Searching for Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies

If you run a fast-growth company, or know someone who does, time is running out.

You have just a week to apply for a listing on the PROFIT 200, Canada's authoritative listing of hyper-growth heroes.

For 23 years, the PROFIT 100 has turned successful entrepreneurs into the heroes of Canadian business. Now you can be one of them!

This year, PROFIT magazine is expanding its ranking of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies to recognize 200 of the nation’s most entrepreneurial enterprises. If you qualify for the list, you’ll join such notable alumni as Research in Motion, Globalive Communications and WestJet Airlines.

You’ll enjoy many great benefits as a PROFIT 200 company, including coverage in the June 2011 issue of PROFIT Magazine and online at PROFITguide.com. PROFIT 200 leaders also receive an exclusive invitation to the PROFIT 200 CEO Summit, Canada’s most rewarding conference for entrepreneurial achievers. 

Your PROFIT 200 ranking can also attract new customers, employees and business partners—and lead to higher sales.

The entry deadline is March 31, 2011.

Apply now at http://www.profit200.ca.

For more info, visit http://www.profitguide.com/events

Where I'm Spending My Time

I'm afraid I've been under-serving this blog lately. I even missed celebrating its sixth anniversary, four weeks ago. Yet traffic remains very high, and March 2011 will probably set a record for most visitors in a single month.

Which just shows the power of online content. It keeps working for you even when you’re not working for it.

I will try to blog here more often. But keep in mind that I am also blogging for PROFITguide and the Financial Post (in addition to writing regular columns for both). So if I'm not updating here frequently enough for you, you can always find me there.

And feel free to follow me on Twitter. I've been spending a lot more time on Twitter lately. This free short-messaging service takes the idea of blogging and turbocharges it to match today’s faster pace (and shrinking attention spans). You can follow your favorite people’s blog-like musings in a few minutes, since no single post can be longer than 140 characters, or about 20 to 25 words. Keeping insights so short is a challenge, but it makes the overall learning experience more fun, for writers and readers both.

If you haven't signed up for Twitter, you should do so now. You don't have to “Tweet” if you don't want to. Just follow people you know or admire. It’s a great way to get regular exposure to your favorite writers and thinkers. It’ll open your eyes and mind to new ideas, business news, people, opportunities and events. I liken it to reading people’s minds – you get to see what a whole lot of bright people are thinking about every day.

And keep checking this blog. We're not done yet.

How to Annoy Your Dragons

In February I took part in the opening auditions for the next season of  Dragons' Den. It kicked off more than a month of auditions all across the country. They're now going on, and you can find more details here:
http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/audition/

My column for the National Post  summed up my experiences auditioning "pitchers" who want a chance to sell their business ideas to the Dragons on national TV next year. As I wrote, "If you want to make it on Dragons' Den — or impress any kind of real-life investor -- you had better not make the kinds of mistakes I saw during my deputy day."

Here's the short version:

Misunderstanding investors' motives The Dragons, like most venture-capital investors, only want to invest in scalable businesses. If you don't know what that means, you haven't got one.

Not knowing your market How many people will buy your product? When? These are essential calculations, even if they're mainly guesswork.

Never confuse a capitalist Keep your pitch clear and simple.

Not understanding your customers Don't wait to talk to customers till your product or business plan is picture-perfect — make them consultative partners from Day 1.

Being afraid to give up equity A venture investor won't make any money unless you do, too.

Neglecting to tell a coherent story Let investors know (briefly) where your idea or product came from, why this opportunity is huge, and why you're the best partner to pull all this off.

Click here to read the full story.

Puncturing the Low-Price Myth

My column in this week's Financial Post looks at a common myth: that you should never market your business or product based on price alone. Business and consumers alike are looking for more value today than ever: if you can sustain that advantage over time, why wouldn't you promote it?

The column focuses on U.S. entrepreneur Jerry McLaughlin and his company Branders.com – a promotional-products retailer that restructured itself to be the low-price leader in its niche. It has never looked back.

Excerpt: Immediately after reducing its prices across the board,

“the percent of website visitors who made purchases shot up to 65% from 15%. McLaughlin says profits on the additional sales more than made up for the lower profit margins: ‘That means we should have done it anyway, whether it was our long-term strategy or not.’"

You can read the full story here.

Open auditions start Saturday for Dragons' Den!

Here’s a phrase I never thought I’d see: Dragons’ Den, Season 6.

The CBC’s hit business show begins open auditions for the next fall season this Saturday, Feb. 12, at the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto. Aspiring entrepreneurs and inventors are invited to show up between 10 am and 5 pm to demo their products or ideas for a chance to appear on the show and pitch to the Dragons themselves.

