We have a horse race!

I posted a few days ago about the the search for Canada's greatest entrepreneur of all time - and how someone was stuffing the ballot box for the McCain brothers. I also announced my vote for BC builder and salesman extraordinaire Jimmy Pattison.

The good news is that things are starting to work out. The McCains are down from 39% support to 24%, which is a sign either that market forces are working or that the organizers are dealing with the hanging chad issue.

Better still, Jim Pattison has charged into second place, at 16%. My sentimental favourite, the hugely deserving Max Ward, has slipped to third place, with 8%.

Also mounting a late charge: Alexander Graham Bell, at 7%. Isn't this fun? (Last summer I took my kids to visit his house in Brantford. Another "oh no, not another field trip, dad," that the kids ended up enjoying immensely. They have the first phone there. Go see it. )

The updated standings (as of midnight Thursday) are below. Click on the names for thumbnail bios of each candidate. And act soon: voting closes midnight Monday (Feb. 26).

Paul Desmarais Sr. - 3% vote
Ken Thomson - 7% vote
Frank Stronach - 4% vote
Max Ward - 8% vote
Ted Rogers - 4% vote
Joseph-Armand Bombardier - 3% vote
Alexander Graham Bell - 7% vote
Terry Matthews - 1% vote
Timothy Eaton - 2% vote
Frank Sobey - 1% vote
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis - 4% vote
Izzy Asper - 4% vote
Samuel Bronfman - 1% vote
Galen Weston - 1% vote
Conrad Black - 1% vote
Ron Joyce - 3% vote
Roy Thomson - 2% vote
Harrison and Wallace McCain - 24% vote
Kenneth Colin (K.C.) Irving - 4% vote
Jim Pattison - 16% vote

Hint: If you have more than one e-mail address, you can vote more than once.
No ballot-stuffing, please.

The Secret Origin of the CFIB

I’m sorry I missed the 35th anniversary party last year of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. It’s truly a milestone worth celebrating.

Here’s a link to a speech by founder John Bulloch last year recalling the “untold story” of the CFIB’s founding. Such a big, nationwide marketing machine, you'd think there’d have been some strategy behind it, right?

Nope. Like most small businesses, it started as a half-formed notion and grew shakily, almost anecdotally. With lots of “fake it till you make it” moments that will be familiar to anyone who ever launched a business.

Here’s a highlight:

"I created a national Board of Governors in early 1971 although the CFIB was not incorporated until August 1971. They were friends who had helped me organize [tax-reform] Rallies across Canada and they allowed me to use their offices as CFIB virtual offices. So the image was of a powerful national organization. The reality was a family business financed with the help of my father that was soon to deplete its cash reserves and line of credit. What I thought would be viable after 10 months took 18 months, and the feelings of sheer terror associated with failure lived with me each day during that eight-month period…

"Like most small business owners trying to create something new, you are a ‘Jack of all Trades’. I took off the monthly trial balance, wrote Mandate questions and articles often working through the night at the Toronto Star library, and then sold memberships every Friday to pay my own income. And on top of all this, commenting to the media on every public issue, when half the time I did not really know what I was talking about.

"Mary and I used to come over to the office at night. She vacuumed the rugs and I cleaned the washrooms. To save the cost of an envelope, the first Mandate ballot was designed to be something members could fold over and staple. How was I to know members would put close to ten staples on each ballot to ensure no one saw how they voted?

"This created the first big function at CFIB--taking the staples out of the ballots which were sprinkled over the floor of our offices. I can still hear the sound of staples being sucked up by Mary’s vacuum cleaner..."

Read the full story here.

"We went into the backwoods and paid the price for it"

Legendary retailer Harry Rosen answers readers' questions in this month's PROFIT Magazine. All part of the magazine's new "Ask the Legends" feature.

Here are two sample questions and answers that I liked.

You have locations across the country, but you provide service that one would only expect at a small, family-owned store. How do you still make each customer believe they are the most important one you have?
Catherine Proulx, Managing Partner, twistmarketing, Calgary

Harry: From the very first day, it has been our intention to befriend the customer. We try to enter into some sort of personal relationship with them, where we learn something about them and always use that information to help sell them the right things. As we expanded, I would go from store to store and work on the selling floor. It meant so much to the staff to see that the principles we espoused in training were in fact the practices of senior management. That's the glue: management walking the talk. We've also been able to select the kind of employee who enjoys living by this idea that there's nothing more important than the customer.

If you could change a business decision you made in the past, what would it be and why?
Lorne Merkur, PresidentAdwear + Promostuff, Toronto

Harry: When we were well positioned in the seven major markets in Canada, I felt that there wasn't any further growth available and decided that the place to start in the United States was Chicago. I found a location that was right on the Miracle Mile, with Saks Fifth Avenue in the other part of the building. Midstream, the developer sold it off to another developer, who wanted to renegotiate after I had already come to a verbal agreement with the previous developer. I walked away in spite and wound up going into Buffalo. If we'd gone ahead with Chicago, it would have altered the whole future of Harry Rosen in the U.S. Instead of that, we went into the backwoods and paid the price for it.

Click here for the rest.

101 Things To Do in Business Before You Die

Colorado-based executive coach and consultant Debra A. Benton offers a fabulous article on her website, 101 Things To Do in Business Before You Die.

Chances are you’ve already done many of them. And some of her recommendations are clearly filler. But there is much truth in a list like that that reminds us that we must always be stretching and learning and experiencing – or we are missing out and falling behind.

You can read her full article here.

