By The Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute

It’s time to take all your business ideas and turn them into reality. The Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute has launched three new student development programs to make your dreams more attainable.

Workshops, Meetups and Hours with Experts are the new programs to help you succeed in your business venture.

Workshops

The workshops help you get involved with programs and software that are necessary for innovators and entrepreneurs, like Adobe software, coding, 3-D software, video production and design.

Many classes at the U teach these skills, but are limited to specific majors. The workshops solve this issue by offering brief learning opportunities to all students.

“In the workshops, we’re learning the things that you wouldn’t normally learn in the classroom,” said Collin Dumke, one of the student directors behind the new development programs. “They overlap with classes that are taught at the U, but we are trying to address the students that would not normally take them.”

Meetups

While workshops will help you personalize your education, develop your startup or expand the ideas you already have, meetups will help you meet students who have specialized skills that you might not have.

In one of the first meetups this year, students entered a room plastered with posters that said: “What do you need?” and “What do you have?” on which participants wrote their talents and abilities, or their needs and wants. This is the basis of meetups; they help you network with innovative geniuses, like yourself, and glean skills and services from students with similar interests.

These events are not your average meet-and-greet networking events. “It’s nothing schmoozy,” Dumke said. “We want it to be super casual and super fun.” The Lassonde Meetups are activity-based and interactive. They promote brainstorming in a cooperative environment.

Hours with Experts

After you have developed skills and enlisted a team to help carry on your idea, you might realize you have the ideas, but the real-world logistics are tough. This is when Hours with Experts becomes an asset to you.

Within this program, you can sign up to spend face-to-face time with attorneys, product designers, accountants and other business professionals. They offer free, professional advice that could be otherwise unattainable.

Professionals want to be there, so they will be happy to field your questions. In most cases, the professionals had heard about the program, recognized its value and thought it would be rewarding for them to volunteer. They are coming to you more than you are going to them.

The Lassonde Student Development programs take all of the fears and questions you have, and give you support in areas that might be holding you back. Once you start attending the events, you’ll see your startup dreams come into reach.