The celebrity Dragons are unlikely to be at the audition, so you can expect to meet a corps of steely-eyed Deputy Dragons, one of which will be me. I think this will be my fourth year of interrogating potential pitchers. If you're not prepared, don't expect me to be very nice.

Pitchers are expected to sound smooth and professional, and to be able to answer tough questions like:

• What’s the market for your product?

• Why would anyone buy this?

• What kind of sales have you had so far? (If none, we may ask “Why?”

• How much money would you like from the dragons? What would you use it for?

• How much equity in your business are you prepared to give up in return for this investment?

Did I mention that you only have five minutes? And I usually interrupt people and start asking questions at about the 30-second mark. (Dragons are impatient beasts.)

If you can't make it this Saturday in T.O., the show’s producers are hitting the road to come to you. This year they intend to hit a whopping 36 cities, which is a testament to the success of the show and the entrepreneurial abilities of Canadians.

The roadshow begins Feb. 17 in Victoria and ends March 28 in Yellowknife (how cool is that?). The final audition will be held again in Toronto on April 2. (Some dates may be subject to change.)
Click here for the full schedule: http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/audition/

Interested entrepreneurs are asked to apply online at www.cbc.ca/dragonsden. You'll save time by bringing your completed application form to the audition.

Canadians have fallen in love with Dragons' Den. The January 12th special “Second Chance” episode drew a series high of nearly 2.2 million viewers – a higher audience than many U.S. series get, with 10 times the population.

If you love the show, you may be interested in a behind-the-scenes look at how the show started – including how Kevin O’Leary insulted Robert Herjavec the first time they met. Click here for the full story.

And here’s a cool blogpost by show consultant Sean Wise explaining where so many pitchers go wrong.

Hope to see you Saturday!

How to improve your blog

A friend asked me recently to comment on his blogposts. So I checked them out and sent him a few comments. Then I thought, hey, that might make a good blogpost!

In the end, I came up with 5 points. And they are so basic, so easy to understand, that I decided to try to compress them into 140 characters, or about 25 words. So here you are: my first blogpost that was also a single tweet on Twitter.

5 rules to improve your blog:
* Get to the point fast;
* Stay out of the story;
* Focus on readers' needs;
* Protect Brand You;
* Stick to 1 big theme.

Let me know if you'd like me to elaborate on any of these points.

(I wonder what else could be compressed into a single Twitter post...? How about the 10 Commandments:
Top 10: No other gods; no idols; don't say O God!; sleep in Sunday; honor mom & dad; don't kill, steal or lie; nix to adultery; no jealousy.
140 characters. Bingo!)

2 questions on modern marketing

Based on my recent columns on marketing in the National Post, I received a brief email asking me two questions:

1. What percentage of sales should be spent on a marketing budget?

and
2. What are the criteria in choosing a marketing agency? Because everybody promises you everything underneath the sun.

The author didn't tell me anything about his business, so I answered rather generically.

1. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules, but I don't think your marketing budget should generally be more than 5% to 8% of sales revenues. Of course in some industries (movies, soft drinks), it's much more. It basically depends on what you sell, how you sell it, and what kind of margins you get.


2. "Marketing agencies" can be very different things: PR agencies, web marketers, etc. I think the best thing to do is talk to some of the agency's other clients to find out what the agency accomplished for them.

Make sure you inquire about the sort of work that you're interested in buying. For instance, your questions would be very different depending on whether you just wanted a pretty website, or you wanted to boost sales through your website.

Marketing should always have goals and metrics attached. So make sure you find an agency that meets objectives and creates results for its clients.

All the best.
Rick

Best Entrepreneurship Quotes, Week 35

“The problem with first impressions isn’t that they're not important (They are important! They're critical!), but that we have no idea at all when that first impression is going to occur… That’s why authenticity matters.”

Seth Godin, numero uno marketing guru, explains in his 2005 book, All Marketers Are Liars, why authenticity and consistency matter so much to your brand or business.

The customer is not a passive consumer of your marketing; they interpret it the way they want to. Or as Seth says, "The reason authenticity matters is that we don't know which inputs the consumer will use to invent the story he tells himself."

Front & Centre: Canada's Future in a Global Marketplace

My Financial Post columns lately have dealt with an unusually weighty subject: the future of the Canadian economy in a global marketplace.

I have just had too many conversations lately with people who despair of the current economy and think that the way ahead is to return to the high-tariff world of the 1970s, when jobs were steady and black clouds of smoke belched from prosperous, stable factories on the outskirts of town.