Here are my 15 favourite things on her list:

3. Take a sabbatical.
5. Start a business.
6. Sell a business.
7. Fire a family member.
12. Take a psychological test.
13. Give a speech to 100 people.
14. Give a speech to 1000 people.
21. Reprimand an employee.
29. Contribute to or write a business book.
32. Have a mentor.
33. Be a mentor.
68. Take a course in some new technology.
69. Be on a company sports team.
92. Fly international first class.
101. Write a list of what you want to do in business before you die.

Leave a comment below to let us know what's on your list.

How To Name Your Company

Over on ThinkVitamin, implausibly young and bright Toronto entrepreneur Michael McDerment, founder of web-based invoice service FreshBooks.com, offers his tips for finding the right name for your product or business. He’s been down this road a few times already, so he has learned a lot and has some great advice.

“As the online marketplace becomes increasingly cluttered,” he says. “it is more important than ever to be memorable and to stand out. The name of your company is a critical factor in this.”

Here’s the gist of his process:

Five characteristics of a good name:

1. Easy to remember
2. Easy to spell and requires no explanation
3. Describes your business category
4. Describes your benefit
5. Describes your difference

Four more characteristics McDerment likes:

1. It has to be one or two syllables long - no more
2. Each syllable starts with a strong consonant (B, C, D, G, K, P, Q, T)
3. It’s fun to say (”…that just rolls off the tongue”)
4. You should be able to buy the dot-com version of your name.

How to get started:
1. Establish a ‘Naming Team.’ Expect the process to take eight to ten sessions of one hour each.
2. Get the tools you need (thesaurus, dictionary, spreadsheet, etc.)
3. Identify a ’secretary’ to keep everything organized.
4. Conduct structured brainstorming.

Best book to prepare with: “Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind ” by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Finding a name is one of the toughest jobs in business, because it's a relentlessly practical consideration that requires creativity, imagination, vision, customer insight, patience and dsicipline. Mike's post is must reading. For the full story, click here.

PS: FYI, I was on the team that renamed Small Business Magazine as PROFIT Magazine back in the 1990s. It took us forever, with lots of false starts and focus groups. Ironically, long after we switched to PROFIT, I ran across the original business plan for the magazine. I was astonished to discover that the name PROFIT was also the first choice of the team that founded the magazine a decade earlier.

Great Canadian Tradition

There’s a tempest brewing in the Greatest Canadian Entrepreneur contest at www. yoce.ca (see two posts below).

Since I posted the list of finalists four hours ago, I see the brothers McCain have shot up from 34% of the votes to 39%.

This continues a fine Canadian tradition of ballot-stuffing. A few years ago, the NDP mobilized members across Canada to elect former NDP leader Tommy Douglas (father of medicare, grandfather of Keifer Sutherland) as the CBC’s Greatest Canadian.

I wonder who’s doing the stuffing this time out.

Dave Keon - Toronto Maple Leafs Blast from the Past

This is a self-indulgent post that has nothing to do with entrepreneurship. But the 12-year-old inside me was delighted to see his childhood hero, Dave Keon, back in Toronto this past weekend.
The accompanying video provides more individual heroics than any six hours of Hockey Night in Canada today.

Greatest Canadian Entrepreneurs

As mentioned in a previous post, Roynat is continuing with its search for Canada's all-time best entrepreneur at www.yoce.ca (Year of the Canadian Entrepreneur, as you may know).

There are 20 finalists to choose from. I have copied and pasted the list below, along with their current vote totals.

Comments: looks like a pretty conventional list. Mostly household names, all men, and mainly from central and eastern Canada.

I think it's too bad that Ken Thomson is siphoning away votes from his more entrepreneurial father, Roy. I'm pleased to see a few historical figures on the list: Eaton, Bell and Bombardier. And speaking of historical figures, Max Ward is flying high. But it looks like Florenceville, New Brunswick is stuffing the ballot box for the McCains.
And what the heck is Conrad Black doing on this list?

Who do you think is the Greatest Canadian Entrepreneur…of all time?
Paul Desmarais Sr. - 3% vote
Ken Thomson - 3% vote
Frank Stronach - 3% vote
Max Ward - 26% vote
Ted Rogers - 2% vote
Joseph-Armand Bombardier - 1% vote
Alexander Graham Bell - 4% vote
Terry Matthews - 2% vote
Timothy Eaton - 1% vote
Frank Sobey - 1% vote
Jim Basillie and Mike Lazaridis - 3% vote
Izzy Asper - 2% vote
Samuel Bronfman - 1% vote
Galen Weston - 1% vote
Conrad Black - 1% vote
Ron Joyce - 2% vote
Roy Thomson - 1% vote
Harrison and Wallace McCain - 34% vote
Kenneth Colin (K.C.) Irving - 2% vote
Jim Pattison - 8% vote

Make your vote count by clicking here. (One name per email address.)

Best-Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes: Week 20

Continuing our series of powerful motivational quotes, personally selected to get your week off to an inspired start.

This week, the secret of smart management, from Peter Lewis, CEO of Ohio-based insurance company Progressive Corp:

“If you want to improve something, start measuring it." ­
Peter Lewis

There’s actually a rarely-quoted second sentence to this quotation that really spells out the message: "Then attach rewards to positive measurements, or penalties to negative ones, and you'll get results."

Best of the Net

PROFIT Magazine has a great cover-story package this month on “The Fabulous New Internet.”

Especially noteworthy is the package on “21 essential web tools”, which seems to have been written by the whole darn PROFIT staff. It covers all kinds of Web 2.0-type tools to help business owners connect, transact, network, manage information, and get lots more done faster and cheaper than ever before.

