Having had huge successes in recent years, TU Dublin’s Entrepreneurship For People With Disabilities course is now looking for applications from people with disabilities who are interested and have an idea for running their own business. The course, which is supported by AIB and The Open Doors Initiative, is a best in its class initiative and is designed to give students the tools, knowledge, assistances and inspirations to develop their own business.

The course is run online, (to make it as accessible as possible) over 12 weeks, every Wednesday for 2 hours. Each module is designed to give participants the knowledge of a different area of entrepreneurship. Each week the participants are joined by a successful entrepreneur with disabilities to give them the inspiration needed to start their own business. Participants also receive access to online tools that help them develop their business plan. Participants are then graded on how they develop their business idea and their overall business plan at the end of the course. The participants are given a mentor at the start of the course, so that they can get 1:1 support for their idea and the lecturers are very open to being contactable by email should the participants have any questions about their specific idea.

I interviewed the program’s creator Prof Tom Cooney to find out more:

1. What prompted you to create a course like this? How long has the course been running?

The pilot course was first delivered in 2021 in conjunction with the Open Doors Initiative. Given its success, AIB agreed to fund the delivery of the course from 2022-24. It was developed because there is no tailored support in Ireland for people with disabilities who wish to start their own business. This online course addresses the additional and distinctive challenges faced by people with disabilities in terms of self-employment, and it provides a unique approach to supporting career options for people in the community.

• What is involved in the course? How is the course delivered? What are some of the added benefits to attending this course rather than other?

The course will consist of 12 lectures which are all delivered online. The lectures will be recorded and made available for viewing at any time, plus a range of useful content resources will be provided online for review when suitable for the course participant. The course will include a range of Guest Speakers (including role models and subject experts) whose experience and expertise are relevant to the target audience. In addition, using the online tool SimVenture Validate will enable participants to develop their ideas weekly. Plus, by adopting Universal Design for Learning principles, a customised experiential learning approach will allow each participant to maximise their learning from the course.

• What companies do you work with to support the course?

The course was co-founded by the Open Doors Initiative, and it is financially supported by AIB, while Sim Venture (UK) and DoTheFinancials.com provide online resources. We also have guest speakers from a wide variety of organisations offering their specific expertise to the participants.

• Each participant is given a mentor, why is the mentor’s advice so important? Where do you source the mentors from?

The Local Enterprise Office network provide business mentors for each of the participants and this is a crucial resource as it means that each participant receives one-to-one support from their business mentor. This allows the participant to get tailored advice and feedback on their specific business idea and how it might be developed.

• What guest speakers have you joined? How do they add value to the course?

In addition to having specific experts on finance, law, social welfare benefits, etc, providing information of particular relevance to the participants, each lecture also features a guest speaker who is an entrepreneur with a disability. They talk about their experiences and how they overcame the challenges that they faced which enables participants to appreciate that self-employment can become a viable career option. The speakers are role models that demonstrate that a pathway to entrepreneurship is possible.

6. You also brought Dennis Kennedy to deliver some of the lecturers. Why did you think it was important?

Denis was a participant on the pilot course and set-up his own business providing training to companies regarding disability awareness and preparedness. As a former course participant, as a person with a disability, as an entrepreneur, Denis brings these various experiences into the lecture and so course participants can relate to his experiences.

7. What success stories have you had in the last 2 years?

Each year we have been experiencing approximately six intentions to start a business. Not each of these will begin immediately as there may still be a need for further research or planning. A participant from the first course subsequently received €100,000 in seed funding for her business idea, another person established a company producing film and tv content, while this year a participant created a social enterprise. Business ideas are highly varied and there are no typical business idea coming from the various cohorts.

8. What are some of the most frequent business mistakes you see from this cohort, when they are thinking about starting their own businesses?

There are a wide variety of business mistakes, but the following arise most frequently:

1. Overestimation of the business idea in terms of sustainability – this is one of the most common mistakes with all nascent entrepreneurs, but more exaggerated with underrepresented groups. People convince themselves that their idea is wanted by everyone, and it can be difficult to get people to be realistic in terms of the viability of their business idea.
2. Self Confidence – the world has been hard on them in many ways. Imposter syndrome is rife within these groups. That is why it is important to be frank with them. It could be hugely damaging to go ahead and launch the business and it fails. I don’t patronise, but I want them to believe that businesses can work themselves, but also see where they need more work, if there are flaws in it.
3. Poor financial literacy – SME owner-managers generally have poor levels of financial literacy and do not appreciate the value of understanding their financial accounts or key monthly figures (e.g. sales, cost of sales, outstanding debtors, cash in bank). Again, with entrepreneurs from minority groups, this problem is frequently more exaggerated.

There is also a general failure to properly research and test the idea. Instead people will frequently believe in the viability of their business idea based on feedback from their family and friends which does not constitute good market research.

9. What are some of the biggest barriers towards underrepresented groups starting their own businesses?

The barriers facing people from disadvantaged communities can be broken into four main areas:

1. The lack of recognition by the government, government agencies and private industry of the additional and distinctive challenges that they face – arguments such as “We treat everyone the same” and “Our Door is open to everyone” is simply not true for underrepresented groups. There are additional and distinctive challenges that mainstream entrepreneurs do not face. We have little tailored entrepreneurship support in place for people from these communities who wish to start their own business.
2. Greater difficulty with access to finance – there’s a lack of trust on both sides. For example, some immigrants have trust issues with authorities given their previous experience. People like suppliers or customers may have trust issues with building relationships with entrepreneurs from minority communities. Research has shown that people from Africa experience the highest levels of distrust, but also the Roma community and members of the Travelling community in Ireland also experience high levels of mistrust which makes it difficult for them to grow a business.
3. Networking – many people from minority communities will come from positions where they do not have the same opportunities in terms of creating a network as people from the mainstream population. Additionally, because of a lack of capital, they do not have useful access to finance and this is where many businesses fall down. Many people are in poorly paid jobs, so they may have poor credit ratings, and they are also time poor, so they cannot go to events where they can grow their network.
4. Institutional barriers – this is in terms of regulations and cultural norms which frequently are biassed against people from minority communities.

10. If someone is interested in joining the course how do they apply?

The course is open to anyone who self-identifies as having a disability and wishes to start their own business. However, the course is not suitable for someone who has already started their own business or simply wants to learn about entrepreneurship. Further details and the application form are available at https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/news/aib-and-tu-dublin-entrepreneurship-for-people-with-disabilities-programme.html.