Innovate Marquette SmartZone offers one-day business bootcamp

MARQUETTE — For anyone that has wanted to start a business but didn’t know how to go about doing that, this weekend you might be in luck. Startup Saturday is a one-day business bootcamp to help evolve your business idea into a fully-fledged blueprint for making it a reality.

Innovate Marquette SmartZone is coordinating the event, and will have professionals teaching the crash-course and take new entrepreneurs through every step of starting their business.

“People that have ideas can come to the bootcamp, and when they leave in the afternoon they should have a really good plan of how to move their idea forward,” said Rachel Barra, the Program Manager for Innovate Marquette SmartZone.

While the event is about starting new businesses, Barra said that it is open to anyone with any level of business experience.

“So we’re going to cover a variety of topics,” said Barra. “We’re going to start by helping people actually refine their ideas. So getting it down on paper for the first time, validating it by looking at other competition. Following it up with how to make it legal, so filing for an EIN, this is like your business social security number for an LLC in the state of Michigan. And then lastly ending with marketing.”

Startup Saturday is a free course, and goes from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at Ampersand Coworking in the Masonic Center. There are only a limited number of spots left available for the course, and lunch and coffee will be provided.

“The goal of the day is to have people walk away with actionable next steps,” said Barra. “Even if you’ve opened up businesses before, you can still benefit from putting it all down on paper and holding yourself accountable to it.”

To register for Startup Saturday, click here, or call 906-227-6261. For more information about the event or about Innovate Marquette SmartZone, visit their Facebook page.