The topics range from Basecamp and Skype (which I only recently signed up for, and it’s a great backup phone system), to Backpack, SearchMash, PageFlakes, ClipClip and other two-syllable tools you may not know.

The story won’t be officially posted on the PROFIT site till next week, but becuz they still like me there, they are letting me link to it a week early. At last, a benefit for the people who read this blog!

Feb. 1 UPDATE: The story is now online in the regular place. You can view it here.

Secret Search Terms Revealed!

As you probably know, web analytics give webmasters access to the actual search terms that users have used to find their websites.

Once in a while it’s fun – and occasionally even instructive – to review the terms my visitors used to get here. Here's how a few of my 110 visitors in the past 24 hours found their way to this blog.

There are the obvious searches:
Canadian entrepreneur
trends in Canadian entrepreneurship
selling a canadian small business
angel investors in Toronto
pitch for profit
entrepreneur succession founder
successful Canadian ventures
motivational quotes entrepreneur
women- training entrepreneurship Toronto
top three canadian entrepreneurs
Canadian business billionaires

There are the offbeat search terms:
one line quiz questions on entrepreneurship
pitchers of dragons
saying goodbye to client
entrepreneur jokes
small quotes on teeth
18" rims, toronto
equinox magazine ceased publication
buy "Artisan Bakery" software
emsdale trout

And then there's the just plain mean:
Doug Hall arrogant
employees do not like jim estill
(Just to reassure you, I never said anything of the kind about either gentleman.)

And then there was this one:
rick spence the number one problem in entrepreneurship

Hail the Internet, fount of all wisdom.

Four words I never thought you'd read in this blog: Top 10 Fashion Tips

Larry Rosen, CEO of men’s fashion retailer Harry Rosen Inc., spoke last November to members of the Upper Canada (!) chapter of CAFÉ, the Canadian Association of Family Enterprise.

He offered 10 Fashion Tips for sartorially challenged males, which is most of us, I suppose. Try them on for size:

1. You can only under dress, not over dress.
2. Men in suits look powerful, authoritative and sexy.
3. Successful people get their shoes shined-often.
4. Dress for who you want to be and the position you want in life.
5. If there is something in your closet that you haven’t worn in a year, it’s trying to tell you something. Give it to Charity.
6. God is in the details (architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)
7. (a) the leather colour of your belt should match that of your shoes
(b) the colour of your socks should match that of your pants.
8. Eyeglass frames that are ten years old look ten years old.
9. More expensive clothing should look and feel better. If it doesn’t, don’t spend the extra money.
10. Try something new. Everyone can benefit from getting out of their rut and dressing more eclectically.

Click here to visit the website of CAFÉ Upper Canada.

Make the job fit your employee

Some common sense from Toronto career coach Stephen Freidman in yesterday’s Financial Post.

He wonders why, when people discuss the "fit" between employee and employer, the focus is always on how well the employee fit into the organization, rather than the other way ’round.

“If organizations want to win the war for talent and attract the best and the brightest, it makes more sense for them also to consider how well the organization fits with its employees.”

At a time when so many companies are crying out for new talent, he says employers need to be more innovative about what it takes to attract and retain good people.

For instance, employers must be prepared to accommodate employees who have interests and responsibilities outside of work. He cites a new employee who was unable to commit to five days a week – and instead rejuvenated the position by working only three days a week. Sadly, the company's president insisted on finding a full-timer, and let the prized part-timer walk away.

Freidman warns that there are many dedicated part-timers in today’s workforce, especially among those aged 25 to 35, who consider their "career" to include work plus family, friends, interests, etc. “This way of looking at work and careers is becoming the norm,” he says.

The moral: Stay loose. Be flexible. Don't be blinded by conventions – such as the 40-hour work week – that were created for a different time and a less creative world.

You can check out the original article here.

Dealing with Doubt

U.S. business consultant Tony Alessandra wrote an article recently on self-confidence, and how his father bred it in young Tony at an early age by sending him out to fight a schoolyard bully. “Confidence in yourself gets built up gradually, one success at a time,” he writes.

I certainly agree that self-confidence is essential in business (if you don't have it, you’ll have to fake it). It’s confidence that makes you go out and sell to people who have never heard of you, and to make that 10th call of the day when the first nine were all rejections.

Self-confidence is all about knowing that you can deal with just about anything the world can throw at you. And about making other people believe that about you, too.

Here's Tony’s recipe for developing confidence:

“Take an inventory of the major accomplishments you've achieved over the past few years. Then remind yourself of the minor ones too. What about the computer course you completed? Have you built anything that's still standing?“

“Don't be modest. Tell the truth about how hard you worked, what sacrifices you've made. If you can't think of any, then begin by congratulating yourself for living as long as you have. Sheer survival is an accomplishment these days! What's unique about you? What skills do you bring to an organization or project that you can count on?”

In my experience, the next step is to write these stories down. Make a habit of referring to them often. Be ready to use these success stories whenever people doubt your ability to accomplish what you say you can.

The very act of dealing with doubt can give you the self-confidence you need.

Learn more about Tony at www.alessandra.com

Do family businesses really run like this?

North Carolina family-business consultant James Lea obviously had something to get out of his system. In a recent column I found at OfficeDepot.com, he lists several ways that family business clients dodge, ignore and otherwise run away from key issues.

Read his opening paragraph carefully:
“One of the ways I assist family owned companies is by helping them to identify, understand and resolve issues that get in the way of sound business decision making. And one of the best ways to do that is to talk through those issues in order to reach a conclusion and get on with business, something that a lot of families are pretty good at not doing.”