There is no going back. Nor should we want to. The global economy may have taken our low-skill manufacturing jobs, and may be gunning for the high-skill jobs next. But it puts us right where we want to be: selling civilization to the rest of the world.

Canadians are in an enviable position to sell the goods and services that can build cities and developing nations: dams, roads, public services, skyscrapers, malls, governance institutions, stock markets, schools, mines, refineries, even (ironically) factories. So many developing nations are ready to splurge on high-quality infrastructure, and who better to sell it to them than us – who have built such a great country at 20 below zero?

Our economic future lies in selling services and high-end products to an emerging class of countries that want these products and can pay for them. We’re not the only people who are trying to sell this stuff – think of Europe and the Americans. But we have unique advantages – a more multicultural society than any in Europe, and a stronger and more respectful “worldview” than the Americans.

Look at the success of companies such as SNC Lavalin, which has become a global powerhouse building superhighways in Britain, ports in Spain, power-management systems in India, Central America and the Balkans, power plants in Algeria, refineries in Venezuela, gas plants in Oman... This is our future.

This opportunity is ours to seize. Or lose.

We need more entrepreneurs. People who see the opportunities in change, not the drawbacks. Skilled people who confident of their abilities and able to build trust with customers in all parts of the world. Instilling these skills and values in Canadians should be Job 1 for our governments and schools.

We can change the world.

You can click here to read my Jan. 3 column, “Prepare for the great global tournament.”

Click here for this week’s follow-up column, “Canada's future lies in knowledge.”

Your 2011 Guide to Business Resolutions

Just in time for your New Year’s makeover, here is my list of 11 resolutions for business owners in 2011. (Top 10 lists are so Old Year.)

1. Make this a year of opportunities. Look for ways to expand your market reach, develop new products, or deepen your relationships with customers and suppliers. Most of your competition is still waiting for the economy to conclusively improve before taking chances and investing in the future. Now is your chance to seize the initiative and establish clear market leadership.

2. Leverage your strengths. If you have strong credibility in your market, look for opportunities to offer more in-depth services for current customers; they trust you and want to do more business with you. If you're a whiz at product development, accelerate upgrades that offer additional features and benefits – then promote the heck out of them.

3. Explore new geographic markets. Pick a promising country or region and get to know what makes it different. Study its culture and business practices, get out and meet business people from that region, and chat up other Canadians who have tapped that market and learned valuable lessons. The future of Canadian business lies in selling to the rest of the world.

4. Look for ways to add more value. In tough times, most marketers look for ways to claw back some of the value they offer their customers, as a way to preserve margins; you can stand out by offering more. Henry Ford said it best: “The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.”

5. Appoint someone on your team to explore opportunities in social media. I'm pretty sure I said this last year, but now I really mean it. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Groupon are growing faster than anyone dreamed. They are changing the way we communicate, and you have to learn to make them work for you.

6. Focus on corporate culture. More and more entrepreneurs I know are recognizing that their best most enduring, and possibly their only competitive advantage is their companies’ culture. With the right culture, you can move faster, out-serve and out-innovate the competition. And you’ll hold on to more of your best people and naturally attract more of the right people.

7. Hire better people. To grow the company, you have to recruit more senior people with greater skills and experience. You may have to pay some of them more than you pay yourself. But that’s okay – you have equity.

8. Invest in your best employees. Some of your staff aren't going anywhere and don't deserve any coddling But the best of them deserve more attention and nurturing than they're likely getting now. Help them upgrade their skills; give them new challenges to tackle. Help them learn, grow, and prove themselves.

9. Give your staff a big audacious goal to focus on this coming year. Present them with a challenge that will compel them to dream bigger, think harder, and innovate and collaborate in new and energizing ways. Be prepared for lots of new ideas and suggestions. While you can't be expected to follow up on them all, be aware that you will be expected to put your weight behind the best ones.

10. Find a mentor. Join your industry association. Create an advisory council or a customer advisory board. As you upgrade your company, you have to become much smarter and more resilient – and only other business people can help you do that.

11. Make yourself more interesting. Book a die-for vacation, take up an adventure sport, hone your artistic talents, set yourself an impossible challenge. The more interesting and memorable you are, the more other people will want to be around you. It will also make you a happier, more confident and well-rounded leader. Why, 2011 could be your best year yet.

(Adapted from my National Post column, Dec. 27, 2010)

A Christmas Business Model

I know it's a little late to be talking about Santa Claus, but my Xmas card/Dec. 24 post generated a compelling response from one of my favorite business thinkers, Donald Cooper, so I didn't want to wait till next Christmas to share it with you.

