RABC Cold Lake Raising the Roof in Rural Alberta

Second year RABC awarded the Alberta Retention and Extension Small Business Award at the Economic Developers Alberta Awards.

The Cold Lake Rural Alberta Business Centre’s (RABC) Kathryn Hotte has been awarded the Alberta Retention and Extension Small Business Award for small communities (population under 25,000) from the Economic Developers of Alberta (EDA).

The EDA held their annual conference and awards banquet last week, where Hotte was praised for the work she puts in to help grow the community’s small business sector. “I call it raising the roof in rural Alberta,” joyfully laughs Hotte, at their consecutive win for the RABC Cold Lake has won the award.

“We had some really good increasing this year,” Hotte says all around small business and entrepeneurship in the Cold Lake area is up. “We had a 62 percent increase in clients. We had a 50 percent increase in workshop participants.” Hotte’s goal with the RABC is to grow a huge network within the business community; businesses helping each other grow by using each other’s strengths. “With our marketing and our outreach to the community, that’s what put us over the edge. It was really nice to receive [the award] again.”

“This year the theme was ‘Embracing Change and Creating Opportunity’,” an area of expertise for Hotte. “I was also a presenter. The title was Innovate & Incubate: RABC Cold Lake Success Stories.” Hotte showcased the success of the RABC Incubator program. The program welcomes entrepreneurs to utilize office space within the RABC. It’s not just a room to hang you degrees and put a fancy desk. The RABC, under Hotte’s experience, mentors the entrepreneurs until they are ready to venture into the business world. Some of the ways include, building a business plan, finding the best ways to market the business, and assist with attracting clientele. In just over a year since the RABC launched the incubator program, six businesses have graduated, each with their own level of success.

“We’ve had several RABC graduates, who graduated from the incubator, with great increases for their business and now they’ve moved onto bigger and better things,” some graduates include Blue Sun Healing and Cindy Couture Photography.

“We had some great feedback [from the presentation]. In fact, when I was done, there were several people waiting to talk to me to learn more about the incubators and WOWs,” Hotte says many people wanted to learn more about the Wisdom & Opportunities for Women networking sessions that were launched through the RABC. The WOWs are designed to bring women in business, whether they are entrepreneurs, leaders in their fields, or just women in business looking for a support network, together. Once a month the group meets for a networking session, that includes a keynote speaker and a different theme each month. The WOW is so popular that is has expanded into St. Paul. The inaugural WOW St. Paul will be held on Thursday. See poster below. 

The original WOW group rotates between Cold Lake and Bonnyville and will be held in Cold Lake April 19th. See poster for more details.

With over 400 delegates, 30 partners and over 80 speakers and moderators  from across the province, the popular EDA Conference was held in Banff March 22-24.