Funny stuff. Here’s an example:
Lea says some families in business resist dealing with matters of substance is by "preserving ancient ruins." Here’s how that works. (JL is Lea, trying to settle a family dispute…)

JL: "I have the feeling there's a background issue that's keeping us from reaching closure here. Is there some tension between you two sisters that we should deal with?"
Martha: "No. Absolutely not. Nothing."
Susan (glancing at Martha): "Well, there was that little falling out in 1983 over which one of us would inherit Mother's ring. Now that you mention it, we've had a hard time agreeing on anything since then."
Martha: "That was so long ago I don't remember a thing about it, so we don't need to bring it up now. But I'm still not willing to sign that buy-sell agreement with you. And by the way, it wasn't a ring, it was an opal pendant with eight diamond chips on an Italian 18-carat gold necklace."

You can read the whole article here.
For those who want more, that page also links to other recent articles by Lea.

Pitching for Fun and Profit

PROFIT Magazine’s Pitch4Profit contest has attracted a surprising number of entries. Most are painful to sit through, but that’s Web video for you. It’s still fun to hear about (and see) all these new business ideas and products.

Check out the pitches for less than $1 million here.
You’ll find the folks looking for more than a million here.

And if you can't wait to make your own pitch, you can get your 90-second elevator speech put on tape following the Toronto Venture Group meeting Wednesday morning (Feb. 14).

Special guest at the meeting is Scott Paterson, the former Yorkton Securities superstar who has reinvented himself as CEO of JumpTV (speaking of Web video), which may be the world's leading internet ethnic television broadcaster with 254 channel partnerships and subscribers in 90 countries.
(It’s a bit of a coming-out party for Paterson, who has been pretty quiet since his 2001 agreement with the Ontario Securities Commission to settle allegations that he acted “contrary to the public interest” in helping convince Yorkton clients to buy into a lot of sketchy, tech-related IPOs prior to the 2000 market meltdown.)

Click here for the TVG homepage.

Back to the pitches: Once you've viewed the videos at Pitch4PROFIT, don't forget to leave a comment or vote for your favourites.
If you do make a pitch, come back and let us know. Feel free to ask the whole community at Canadian Entrepreneur to vote for you!

Note: The entry deadline is Feb. 15!

Best-Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes: Week 19

Continuing our series of powerful motivational quotes personally selected to get your week off to a flying start.

This week, the secret advantage of small business:

"One of the unique things we small companies have over the big guys is the ability to establish personal relationships. Big companies really can't do that. You read about effective organizations, learning organizations, lean and mean organizations, but small companies can be virtuous. We as small companies can have virtue because we as small companies are basically the embodiment of one or two people, and people can have virtue, while organizations really can't."

-- Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Company, maker of Sam Adams beer.

Who is... the Greatest Canadian Entrepreneur?

Nominations close Feb. 9 to name Canada's Greatest Entrepreneur of All Time, as part of the festivities around the Year of the Canadian Entrepreneur (see previous post).
I have no idea why they're in such a hurry, but you can cast your vote by clicking here.

You can vote once a day. I voted for Franz Strohsack today. Tomorrow I'll likely vote for someone else.

Special Offer if you're looking for a speaker: The Future of Entrepreneurship

I am developing an exciting new presentation, suitable as a luncheon or keynote speech for entrepreneurial organizations, business associations and service clubs.

It’s called The Future of Entrepreneurship, and it’s based on five years of conversations, interviews, trends and original study.

This presentation explores the reasons that entrepreneurship has exploded in this country, and offers 10 reasons why this revolution will not only continue, but grow. Then it looks at the flipside: the challenges facing Canadian entrepreneurs, and why they must become stronger to seize the opportunities of today and tomorrow.
Finally, it looks at innovative strategies developed by today’s most successful Canadian entrepreneurs to survive and win in today’s global, get-tough markets.

It’s everything but the kitchen sink (although a kitchen sink does make an appearance) in 45 minutes.

I’m eager to road-test this speech and get some reaction from live audiences. If you'd like to be among the first to hear this original, informative and empowering presentation, drop me a line.

The first five organizations to book me will get 75% off my usual speaking fee.
For more information, please e-mail Rick (at) rickspence.ca

Other workshop and keynote topics available at regular prices. Feel free to contact me for information:

Secrets of Entrepreneurial Success
20 business-building strategies in 40 minutes
The Four Communication Gaps in Business
Writing for Results
Breakthrough Questions
Get the Publicity you Deserve: PR for CEOs
Why Businesses Fail

Previous testimonials for Rick Spence:
“You gave us a delightful, insightful talk and I want you to know that I carry your list of 10 business success factors in my purse like a portable mantra. I have had very positive comments from our members... It was a pleasure to be with you.”

“Thank you for speaking at our recent conference. Your generosity, preparation and participation were all import to the success of the event. Your event was of extreme interest to our members, and very important to the organization.”

“The audience thoroughly enjoyed your presentation. You were able to set the stage for the balance of the Symposium.”

Straw homes, bongo drums, horror movies and climate change (Long post, but you can quit any time)

You can build businesses on trends – if you can tell a fad from a trend.
A fad, of course, is when one person you know is doing something new or different: e.g., having their baby at home, trekking to Nepal, building a barn. A trend is when you know two people doing it.

Browsing through the “Class Notes” of the latest issue of York University's alumni magazine, I discovered numerous offbeat careers and lifestyle changes that reflect dozens of trends and changes in society.

So here’s a list of interesting choices some people are making these days. Which do you think offer the best business opportunities?

Class of 1970: A female grad is building a straw-bale home.

1978: A musician has just released a new DVD, The Art of Bongo Drumming.

