Masterclasses · monthly
The schedule is public. The room is members-only.
Members-only because it seats 18, not because the knowledge is precious. Every session is written up and published afterwards, free, for anyone — that part is not behind anything.
First season
Six sessions on the half nobody teaches.
Every one is a thing that has killed a real product business. None of them is a motivational talk.
- 01
Landed cost, properly
Duty, freight, brokerage, FX and the exchange-rate drift nobody budgets for. The gap between the invoice price and the number your margin actually turns on.
You leave with Leave with a landed-cost sheet for your own product, filled in.
- 02
Minimum order quantities and the cash they trap
Why a supplier’s MOQ is negotiable far more often than founders assume, what to offer instead, and what a pallet of unsold stock costs you per month once you count the space it occupies.
You leave with Leave with the two questions that move an MOQ, and your real carrying cost.
- 03
Reading a commercial lease
CAM charges, escalation clauses, tenant improvement allowances, demolition clauses, and which lines genuinely move in a negotiation. Taught by people who negotiate them for a living.
You leave with Leave able to read your own lease and name its three worst clauses.
- 04
Financing inventory without selling equity
Purchase order financing, invoice factoring, and the bank products nobody explains to a first-time founder because the margins are thin on explaining them.
You leave with Leave knowing which instrument fits your cash cycle, and its true cost.
- 05
Labelling for Canadian retail
Bilingual requirements, CFIA basics, net quantity declarations, and the compliance failures that get a product pulled off a shelf after you have paid to get it there.
You leave with Leave with your label checked against the rules that actually apply to it.
- 06
Getting onto a shelf
Margin expectations, payment terms, listing fees, and what a category buyer is really deciding in the first meeting — which is rarely the thing founders prepare for.
You leave with Leave with a one-page sell sheet a buyer would actually read.
How it runs
One session a month, in the board room, capped at 18 seats. Included with every membership — day pass, pay-as-you-go and resident alike. There is no separate ticket and no upsell.
Sessions are not recorded. A camera changes how people talk about their own numbers, and the value here is that founders say the real figure out loud. Instead every session is written up properly and published.
Why us
Run by the people behind Zenith Commercial, an Edmonton commercial real estate brokerage. That makes the lease session credible in a way the same class is not anywhere else, and it means the room is full of people who deal with premises, suppliers and buyers rather than pitch decks.