When Fondation Lise Watier reached out to design a bilingual marketing workshop for women entrepreneurs in Quebec, we knew this was exactly the kind of work Abundance Bureau was built for: live, intensive sessions for women who are serious about building real businesses, who need practical tools, not more theory.
Here’s a full look at what we delivered, how we designed it, and what participants walked away with.
Who Fondation Lise Watier Supports
Fondation Lise Watier has been championing women’s financial independence through entrepreneurship for years. Their Let’s Start Up Pathway reaches more than 400 women a year across Montreal, Drummondville, Gatineau, the Laurentians, Montérégie, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, and Toronto.
Their participants are women at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey: motivated, often juggling other responsibilities, and ready to move from learning to doing. They don’t need more inspiration. They need structure, clarity, and concrete tools they can use the same week.
That’s why, as part of their Continuing Education Program, the Foundation decided to design their very first marketing bootcamp for women entrepreneurs in Quebec. And they called us.
What the Organization Needed
The brief was clear: two intensive days, eight participants maximum, focused on real marketing and communication challenges in their actual businesses.
The Foundation wanted participants to make real progress on their marketing and communication foundations: brand identity, planning, and digital tools, all anchored in each woman’s actual business situation.
This wasn’t a lecture series. It was a working session where every activity was anchored in each participant’s real business. That distinction matters enormously when you’re designing a bilingual marketing workshop for women entrepreneurs in Quebec who need immediate, tangible results from their time.
How We Structured the Bilingual Marketing Workshop for Women Entrepreneurs
The bootcamp was co-facilitated by Ania Ursulet, Marketing and Communication Strategist with over 35 years of expertise, and Rose Napoléon, Founder of Abundance Bureau, specializing in digital content strategy and brand storytelling. Together, we divided the two days into a logical progression: validate first, then build.
Day 1: Foundations, Brand Identity and Digital Tools
Morning: Validating What Participants Already Know
We opened with an icebreaker and roundtable, not as a warm-up formality, but as a diagnostic tool. We needed to understand where each participant actually stood before introducing anything new.
From there, we ran a mise en situation, a situational marketing exercise where each participant worked through her real business challenges. In small groups, each woman had 15 minutes to present her situation and receive direct, practical feedback. This format, collaborative, honest, and grounded in real business scenarios, set the tone for everything that followed.
Afternoon: Building Brand Identity
Once foundations were validated, participants moved into the work of building their brand, starting with the written, then the visual.
Written brand identity: Mission, vision, values, commitments, products and services. Each participant defined the core of what her business stands for and how to communicate it clearly.
Visual brand identity: Personality of the brand, artistic direction, colour palette, typography choices, and editorial research. This is often where women entrepreneurs in Quebec get stuck: making visual decisions without a strategic foundation. By this point in the day, participants had the foundation to make intentional choices.
Digital organization: We closed Day 1 with a practical session on digital tools (Canva, Google Drive, Pexels) to simplify content creation. Participants left with a working toolkit and recommendations for what to bring the next day.
Day 2: Action, Planning and Content Creation
Morning: Marketing and Communication Planning
Day 2 opened with marronniers, recurring annual events and seasonal moments that every business can plan content around. This gave participants a concrete framework for thinking about their six-month communication calendar.
From there, each participant built her own ligne de temps, a personalized marketing and communication timeline for the coming six months. It was built around each woman’s business reality, her available resources, and her objectives.
Afternoon: Creating Real Content
This is where the bilingual marketing workshop for women entrepreneurs became truly distinctive.
Participants didn’t just plan their editorial calendar. They started building it. Working with Rose, each woman began creating actual content: posts, visuals, and captions grounded in their own brand identity work from Day 1.
The afternoon was hands-on and intensive: participants used their own phones, cameras, and brand materials. Props, tripods, and corporate materials were on hand. The goal was to break the inertia of the blank page and give each participant a real taste of what consistent content creation looks and feels like.
Closing: Tour de Table and Live Feedback
The bootcamp closed with a full-group roundtable where every participant shared her experience, expressed what she still needed, and received live feedback. The Foundation’s team was present for this closing session, a deliberate choice to connect participants directly with the people supporting their entrepreneurial journey.
What Participants Walked Away With
Two intensive days don’t produce a finished marketing system, and we don’t pretend otherwise. What they do produce is something arguably more valuable: clarity, momentum, and a structured starting point that participants can build on independently.
Each woman left with a clearer sense of her brand identity, a framework for her marketing and communication planning, and firsthand experience with the digital tools and content creation process. Most importantly, she left having worked through her own real business challenges, not hypothetical case studies.
One participant, Ophélie, captured the experience clearly:
“This two-day marketing and communication boot camp offered by the Lise Watier Foundation was both intense and productive. We worked directly on the issues facing our businesses, with workshops led in a fun way by two experts. I learned to better differentiate between marketing and communication and to structure my messages for more impact. This training allowed me to plan my upcoming marketing actions and to find concrete solutions by sharing ideas with other entrepreneurs. I recommend this training for entrepreneurs who want to improve their communication skills and move forward with new tools!”
What stands out in Ophélie’s words isn’t just the skills she gained. It’s the momentum. She left with a plan, concrete next steps, and the confidence to keep going. That is the difference between a good workshop and a transformative one.
Fondation Lise Watier reflected: “We are proud to offer hands-on experiences to the women we support, empowering them with practical skills and tools for success. Through immersive activities like this, our participants leave with renewed confidence, ready to tackle their projects with fresh perspectives and strengthened leadership.”
Why This Bilingual Marketing Workshop Model Works for Women Entrepreneurs in Quebec
If you coordinate a cohort of women who are starting businesses and you’re looking for bilingual marketing workshop support in Quebec, here’s what this case tells you:
Live and in-person produces outcomes that online modules don’t. Two intensive days built around each participant’s real business create a kind of focused momentum that’s very hard to replicate in a self-paced or virtual format. When women entrepreneurs are in the same room, working on their real businesses, with facilitators who can respond in real time, that is when clarity actually happens.
Small cohorts allow for real depth. With a maximum of eight participants, every woman received individualized attention within a group setting. The mise en situation format, 15 minutes per person in front of the group, created a rare combination of accountability and community.
Beginner-friendly doesn’t mean watered down. The women in this room were early in their journey, but the work was rigorous: brand strategy, visual identity, six-month planning, content creation. These are real marketing fundamentals, taught in a way that made them immediately applicable.
Structure before creation. We never open with social media. Day 1 was entirely dedicated to foundations: who you are, what you stand for, how you communicate it. Only once that was solid did we move into planning and content. That’s why participants leave knowing why they’re doing what they’re doing, not just how.
The right co-facilitation makes a difference. Ania Ursulet’s 35+ years of marketing and communication strategy expertise, combined with Abundance Bureau’s focus on digital content and brand storytelling, gave participants access to two complementary skill sets across the two days.
Bring This Bilingual Marketing Workshop to Your Women Entrepreneurs Program
Abundance Bureau delivers live, bilingual (EN/FR) marketing and sales workshops for organizations supporting entrepreneurs across Canada: entrepreneurship programs, incubators, business schools, community organizations, and foundations.
Every bootcamp is designed around your participants’ realities and your program’s objectives. We adapt our content to the level, language, and context of each cohort. Cohorts of up to 8 participants. In-person or hybrid.
If you’re planning a bilingual marketing workshop for women entrepreneurs in Quebec or across Canada, we’d love to talk.
👉 Plan a workshop with Abundance Bureau 📧 hello@abundancebureau.co 📞 438-371-4750
Read the original recap published by Fondation Lise Watier: Recap of the First Marketing Boot Camp