1981: A PhD is teaching archival sciences. A BA grad working for a disaster-services organization also runs a private psychotherapy practice. A couple just bought a Kumon Math and Reading Centre franchise.

1982: A grad is working on South Africa’s National Transportation Master Plan, made more challenging due to South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup in 2010.

1988: One grad is a “Six Sigma Black Belt” with PricewaterhouseCoopers. An MBA grad works for a Texas software company from his home in Thornhill, Ont.

1989: An MBA grad has returned to the west coast to “resume retirement” after taking a break to work on a two-year engineering contract in Ontario.

1992: One grad started her own concierge business in Toronto. Another grad has a job in dispute management for the Canada Revenue Agency. Another grad exchanged vows with his life partner in the Himalayas.

1995: A grad left teaching to go into housing construction.

1996: One grad reported she is working “in a job she enjoys.”

1997: A BA grad has become director of a Centre for Conflict Resolution Studies at UPEI.

1998: A science grad is working as a contaminants-surveillance biologist for the Great Lakes. Two guys named Steven just got engaged. A self-described “artist with disabilities” has just released her third CD.

1999: A BA grad is a technical writer in Australia.

2002: An honours business grad is running several used-car dealerships in Indonesia.

2003: A BA grad is working in marketing for a sci-fi and horror film festival. A science grad is managing Telus’s wholesale U.S. marketing strategy.

2005: A law grad is now a policy analyst for the climate change division of DFAIT in Ottawa.

What’s it all mean? As mass markets fragment, a list like this demonstrates that there are more emerging market niches and new opportunities than any of us can really imagine.

My latest column in the National Post

My new column in the “Entrepreneur” section of today’s Financial Post is online at the Post’s website today (and still available on newsstands if you hurry).

It tells the story of Shaheel Hooda, a 35-year-old entrepreneur running CodeBaby, an exciting software company in Edmonton that makes 3-d “virtual agents” for customer service portions of websites. The company was founded to license animation software from a local games developer, BioWare, but since then it has blazed its own trail.

The story was supposed to be a profile, but it developed a life of its own as Shaheel described to me some of the company’s mistakes, decisions and life lessons. And so it became a step-by-step guide to one entrepreneur’s education in business (made all the more interesting by the fact he already has a degree from Harvard).

You can read the story here.

Here’s the six lessons learned, for those who have no time to read newspapers:

1. Talk to customers. When Hooda arrived at Code Baby as chief executive in 2002, the company was still in stealth mode. "They had multiple concepts of what they wanted to do."
   
2. Simplicity rules. Code- Baby presumed that Bio Ware's artificial intelligence technology would give its clients the most powerful "virtual agents" in the business. Real life, however, indicated clients wanted virtual agents to just follow the scripts they were given (like live call-centre employees).
   
3. Follow the money. CodeBaby learned while most companies support employee training, they don't like to spend as much money on it as they do on other things.
   
4. Avoid exclusives. As much as the company loves blue-chip clients like RBC, it offers customers just six months' exclusivity with its technology before it will talk to their rivals.
   
5. Make things easy for your customers. Code Baby has moved away from proprietary processes to open-source tools like Flash to ensure customers get the most from its products. Tech-savvy companies can walk away with a licence to the technology and develop their own scripts and animations in-house.
   
6. Leverage the biggest price-insensitive market you can find.

Entrepreneurship Quote of the Week, part 18

Continuing our series of powerful motivational quotes personally selected to start your week on an inspiring note.

This week, we hear from a contemporary Canadian entrepreneur who has figured out the difficult business of delegating. It’s a management manifesto in miniature:

“I expect people to work hard and take charge in their areas, but to have the judgement to be able to tell me when they can't handle a situation."

Nick Laperle, president of Sonomax Hearing Healthcare Inc. of Montreal, quoted by Libby Znaimer in the Financial Post, January 27, 2007

Your starter guide to Social Media

Sean Moffitt of BuzzCanuck is probly be Canada’s top expert on word-of-mouth marketing – which in these days of wikis and blogs and YouTube and social media can be more powerful than ever.
“Unfortunately,” says Sean, “word of mouth just doesn't happen, and like most great things in life, it starts with a first courageous step into the unknown.”
Fortunately, he has offered 29 links to get you started. I hope he doesn't mind sharing them with you here.
Visit http://buzzcanuck.typepad.com/ for much, much more.

Great introductions to word-of-mouth marketing:
- How To Sell In Word of Mouth Campaigns to Your Boss
- The 10 Steps to Building Your Corporate Podcast
- An Entry Level Guide to Vlogging
- How to Visit Second Life
- How to Be Blogged About
- How Bloggers Should Approach Companies
- How Companies Should Approach Bloggers
- Setting Up in My Space
- Posting on YouTube
- Mastering Word of Mouth Conversations
- Setting Up a Photo Blog
- How to Get Traffic To Your PhotoBlog
- How To Generate Buzz
- How to Use Linked In
- Conducting an SMS Campaign
- Nailing the Tricks to Viral Advertising
- Researching Word of Mouth
- Measuring Word of Mouth
- Keeping it Ethical
- How to Look At Social Media from 3 Corporate Angles
- Steps to Building Brand Communities
- Mastering The Ultimate Question You Should Be Asking
- BuIlding Great Brand Experiences
- Setting Up Corporate Blogging Guidelines
- Building Your Social Media Optimization
- How to build Consumer Generated Media
- How to Harness Happy Employee Word of Mouth
- How to Start a Wiki

Visit Sean’s website http://www.agentwildfire.com/

The New Outlook for Exports

If you're interested in the latest outlook for specific geographical markets, commodities, or selected industrial sectors, look no further.