My previous post asked if Santa qualifies as a true entrepreneur. Donald's reply ran thusly:

"Rick, as I give your Christmas message more thought, there are many observations re your “mystery entrepreneur’s” business model and the business lessons that evolve from it...


1. He has clearly focused target customers....good little girls and boys.

2. Hires people with physical challenges....elves.

3. Business is based in a low-rent location....North Pole.

4. Pays close attention to detail... makes lists and checks them twice.

5. Offers the convenience of on-time, home delivery and free gift wrap.

6. Has gone Global.

7. Successfully uses Social Networking to get customers to write him re what they want, so as to plan production and control inventory.

8. Is masterful at getting loads of free media publicity.

9. Cleverly arranged a global cross-brand promotion with Coca Cola.

10. But, he has no discernible revenue model...and,

11. No succession plan, or exit strategy.

There is much to be learned from all of this."

I especially like No. 7. It's true and subversive at the same time.

For more of Donald's out-of-the-box thinking, check out his free articles and resources at http://www.donaldcooper.com/

I also liked his signoff: "Be well...make a difference...have fun."

Is Santa Claus a real entrepreneur?

Yes: Innovative distribution model (flying reindeer)
No Ho Ho: Antiquated, one-size-fits-all marketing model; all customers pay the same price

Yes: Prepares an annual operating plan, and checks it twice
No: Hiring practices include recruiting only elves in his workshop

Yes: Popular brand is known the world over
No: Failed to control his intellectual property, meaning anyone can use his image to sell anything

Yes: Exports to over 200 countries
No: Tax and visa status unclear; not good with paperwork

Yes: No. 1 in market share
No: Only works two days a year

Yes: Creates incredible value for his customers
No: No known succession plan or exit strategy

Yes: Has clearly defined communication plan focusing on one positive message:

Merry Christmas to all!

And best wishes for a happy holiday, and a prosperous New Year!

Mentors and Movies

My column in this week's Financial Post looks at the role mentors can play in small business. I met with a trio of experienced business mentors with the Innovation Synergy Centre in Markham, Ont., and grilled them on their best advice for other entrepreneurs who don't have mentors. The result was some great, road-tested wisdom anyone can benefit from.

Excerpt:
• Go where the money is. [Mentor Reza] Reza Alavie once mentored a home-services company that provided quality service but was barely breaking even. "Like a lot of SMEs," he says, the company wasn't charging enough for its services. That doesn't mean it could just raise its prices; Alavie helped the owner recognize she should reposition the company to serve high-end consumers at higher price points. Today the company has a carriage-trade reputation and a long waiting list for appointments.

Click here to read the full story.

Holiday Bonus: Last week’s column took its lead from my recent visit with an economic-development agency in Saskatchewan. I was impressed by the work done by Sagehill Community Futures in creating jobs and businesses in its territory, north and east of Saskatoon. In fact, I realized it reminded me of something: George Bailey’s community co-operative Building & Loan Society, in the Frank Capra movie It’s a Wonderful Life.

In the movie, Jimmy Stewart’s character gets to discover how different things would be if he had never been born. Productive ventures like Sagehill get to see the difference they make every day.

Excerpt:

Playing the part of Bailey’s Savings & Loan is Sagehill Community Futures Development Corp., headquartered in Bruno, a 500-person town 90 km east of Saskatoon. Under the direction of an all-volunteer board, Sagehill’s five-member staff provide loans no one else will make, hand out free business advice, offer management training and development, and help new or insecure entrepreneurs navigate the bureaucracies of banks and governments. They also play a key community-building role co-ordinating the economic development activities of more than 50 small towns in an area three times the size of Prince Edward Island.

For the full inspiring story, click here. And savour a government-funded program that works.

Why Groupon turned down Google, and other cool stuff

My friend Amrita Mathur has just launched a new blog on technology, media and startups. It's worth your attention because she's a good writer and frightfully smart.

 

Today she is blogging about why Groupon turned down Google's $6 billion acquisition offer. She even makes it sound like it was the right thing to do.

Here's what she says:

"Groupon is no fool. They know how valuable a support they can be to Google’s Adwords service – allowing vendors to deepen their existing relationships with Google. Not to mention the loyalty it might bring back to Google, the same loyalty they have lost to the Facebooks of the world. Groupon also knows they would be quite complementary to Google Places as well as Google’s new service Hotpot."

Go ahead. Read Amrita's full story here.

Think Big, Shop Small

Happy “Small Business Saturday” to all our American friends. It’s so designated because, after the rush and crush of Black Friday, everyone is being encouraged today to shop with their local small businesses.

