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The head of national advertising agency Venture Communications, known widely from the TV shows Dragon’s Den and The Big Decision, this week announced her latest endeavour to both fund and target Canada’s entrepreneurs, Arlene Dickinson Enterprises (ADE). The multiplatform entity will also promote entrepreneurs through a new social network, an upcoming magazine and TV shows.

“I’m a marketer, I’m a businessperson, I am an entrepreneur — I can do all those things, and I believe they all intersect,” Ms. Dickinson, 56, said in an interview at her Toronto office this week, which houses ADE on a separate floor.

As she chronicled in her book Persuasion last year, Ms. Dickinson was a 31-year-old divorced mother of four with a high school diploma and no marketing experience when she began her career at Venture and worked her way up to becoming its owner and CEO within a decade. With an estimated net worth of $80-million, she has been dogged in her efforts to inspire other self-starters in business. “Television has given me this great opportunity to speak to Canadians every week for the last seven years about being in business,” she said. “I am a huge believer in what entrepreneurs do for economies, and the recession and change that happened in the marketplace has led to this moment in time where it has never been less expensive to get into business for yourself. It has never been easier to sell your stuff through the Internet globally and it has never been easier to manufacture offshore as it is now.”