Export Development Canada's newly revised Global Export Forecast has everything you want to know, from forecasts for advanced technology markets to the outlook for canola prices.
And most of it is surprisingly readable.

Here's the bottom-line forecast, for those with no time to click on the above link:
"For 2007, we now expect a better export performance for agri-food, industrial metals, high-tech goods and communications equipment. Export volumes (where price effects are netted out) are also expected to come in a little stronger in 2007. On the downside, the export outlook for energy, chemicals, fertilizers, forestry, aircraft and services have deteriorated."

The remarkable coup of Teresa Cascioli

The big news today is Labatt’s $200-million bid for Hamilton-based Lakeport Brewing. It’s one of Ontario’s biggest entrepreneurial success stories.

Teresa Cascioli was brought in by a group of Hamilton investors to revive a bankrupt brewery. She brought it back to life by producing branded alcoholic drinks (I swore not to tell about Mike’s Hard Lemonade) for other companies, as well as producing a line of largely generic beers.
Then in her backyard one day, she came up with the concept of “24 for $24” – the idea of owning the value-priced beer market. With that single, crystal-clear marketing message, she built Lakeport into Ontario's third-largest brewery, with 11% of the market.

And now, according to the Globe & Mail, she stands to make $40 million out of the deal. That’s because she rolled up her sleeves and sacrificed salary for equity – shopping the supermarket specials and drawing down her savings (once earmarked for law school) because she believed so strongly in Lakeport’s future.

Congrats to Teresa, for demonstrating the incredible value of one good idea – and executing so well and so courageously.

Strategic Note: Under Cascioli, Lakeport became Ontario’s third-largest brewer. "This looks quite a bit like an attempt to take out a low-cost competitor," one investment analyst told the Globe in a burst of stunning clarity.

Best Advice: Cascioli was the closing keynote speaker at last year’s Small Business Big Thinking Conference in Toronto, sponsored by Visa Canada. Here are five management lessons she shared with the audience:

• Be passionate and work hard.
• Listen to your employees. Their insights can give you a competitive advantage.
• Partner well. Surround yourself with good advisors (lawyers, bankers, accountants), and
don’t nickel-and-dime them.
• When you think you've done well, forget it. Don't rest on your laurels or do things just to
win awards.
• Whenever you're in front of a microphone, sell, sell, sell!

(For more on Cascioli's Visa presentation, or other presentations from the conference, click here.)

Disclosure: I helped plan the conference last year, and am doing so again in 2007.

YokeSmoke's resource list of entrepreneurial sites

One more gala birthday post.

Here's a list of entrepreneurial blogs and websites dug up by YokeSmoke, a blog for Web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

If you have a minute, why not check some out? In the spirit of Web 2.0 community, you could even leave a comment if you find anything of value on any of these sites.

Happy Surfing! Canadian entrepreneurs will thank you.

Forums
Site Point
Digital Point
Young Go Getter
Young Entrepreneur Forums
WebmasterWorld
SitePoint
SEO Chat
TalkSEO Forums
TheWarriorForum - Online Marketing
WebHostingTalk
Webmaster-Talk

Blogs
Entrepreneur’s Journey
Trizoko Business Journal
Guy Kawasaki’s Blog
Ben Casnocha’s Blog
Josiah MacKenzie’s Blog
Problogger - Darren Rowse
On Startups
Startup Nation
Startup Guide
Flush the Toilet
Young Money Blog
Networking Blogger
Just a Week
New Age Entrepreneur
MBA Xploit
The Entrepreneurial Endeavor
Trep Network
Entrepreneur in the Making
Scott Taylor’s Blog
Mind Petals
Dorm Room Biz
Blogtrepreneur.com
EntrepreneursBlog.eu
Driven Entrepreneur
ePublishing Daily
Results Driven Solutions
PA Services
Free Internet Marketing Resources
Selling to Small Business
Canadian Entrepreneur
Jack Yoest
Emmanuel’s “Business Traveller”
Selling it Online
Wil Schroter
Customer Experience Strategy
Local Internet Marketing
Small Business Trends
Virtual Assistant - THE Blog
CoolBusinessIdeas.com
Duct Tape Marketing
Online Marketing Resource Blog
Ben Reich
R.E.A.L. Marketing
Burts osCommerce & More Blog
Blog SEO
Internet Marketing Blog Directory
The Marketing Tools Review
Professional Freelancer
Steven Cardinale
Java Entrepreneur
WorkHappy
To-Done
Venturus
Craig McGinty
Marketing Headhunter.com
Wise & Young: The Blog
The Millionaire Blog
BarryBlog - Barry Moltz
Business Opportunities Weblog - Dane Carlson
HomeOfficeVoice - Martin Neumann
PlusOne - Matt E
SavvySolo - Michael Pollock
Apollyon - Alborz Fallah
The Marketer’s Podcast - Alan & Andrew
A crash course in entrepreneurship - Chris Pund
Thinking Home Business - Des Walsh
Young Entrepreneur Journey
Retire Young And Wealthy
Affiliate Moneymaking
Dave Ryan’s Internet Marketing Blog
Attract More Customers
Marketing Defined Blog
Marketing Comet
Spiritual Marketing
IF from PSFK
PSFK
Trigger
KeyLiberty Marketing
Franco’s e-commerce World
The Bar Project Project
Higher Profits
The Internet Cashflow Guy
Reid Morrow
Rohailrizvi

