Career Options Magazine

Simon Jalbert

This young entrepreneur’s passion for business sparked from an unlikely background: sports. Simon Jalbert’s love of being part of a team and playing a leadership role translated well into his start-up companies. After completing his bachelor of commerce at Saint Mary’s University, Jalbert was selected to participate in The Next 36 entrepreneurship program. With his team, he developed a tablet application called StrokeLink, which he hopes will empower people who have suffered a stroke. The app includes exercise programs specific to the patient, progress monitoring and educational material.

“Everyone seems extremely excited about it,” says Jalbert. “We’ve been invited to speak at health technology conferences all over Canada. People are taking notice, which is definitely exciting for us.”

Jalbert and the three other members of his team take on different roles for the StrokeLink project. He does most of the financial work, but says entrepreneurs have to dip their hands in all pots. “I’ll do some design work and quality assurance—you find yourself doing a bit of everything,” he says.

As a member and president of his university’s Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) chapter, Jalbert also helped to develop an employment assistance program for young people in Halifax. “We identified that a lot of kids in Halifax don’t come from wealthy families,” he says, “so we analyzed Halifax and asked, ‘What industry has the most jobs to offer people?’ Out of that research we started a project where we taught those kids the skills they need and how to do well in interviews.” About 97 percent of students in the program got jobs in the end, he says.

His advice for young entrepreneurs is to develop their attention to detail. “An ability to move back to the bigger picture is important as well,” he says. “And finally, you have to develop ideas, you always have to be pitching and be the best salesperson you possibly can.”

Evan Price

Through a program called “I Want to be a Millionaire,” Evan Price received a small start-up fund of $200 to create a business. He went on to turn a profit with his “High-tech Hygiene” service—which included cleaning and energy audits on appliances—all at the tender age of 10! He hasn’t looked back since, and today describes himself as “a true salesman at heart.”

His entrepreneurial spirit served him well in later ventures; most notably, he cultivated the largest crop of fiddleheads east of Ontario, and founded the largest organic beer hops farm in Nova Scotia. These businesses helped him pay for his bachelor of commerce at Dalhousie University, where he was Vice-president of Finance and Operations for the student union—handling over $6.4 million in spending and $2.7 million in investments.

Impressed yet? He was also named one of the “Top 10 entrepreneurs under 35” by Nova Scotia’s High Fliers program; received business development funding to the tune of $10,000; and was named the best co-op entrepreneurial student at Dalhousie for 2010, receiving the Sagewood grant of $4,000.

His successes haven’t all come easily. “The hardest parts are always around getting the confidence of others and finding partners or start-up funding to keep growing,” Price says. “But if you take time and build relationships, that’s much harder to break than simply having the best price.”

Price says that while education is important, building relationships is key. “Make friends with successful people around you. Family, friends, parents—they have the keys to what works for them and know the business models they work in. The more you know now, the better you will be able to negotiate later,” he says.

Bella Hwang

Bella Hwang is proof that not just business students have the entrepreneurial spirit. The occupational therapy major was working in a hospital when she realized she wanted to pursue business, after getting a taste of entrepreneurship with a food and culture magazine she launched with a friend. At the pediatric clinic where she worked, Hwang says, she “was always excited and keen to launch new programs with my colleagues, including starting a feeding program and an aquatic program for children with disabilities.”

She then started her own private practice, and successfully helped others launch their own practices as well. She realized she wanted to learn more about business, so she completed an MBA at Simon Fraser University. This led to her helping to launch a maternal health centre in rural Uganda.

“I think from my health background, I’ve always had an interest in combining entrepreneurship and health, and working in the field of social entrepreneurship,” she says. She now works in the field of “mHealth,” shorthand for “mobile technology supporting health care.”

Hwang says her success has been due to her ability to say yes to every opportunity, leading to her wide range of experiences. “I think this has been the key to understanding how the world works and how my skills and goals fit into it,” she says.

For high school students, Hwang recommends keeping your options open by taking business courses but also a “wide breadth of different courses to learn more about yourself and what you are interested and passionate about. You can always change what you decide to major in, and I think that life is all about continuous learning.”