

The foundation offers assistance in the form of both funding and mentoring. Startup loans of up to $15,000, repayable over five years at interest rates ranging from prime plus two per cent the first year to prime in the last two years, are given to people who already have a business plan in place.

If individuals are still at the “good idea” stage, they are directed to the CYBF website where they can follow a business-plan template. Hurlbut says they will look at any business idea, with a couple of exceptions. “We don’t do multi-level marketing businesses or anything that’s not ethically correct.”

With the assistance of the CYBF, Amber Murphy, 24, was able to buy the Vancouver martial arts school where she had been teaching part time while also working as a waitress. A third-degree black belt, she now runs the Purple Dragon, a franchise where she teaches Don Jitsu Ryu and has taken on two part-time employees. Asked about her chances of starting her business without the help of CYBF, Murphy says: “It would have been very very challenging, very tight.”

Once a month, Murphy meets with her mentor, retired businessman Dave Roxburgh of North Vancouver, to go over her business plan and discuss the various aspects of running the business.

“I met this young lady and we agreed we thought we could work together,” says Roxburgh. “She’s doing very well.

“I’m impressed with all the young people we get involved with this program. The failure rate is very low,” says Roxburgh, a member of the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO), a group of professionals and businessmen who volunteer their time to developing countries and developing companies.

After a business career of consulting with businesses around the world, he now travels the world with the CESO and mentors for the CYBF.

“The young people that are graduating from the high schools and the colleges today are much brighter and much more knowledgeable. The bright ones get jobs while they are in school and have a good idea of what business is about. It doesn’t take them long to say: ‘Hey, why work for somebody else when I can work for myself,’ ” says Roxburgh.

That was certainly the thinking of Mark Williams, 34, co-founder of software developer Ekkon Business Group Ltd. In 2000 he and three partners (including Harry Chemko, 24, now the company’s CEO) approached the CYBF with their business plan for a web-design shop.

Operating out of an apartment, they needed some funding to set up offices. While considering several funding options, including government grants, a professor at Royal Roads University in Victoria, where Williams was studying business, pointed the group in the direction of CYBF.

“What CYBF did for us was give us $15,000, which gave us the ability to move into an office, which enabled us to establish credibility,” says Williams. With offices established at Vancouver’s trendy Granville Island and a client list that includes A&W Restaurants and Proctor and Gamble, the company has now shifted focus to software development and is being very successful in marketing its Java-based e-commerce application.

Williams says they are on target to attain revenue of $1.2 million this year, adding: “We’re meeting with clients that could potentially triple that in the next six months.”

Sue Yee Chan, CYBF’s program co-ordinator for B.C. based at BCIT’s Venture Centre in downtown Vancouver, says Ekkon is one of 100 businesses the foundation has helped since it came to the province in 1996.

(Jan Mansfield can be reached at jan@businessedge.ca)