Perhaps you will find some gem that isn't advertised on TV, or discover a capacity for personal service that you didn't know existed any more. At any rate, the intention is that more of the money you spend will be retained and reinvested in your local community.

According to the statistics on http://www.localfirst.com/, when you shop at a locally owned business, $73 of every $100 spent stays in the community. Apparently, when you shop at the big chains, only $43 of every $100 you spend stays in town to fund jobs and public services.

You can learn more about Small Business Saturday at http://www.facebook.com/SmallBusinessSaturday

Sponsor American Express celebrated the occasion by awarding free Facebook advertising to 10,000 small businesses as part of Small Business Saturday. So I guess big business has its uses too.

The Architectural Conservancy of Ontario points out that the federally established Heritage Canada Foundation used to have a Main Street Promotion program with similar aims. According to the ACO, “it is time to bring it back.”

Google Street View, or, This is no Place for Modesty

On a dark November night in Toronto, I cruised down the summery Trans-Canada Highway from Banff to the BC border... courtesy of my computer and Google's Street View. I find this addendum to Google Maps fascinating. It's a useful tool for previewing places I am headed to (eg, Saskatoon next week), or a fun way to explore foreign sites or to just look back at some favorite places.

It's remarkable how in just two years, Street View has expanded from not just Toronto and Montreal but to rural towns and highways right across Canada (not to mention all over the U.S. and Western Europe, and selected parts of Asia, Australia and major cities in South America -- see map).

You've probably gone looking for pictures of your own house or office - it's the first thing we did, and we found our daughter got in the picture when she was out weeding the front lawn. (She never noticed the Google car with the 9-lens camera mounted on top.)

But I think Google Street View will become recognized as an amazing way to explore the world. Main highways, back roads, even pathways (using something called Google Trikes).

For instance, I've always dreamed of driving the Dempster Highway up to Inuvik, NWT, almost to the Arctic Ocean. Yet I know the drive would be long, hazardous and boring. So how cool is it to follow along with Street View - their camera went to the very end, to a junkyard at the end of Navy Rd., just north of Inuvik. And here it is: the very end of driveable Canada.

(Looks like the Google cars travel in pairs. And sometimes they get very muddy.)

But how cool is to see some of the most famous places in Canada immortalized in candid shots in Google Street View? Remember, these aren't just still pictures - they are melded into amazing panoramas where you can pan, tilt, or zoom, and follow the road as far as you want just by clicking your mouse (I estimate maximum speed to be about 100 kph. But that's a lot of clicking!) So enjoy Peggy's Cove, Quebec City and Niagara Falls.

But here's my favourite view. Following the TransCanada west from Lake Louise, I climbed to the summit that marks the border between Alberta and BC. As you can see, they were just putting up a new "Welcome to Alberta" sign for eastbound drivers, promoting "Wild Rose Country" (a beautiful name, but what does it mean?).

Now look how BC takes advantage of the situation. It shouts to westbound motorists, "Welcome to British Columbia: The Best Place on Earth."

I guess they didn't get the memo about Canadians being modest, unassuming people. Good on them.

If you have an office or a prominent sign along a city street or stretch of highway, maybe you should be marketing to Google Street View - as well as to local passersby. Increasingly, the whole world is watching. So let's think big!

Best Entrepreneurship Quotes, Week 34

"The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed."

Henry Ford, founder, Ford Motor Co. (1863-1947)

Speaking of imagination: just imagine how different the North American automobile industry might look today if it had held on to Henry Ford's vision.

Put value first, profit second.

Are your missing out on Twitter feedback?

Last weekend I delivered a keynote on "Secrets from Canada's Top Entrepreneurs" to 200 student delegates at the Impact 2010 conference in Toronto. Little did I know that some members of the audience were Tweeting portions of my speech.

The cool thing about Twitter is that when people tweet about a topic, issue, person or place, they can place a hashtag (#) in front of the name and suddenly turn it into a trending topic for others to follow. Or if they put the "@" sign (not the asterisk, sorry about that mistake) in front of a person's Twitter name, that person (or anyone else) can follow that part of the conversation easily, because it will show up in a feed to that person or anyone else who wishes to follow it.

So today I discovered some of the things people Tweeted about me. Since you rarely get detailed feedback on specific parts of a speech, this is an interesting way to see what resonates with people - eg, local references, or an insight someone finds particularly useful.

