They say third times the charm right? Well, we were charmed by the third week of LeapIN! We are learning so much but the time is flying by, we can't believe we are approaching the halfway point! This week, we took a deep dive into the Marketing sides of our businesses. We explored branding, content creation, copywriting, storytelling, social media, pitching, and much more. Check out our week below!
Day 9- Since day 9 was all about creativity and design, we decided to start the day off with a game focused on getting those creative juices flowing, Disruptus. Sometimes, the staff at Leap Junction like to play this game together on our lunch breaks so it was really special for us to play it with our Leapers! But it wasn't all fun and games (well, it was all fun but not all games), our workshop today was co-presented by James Kingsley and Kendra Matheson who work together on The Localist amounts other things. They taught us about branding, content marketing, and graphic design, or as they put it ‘talking about yourself and looking good at the same time’. James and Kendra have both been huge supporters of Leap Junction over the years and we were so excited to have them share their skills with us!
Day 10- On Day 10 we continued on with the theme of branding in our business, but we shifted the focus to revealing our personal, and brand story. We started by reviving our beloved value proposition roulette as we had given the cohort a challenge to try to adapt their value propositions last week. It was great to see the changes everyone had made and some of the new features and benefits the group was highlighting. We dove deeper into our stories with long-time Leap Junction supporter and friend Paula Morand who every year teaches us the importance of dreaming big and being bold in our businesses. Next, we had Rachel Berdan join us to share the ‘Hero’s Journey’ with our cohort we got a chance to practice sharing our stories and trying them out on one another. She also taught us about B Corps and how we can get more involved. We’re lucky to get to work with Rachel as part of #LondonCAN and London’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem so stay tuned, we’ll be seeing her again! We also got an unexpected visitor! Omar of Fastrack introduced us to Salem, the newest fur-baby to join our growing Leap family.
Day 11- Day 11 was all about crafting the perfect pitch. We switched it up a bit this morning and we broke the cohort out into teams and had them work on answering some key questions about their businesses such as ‘who is your target customer’ ‘what is you unique differentiator’ and ‘ what do you need to be more successful’. With these questions in mind, we welcomed back Brian, Co-Founder of the Roundhouse Accelerator to teach us about investor pitching. After asking him a tonne of questions we were ready to try it out ourselves. Coach Dave and Kelsey got us set up on Pitcherific and gave us about 45 minutes to write a pitch. When we came back, we had to give our first pitches to Kelsey, Dave, and Darlene. If you’d like to see them, stay tuned for information coming up about our Demo Day coming up on August 20th!
Day 12 - The end of our week has come, which is always a sad thing but luckily today we were cheered up by the wonderful Kelly Scott, founder of Spunky. Kelly led us through our weekly Brag & Drag and filled us in on how her business is growing! We then had our first speaker of the day join us, Jill Wise from Words By Jill, who guided us through an incredible workshop on creating copy that converts. Jill taught us about the difference between content and copy and taught us to think about our audience! Next up was the one and only 'forest city sweetheart' Alayna Hryclik, Leap IN Alumni and founder of one of London's coolest brands, Softflirt. Alayna taught us how to optimize our social media for our audience and how to be more effective online. We wrapped up our day with our skill share! This week Kelly from Studio KVR taught us how to throw pottery on a wheel and Aaron and Omar from Fastrack taught us how to create augmented reality! It’s safe to say they both blew us away!
Next week we are going to be spending more time on our marketing! Stay tuned to see what we’re up to next!
Curious about our cohort and their businesses, check them out below!
Tyler from Celebration
Sharelen from Real Model Mom
Jared from JR Welding
Swaraj from Taxably
Christine from Qualia Hub
Kelly from Studio KVR
Aaron and Omar from Fastrack
Jesse from The Hot Sauce Co.
Maxwell from Face Two Face Vintage
Chintan from Greenovation - Eco Dinnerware
Kristen from Soul Runners
Chris from Bernese
**You can find more about them on our social media @leapjunction!**
Our team can help you grow your business as well! If you are a Fanshawe College student or alumni, Book a virtual appointment! Or, feel free to send us your questions and comments at leapjunction@fanshawec.ca.