Magazines
Entrepreneur Magazine - [ Entrepreneur.com ]
Fast Company Magazine - [ FastCompany.com ]
Inc. Magazine - [ Inc.com ]
Business 2.0 Magazine - [ Business 2.0 Site ]
Wired Magazine - [ Wired.com ]
Harvard Business Review
Home Business Magazine
Business Resource Center
BusinessWeek Small Business
Home Business Journal
Home Business Magazine
Minority Business Entrepreneur (MBE)
PROFITguide
Joshua Feinberg’s Small Biz Tech Talk
EasilyWealthy.com
Fortune Small Business
Biztalk
Work-At-Home Success
ZDNet Small Business Advisor
Home Business Report
Upsize Magazine
Smart Business Network Online
Entrepreneur’s Home Office Magazine
Edward Lowe PeerSpectives
CanadaOne Magazine

Articles, & News Sites
Entrepreneur America - Rob Ryan
The Secret to Successful Startups
Where are all the Angel Investors?
The Notion of Entrepreneurship: Historical and Emerging Issues
The Entrepreneur’s Help Page
Free Legal Forms
Entrepreneur Career Guide
Minority Business Entrepreneur Magazine

Small Business Resource Sites
Small Business Adminstration (SBA)
Business.gov
SCORE
eVenturing.org
Idea Cafe
Business Know How
Yahoo Small Business
Working Solo
Power Home Business
Guru.com
eLance.com
Rentacoder.com

Finance
22 Dollars
Personal Money Tips
Quicken Small Business
The Money Spot
The Million Dollar Portfolio
Expletus Blogger
Financial Freedom 4 All
The Dividend Guy
Very Personal Finance
Byrne’s Marketview
MyMoneyBlog

Venture Capitalists
William Tai, Charles River Ventures
Devin Thorpe, Thorpe Capital Group
Ari Newman, Newman Venture Advisors
Tim Keane, Kohler Center at Marquette University
Stu Phillips, Ridgelift Ventures
Robert Goldberg, Ridgelift Ventures
Stewart Alsop, Alsop Louie Partners
Sophie Forest, Mark Skapinker, Tony Davis, Brightspark Ventures
Kara Nortman, Battery Ventures
Leland Cheung, Masthead Venture Partners

Personal Growth
Can You Become Good At Everything?
StevePavlina.com
Success Begins Today

Internet & Technology
Web Teacher - Resources for teaching web design
Skype Journal

Entrepreneur Podcasts
500 Entrepreneur Podcasts on Loomia
Entrepreneur Podcasts on Odeo
Entrepreneur Podcasts on Podomatic
Venture Voice
Venture Week
IT Conversations
American Copywriter
Revision 3
WebMaster Radio
PodTech
The Marketer’s Podcast
SavvySoloCAST

Happy Birthday, Two-Year-Old

It’s Feb. 1, and that means this very blog is two years old today.

Since then we’ve had 425 posts and more than 17,000 visitors. Alexa.com ranks this as the 910,087th-most popular site on the Internet. I thank you for your support.
As a birthday present to you, I have renovated the “Most Popular Posts” section in the right-hand column. You can now catch up on the best posts of the past two years with a single click. New entries range from “Are you ready for recession?" to Rick’s advice for better blogging and more powerful writing.

What’s the best part of blogging? Having a reason to sort your thoughts out on paper. Providing people with helpful information that can make a difference in their lives. And being part of a global dialogue. The accompanying map shows the location of the last 100 people to visit this site – from Indonesia and Australia to Iceland and Nizhni Novogrod.
Skol!

New Small Business Statistics

How many Canadian Entrepreneurs are there, anyhow? (about 2.3 million)

Who creates more jobs, small biz or big biz? (pretty much a tie – as of the latest stats, 48% [second quarter of 2006])

How much does small business contribute to Canada’s GDP? (about 22% as of 2005, down from 27% 10 years earlier. The decline is probably to be expected, given the phenomenal growth of big business and mergers & acquisitions in this country - due to the fact that so much more risk capital is available to big businesses than to small ones).

How many small businesses use e-commerce? (about 33% have websites, but only 6% actually sell online).

All this data and much, much more is available from Industry Canada’s “Key Small Business Statistics” report, newly updated for January, 2007. Should be good for winning a few bar bets.

For more information on these and many other trends, see the full report online .
Or download the PDF version here.

Maxime Bernier and the "secret sauce" of entrepreneurship

I just ran across this ridiculous speech from Industry Minister Maxime Bernier. Speaking in Saskatoon last September, he proved that he (or his speechwriter) doesn't really understand entrepreneurship.

I had no problem with this part:

"The first thing you should know about me is that I am from the Beauce, the region along the Chaudière River south of Québec. The Beauce is unique in Quebec — it is well known as the most entrepreneurial region of the province…. This is where I learned the values that go with entrepreneurship: individual freedom, integrity, responsibility and self-reliance. When I am defending economic freedom and entrepreneurship, I am defending what to me are “les valeurs beauceronnes” — the values of my native Beauce.”

The Beauce is a beautiful, remote region, just north of Maine’s moose country. Everything he says about the entrepreneurial spirit of the region is true. It’s great to have an industry minister (even a lawyer who used to work in insurance) who understands what innovation is all about:

"I grew up believing that when we are free to create and to innovate, and to reap the benefit of our work, all human beings will tend to exhibit some quality of entrepreneurship. And by embracing these ideals we will make the world better, for ourselves and for everybody else at the same time."

But this is going too far:

"You can be an entrepreneur in your own field, since there is always something to improve whatever we do. A hairdresser who develops an ability to match heads with new hairstyles is an entrepreneur. An industrial worker who finds a faster way to assemble a machine is an entrepreneur. A teacher who uses games to keep his students interested in mathematics is an entrepreneur.
"All these people create something of a greater value. They do it not only because they can earn more money. They do it because it makes their jobs more interesting, because it gives meaning to their lives, because they believe that they can make a difference."