Here's what people said about me on Saturday afternoon:

1. KLinked: @RickSpence definetely lived up to expectations! Great job selecting speakers #INC10 @GoDevMENTAL 4:40 PM Nov 13th

2. u_christine: When asked what is the major problem for young entrepreneurs today, @rickspence answers, "you don't have problems." We r at a huge advantage 4:25 PM Nov 13th

3. jadechoyy: @rickspence interesting and informative keynote about canadian entrpreneurs! #inc10 4:18 PM Nov 13th

4. DamiDina: "Become someone worth talking about." Inspirational and Great quote by speaker @rickspence at #INC10. 4:18 PM Nov 13th

5. lu_christine: So awesome to finally hear @rickspence speak! Thx for coming to share such inspiring stories #INC10 http://twitpic.com/36kkcx 4:14 PM Nov 13th
6. summers_megan : @rickspence just mentioned the ottawa valley! aww yeah! #inc10 @impactorg 3:52 PM Nov 13th

What are people saying about you? Get a user account on Twitter and find out!

My List of Great Entrepreneurial Thinkers

I got an email recently from a budding business academic asking about my opinions on the best sources of academic information on entrepreneurship.

I had to tell him that I'm not an expert on the academics of entrepreneurship. Most of the academics I know who teach entrepreneurship do so with very subjective perspectives, and often use "texts" made up of photocopied articles rather than specific books or authors. I think the field of entrepreneurship is just moving too fast for the academics to keep up!

When there was an international conference of entrepreneurship academics held in Halifax a few years ago, I contacted the professor in charge of reviewing the research papers to be presented there, and asked him to point me to the most groundbreaking studies he had seen. I wrote a column about those papers, but they were a pretty undistinguished lot, to my layman's eyes.

For better or worse, here are the works I pointed my correspondent to:

“For me, the most significant thinker in entrepreneurship is Joseph Schumpeter, who came up with the notion of "creative destruction" - that entrepreneurs' role is to create progress by destroying what came before. A lot of people still talk about his work today, although "disruption" is the preferred term now for the impact of innovation.

Roger Martin at the U of T's Rotman School is certainly the most influential Canadian academic when it comes to disrupting and succeeding in business markets (not exactly entrepreneurship, but close). I only recently came to understand that his model, "integrative thinking", is really just code for all kinds of ideas and practices that don't fit into traditional management thinking, such as the importance of design, or innovative approaches to innovation. He seems to write a new book a year, mainly retailing anecdotes from his current favorite business success stories. So I think the state of the art in business scholarship is pretty flimsy.

However, I think the most respected thinker in entrepreneurship is Peter Drucker, who wrote many, many books on management, and settled on innovation and entrepreneurial thinking as the two priorities in business. Geoffrey Moore (Inside the Tornado, and Crossing the Chasm) is king of fast-growth entrepreneurship, focusing mainly on the problems faced by Silicon-Valley-type tech companies.

Jim Collins (Built to Last, and especially Good to Great) is by far the most quoted author I know. He's sort of a freelance academic who uses what seem to be legitimate, academically-oriented research teams to probe management problems that interest him.

At a lower, more operational level, the most influential thinker has been Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and The E-Myth Revisited, among others. He created the concept that entrepreneurs should work "on the business, not in it," which I hear quoted back at me at least twice a week.

The other books most quoted by the entrepreneurs I know are layman works, especially by Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, Outliers, etc.) and Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat). Which tells you that the journalists are way ahead of the academics in distilling today's business trends."

How about you? What are you reading?
What thinkers do you admire?

150,000th visitor!

We interrupt your day to inform you that yesterday, around noon (Eastern Standard Time), this blog received its 150,000th visitor.

It's been just 13 months since we recorded our 100,000th visitor, so we're pleased to say that Canadian Entrepreneur is still growing faster than ever.

The fact that we hit our new milestone during a low-content period underscores the fundamental value of blogs: they stands as permanent content archives, attracting and informing new visitors whether they are being actively updated or not. That alone makes blogging an ideal tool for small businesses with short attention spans: your best messages can last forever (or at least a very long time).

Most of the information in this blog is intended to be of lasting value, so I am pleased that people are still finding it of use and interest. As you can see by the Flag Counter I added to the right-hand margin last year, we continue to attract readers from all over the world. Because capitalism works, and Canadians have a lot of entrepreneurial expertise to offer.

Next stop: 200,000!

Free Business Information Thursdays!

The Learning Enrichment Foundation, near the site of the former Kodak plant in west-end Toronto, is a fascinating place. Occupying a huge old World War II-era factory, it offers day care, skills training, business development, incubation services and on-the-job experience to anyone across the city looking for a hand up.

And for the next five Thursday afternoons they're offering some decent free programs for any entrepreneurs looking to start or grow their business.

Here’s the lineup:

November 18: Join Lisa Kember from Constant Contact as she talks about how to make Award-winning email marketing campaigns, and how to take advantage of online social marketing.

