Failure isn’t something most of us celebrate, but Kathleen Rayworth said her failures help her to be an effective executive director of the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, a regional organization that links entrepreneurs with seasoned advisers from the business world.
Rayworth has been working at the forum since 2007, becoming executive director in 2010. Despite her characteristic modesty, she is respected around the region for her work in linking new entrepreneurs with experienced mentors.
Her path to success hasn’t been smooth, but that doesn’t bother Rayworth, who is known to quote a line from athlete Willie Davis, “The road to success runs uphill.”
As a youngster, Rayworth trained as a chef at the Culinary Institute of Canada, and then later took a small business program at the Nova Scotia Community College. She ran a catering business in Vancouver for 10 years but had to sell her business when the work became too physically demanding due to the effects of injuries sustained in a car crash.
After returning to her native Nova Scotia, she set up a clothing distribution business that grew to become a clothing manufacturer specializing in golf apparel. That venture folded in 1998 after six years, a disappointment she ascribes to “poor partner choices and a lack of mentoring support.”
“The message I pass on to entrepreneurs is that it’s your failures you learn the most from,” she said. “It was hard to leave my first love, catering, but I still do some catering today. And my experiences taught me that I have a huge passion for business of all kinds.”
Rayworth said that the forum’s advisory services and investor readiness initiatives are structured to give entrepreneurs the kinds of support and access to expertise that they need to address the challenges they face at all levels of development, from pre-startups to ventures that are ready to exit (sell).
The forum’s success stories abound, thanks to the growing pool of dedicated forum mentors who hail from a wide range of backgrounds and professions.
“We now have 1,500 mentors across the region and the number is growing all the time,” Rayworth said. “Mentoring is increasingly popular, even something of a trend. These days, many organizations offer mentoring, but we’ve been mentoring for 22 years. We do it best and we support those other groups.”
Rayworth said it has been satisfying to see the forum grow from a small group offering just one service to a regional organization offering a variety of valuable projects.
Inspired by the enterprise forum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Nova Scotia version began in 1992, reaching Prince Edward Island in 2003, Newfoundland and Labrador in 2006, and New Brunswick in 2008.
A current forum success is the advisory program the group is running in Ontario. The organization subsidizes Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs who wish to visit Ontario to meet with potential partners and investors.
The year-long program began last November and has seen ventures such as educational company Ooka Island and Prism Trade Show Lighting, a designer and supplier of custom lighting products for the trade show industry, benefit from making the trip.
“The mission opens up doors to many new opportunities and potential partnerships,” Rayworth said.
Other new projects include a program for immigrants entering Canada through the Startup visa program, and workshops for entrepreneurs run in conjunction with Progress Media. Entrepreneurs’ Forum also collaborates with Entrevestor in organizing and hosting dinners around the region at which attendees discuss ways to improve the startup ecosystem.
The organization’s work is supported by federal and provincial government organizations, including the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the National Research Council.
“I see Atlantic Canada becoming the startup capital for all Canada,” Rayworth said, sounding almost embarrassed to make such a confident prediction. “We’ve got the ecosystem growing so fast. We’ve scaled it as a region so quickly, it’s possible. At the very least, we should give it a go and Entrepreneurs’ Forum is here to help make this happen.”
Disclaimer: Entrevestor receives financial support from government agencies that support startup companies in Atlantic Canada. The sponsoring agencies play no role in determining which companies and individuals are featured in this column, nor do they review columns before they are published.