November 25: Business specialist Gerri Sefi talks about how to buy a franchise, and what you need to know before you buy. Gerri is a coach and facilitator who works closely with clients to ensure they get the franchise that bests suits them.

December 2: Join business expert Katherine Roos from Enterprise Toronto as she explains how the City of Toronto can help you do business. Learn about city-hosted workshops, training, networking, trade shows and clinics that can link you to expert help and advice.

December 9: Albert Peres and Marvin Greenberg from Toronto's Food Business Incubator explain what you need to know to get into a restaurant or catering business.

December 16: Everything you need to know about exporting and importing. Expert Maggie Weaver gives you the goods on running an export/import business. She writes the daily newsletter of I.E.Canada, the Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters.

For more information or to register, call 416.760.2566, ext. 2085 or 2083. Or email David Cohen at dcohen@lefca.org . He’s a great guy who will connect you to the help you need.

Pay per click hits the big time

Slowly getting back into blogging mode after a busy few weeks.
Here's a great article from the National Post on how a few entrepreneurial organizations use social media -- particularly Facebook ads and Google pay-per-click -- to promote their cutting-edge products. Lots of best practices here.

Click here for the full story by Denise Deveau.

More entrepreneurs need to use and experiment with these amazing marketing tools. If someone had told us 15 years ago we would soon have a no-risk advertising medium that lets us target our market precisely and pay only when prospects actually respond to our ads, we would have thought they were lying. Then we would have gone home and prayed for that day to arrive!

Welcome to Small Business Week 2010.

It's that time of year again, when politicians and big business make a fuss about entrepreneurs and say good things about how we are the backbone of the commnituy, the economic engine of Canada, and so on and so forth.

Hey, it's better than a kick in the teeth.

From Oct. 17 to 23, Canadians will be celebrating Small Business Week, and entrepreneurs will be attending numerous events designed to educate and motivate them for greater performance.

As you may know, SBW is a creation of the government – the Business Development Bank of Canada, to be precise. Together with national and local sponsors, the BDC names a group of outstanding young entrepreneurs from each province, and holds events across the country dedicated to helping businesses grow. The BDC selects a new theme each year, and this year the theme is “Power Up Your Business. Invest. Innovate. Grow.”

(They mean well. But they do need a new copywriter.)

The best part of SBW is meeting with other entrepreneurs and learning new growth tactics at special conferences, awards programs and networking events across the country. Click here to learn about local events near you.

The BDC’s Young Entrepreneur Awards nomination program kicks off this week. The awards are open to all entrepreneurs aged 19 to 35. Nominations are open until Nov. 30, with the winners to be announced at a special event in Saskatoon on May 3.
Click here for more information on the Young Entrepreneur Awards.

Someone the other day asked what special activities I had planned for Small Business Week. I just told them that at Canadian Entrepreneur, “Every week is Small Business week.”

Best Entrepreneurship Quotes, Week 33 1/3

 

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality."

John Lennon

Who would have been 70 tomorrow (Oct. 9).

Generals, Blunders and Cold Courage

The books that fell off my bookshelf into my hands most recently were coincidentally of a type. One is a tattered copy of Lincoln’s Generals, by T. Harry Williams (1953), which I picked up free at the end of a garage sale, and the other is Sir Basil Liddel Hart’s History of the Second Word War (1970), which I've had around the house for at least 20 years.

In Hawaii last summer we visited Pearl Harbor, where I realized  how little I know about the war in the Pacific. So when I returned home I read Liddell hart's chapters “Japan’s Tide of Conquest” and (138 pages later), "The Tide Turns in the Pacific."  I enjoyed both so much that I went back to the start and began reading the whole way through. I'm now safely into 1943 and enjoying the book much more – the early years of the war are heartbreaking for the Allied side.

What you learn from studying the Union generals in the Civil War, or the various commanders in WWII, is how often leaders blunder. No one knows why the Japanese failed to destroy the shipbuilding resources and fuel storage tanks of Pearl Harbour; that could have significantly delayed the U.S. Navy's remarkable comeback.

Hitler himself, whose mad hatreds won so many early victories (to the endless surprise of his generals) saved the Allied cause several times: by not annihilating the British Expeditionary Force as it retreated from France, through Dunkirk, in 1940; and again by turning on the Soviet Union in 1941 before he had pacified his western front.

The Allies themselves made mistake after costly mistake. After the Belgians failed to blow up a few key bridges, the numerically superior French armies panicked at the Nazi tank columns invading from the north (instead of dashing themselves to pieces on the Maginot line). The Brits moved a weak force into Greece that only served to attract the Nazis' wrath. In Crete, the New Zealanders ceded the airport to a smaller attacking force and failed to counterattack while they had the manpower advantage – dooming them to defeat and capture.

Several times the British failed to chase Rommel out of Africa when they had the chance. And by building up their defences in Egypt, the Brits doomed Singapore, a more strategic asset.

Even more fundamentally, prior to Pearl Harbor the Americans and British cut off Japan’s oil supplies, but they didn't adequately prepare for the Pacific war that they should have known would follow.

In the Civil War, the North had a huge advantage in manpower, armaments and manufacturing muscle. Yet the generals of the Union Army were timid. Time after time, Gen. George McClelland (facing Lincoln in photo at right) and his ilk failed to move against the Confederates when victory seemed possible; the generals constantly overestimated the size of their opposition, and were always waiting for more supplies, more certainty.

Even after Gettysburg, as Lee’s beaten army was fleeing south towards the safety of Virginia, the Union army failed to chase the Rebels and create a rout that could have ended the war two years early. Only U.S. Grant, fighting on the Mississippi front, harried his foes consistently, using whatever resources he had and never whining for more.

For years, Lincoln told his generals that the strategic objective was the destruction of Lee’s army. He despaired at how often his generals forgot that objective. Instead they would bring him plans for seizing this city or that bit of territory, while avoiding a major battle. They couldn't understand that the war would not end until Lee could no longer threaten them.

Of course, it’s easy to criticize the decision-makers after the fact, long after “the fog of war” has lifted. But it is astounding to see how often bad decisions are made in the heat of battle. It’s a useful reminder why bold initiatives often succeed in times of confusion and uncertainty.

Which should be very encouraging to entrepreneurs assailing established markets.  If you can sow confusion and discord with a sudden frontal attack on a market, it is very likely that your bigger opponents will make mistakes in reaction – giving you a chance to consolidate your early gains and win a victory.

Read up sometime on the battle for Tunis, and how German general Walther Nehring and his outnumbered defenders outwitted, outhustled and outbluffed a huge Allied attacking force, thus prolonging the war in Africa by a full six months. Speed, flexibility, courage and yes, desperation, can work wonders against confused opponents who don't have a clear idea how to win.
There seems to be a lot of those people out there.

Above: Gen. Walther Nehring (at right) with Rommel (in cool peaked cap).

Three words of advice

I blogged recently on PROFITguide.com about my participation at PROFIT Magazine's GrowthCamp, the conference for the growth-company entrepreneurs who made the magazine's Hot 50 list in September.

In moderating a roundtable discussion with 10 GrowthCamp attendees, I asked each of them: What three words of advice would they offer other business owners?

Not all of them managed it in three words, and a few mantraa require some explanation. Overall however, I think their responses address a lot of key business challenges:

• Protect your reputation.
• Be proactive, not reactive.
• Persistence is everything – never give up.
• Focus. Niche.
• Personal relationships: know your clients inside-out.
• Monitor your reputation. (If you want to protect your reputation, this entrepreneur said, you have to first know what other people are saying about you, so you can defend your good name. Think Twitter searches and Google Alerts.)
• Listen to your employees and your customers.
• Drive your dreams. (When I asked what that means, the entrepreneur said, “To attract talent, they have to believe in what you're driving for.”)
• Protect your time, and plan. (This entrepreneur wanted his peers to understand that time flies away if you're not guarding it; make sure your workday is well scheduled to give you the time to make reasoned, thoughtful decisions. “Being effective,” says this entrepreneur, “is more of a technical challenge than we think.”)
• Empower your People.

What’s your three-word business mantra?
Take six words if you need them.

Where do we go from here?

What’s really going on in the world? Who’s winning the War on Terror? And how capable is the Obama administration of making the right decisions today?

If you're a fan of foreign affairs, you won't want to miss Condoleezza Rice in her upcoming Toronto appearance. The former national security advisor and secretary of state will be speaking on Tuesday, Nov. 2 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

The event starts at 3.30, though you’ll want to get there sooner to drink in the buzz.

According to the organizers, this event "will give the audience a candid look into world affairs, the status of Canada and US relations, and an inside look into the current administration."

Tickets range from $100 to $180, or you can get the $330 VIP package that includes admission to the post-speech reception and an exclusive photo opportunity with Condi herself!

Click here for tickets. And if you use the promo code “world” you’ll get a discount off the list price.

This presentation is put on by Innovative Events LP, an entrepreneurial Calgary-based partnership that enables individual investors to invest in big-time speakers' events. Last year, Innovative Events brought Alan Greenspan to Calgary and Edmonton. Good luck to them in their foray East.