This is hogwash. The minister here is talking about innovation, not entrepreneurship. I feel strongly about this, because if we are to truly appreciate and encourage entrepreneurship in Canada, we need a precise understanding of what it is.

Entrepreneurship is not just innovation. The essence of entrepreneurship is not producing something new – it is taking a risk to work towards a goal that may provide a reward. It is the belief that the goal is more than worth the risk.

Without risk there is no entrepreneurship. When a teacher turns a hard subject into a game, that is good teaching - and it may be innovation. But it is not entrepreneurship, because there is no evident risk. There is no attempt to pursue that innovation to a larger end. There is no conception of the reward for leveraging that game, that lesson, to help other students and teachers in the world.

When that teacher takes a risk and remodels the game into a product, and spends time and money seeking out distributors and retailers, that is when innovation becomes entrepreneurship.

I don't mean to be all haughty about it. But entrepreneurship is a precious thing, a fragile sense of confidence that must be continually reinforced and supported. If our government, our culture and our institutions don't support risk-taking as the fundamental basis of entrepreneurship, they're off course before they've begun.

A new low in customer service

Here’s today's new low in customer service. I called a communications company in the States today and got this message:

“You have reached the 20th floor of (company name). If you must leave a message, please do so at the tone.”

This is a media company that doesn't hesitate to stuff its opinions down its customers’ throats. But it would rather not hear back from any of them.

Can such arrogance last in today's "you-first" digital-media culture?

Best-Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes: Week 17

Continuing our series of powerful motivational quotes personally selected to get your week off to an inspiring start.

This week: how to keep a customer.

“Get to know your clients. Go where they are. Try to meet with them as often as you can without making a pest of yourself. Shake their hands and look them in the eye, and always follow through with what you say.”

- Anonymous Canadian entrepreneur, from the June 1999 issue of PROFIT Magazine

This was from a story called “The Best Startup Advice You’ll Ever Get” – in which we quoted every single entrepreneur on the PROFIT 100 list of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies. Sure, some were better than others, and there was some duplication, but every single piece of advice they offered was a gem.

PROFIT’s Kim Shiffman compiled a similar article in June 2006, but I just realized it’s not online. I’ll email them and suggest they post it for all to see.

Four sales lessons from 2006

Warning: Ally Motz, CEO of management-services provider SiriusDecisions Canada, uses a lot of big words. But he’s done some serious thinking about the latest trends in sales and marketing.

In an article in the latest issue of SalesExchange, published by the Canadian Professional Sales Association, he shares four key lessons his firm learned last year, and looks at how these findings could shake out in 2007. Here's my edited version.

“Productivity” is now the in word. Since the dawn of time, sales productivity has meant one word – revenue. Now that’s changing.

Motz defines sales productivity as the measure of time and effort expended by salespeople to create the high-quality, customer-relevant interactions required to advance and eventually close an opportunity. Organizations that track salespeople’s ability to be efficient and effective with these interactions, and then consistently help them to improve, will have many options to drive better performance.

Shared metrics are becoming all the rage. More b-to-b organizations are creating funnels that depict the end-to-end demand process, and measuring the ability of sales and marketing to convert at five key junctures: response, marketing-qualified lead, sales-accepted lead, sales-qualified lead and closed business.

Next-generation funnels must consider the reputation activities that are seeding demand programs at the top of the funnel, building out the link between what Motz calls reputation and demand creation.

The technology is beginning to catch up to aspirations. Disappointed by traditional technologies such as CRM and SFA, SiriusDecisions’ clients have moved forward in three distinct areas: communications measurement, marketing platforms and customized sales communications.

Still, many organizations continue to hope that the implementation of these technologies will solve their sales and marketing-integration issues – only to find that their functionality is limited due to a lack of shared vision and co--operation from either sales or marketing.

Operations isn’t just for number-crunchers any more. Progressive sales organizations have shifted the focus of sales operations to that of sales effectiveness, including the oversight of tasks such as sales training and development, sales programs (centralized briefings, demos, proposals), and sales technologies (CRM, SFA, etc.).

On the marketing side, operations is being used to standardize processes to facilitate successful marketing decentralization, create joint metrics with sales and drive synergies in programs and communications between product lines. Organizations that continue to view operations as only an administrative function will find that these other tasks will remain unstructured and underused, forcing reps and marketers alike to solve their own problems ad-hoc.

See the full article here.

Pitch for Profit!

If you think your business could benefit from a dose of venture capital, but don't know whom to pitch – PROFIT Magazine has a contest for you!

“Pitch 4 Profit” is a Web-based contest in which you record a 90–second pitch for funds, and upload it to PROFIT's website. The contestants with the most compelling presentations (as determined by the judges and the public) will win a chance to present in front of a real audience of potential investors:

* The top three winning companies that are trying to raise less than $1 million will receive a chance to audition for the second season of Dragons’ Den, the CBC-TV show that puts real entrepreneurs in front of self-made millionaires looking for angel-investment opportunities;

* Three companies looking for $1 million or more will win a chance to pitch in front of the assembled venture capitalists at the Canadian Venture Forum, held March 4-6 in Toronto.

Entries will be judged by a three-man investment panel consisting of VC consultant Sean Wise, Rick Segal of JL Albright Venture Partners, and Salim Teja, vice-president of Brightspark Ventures.

While all three are best known for their tech expertise, I am assured that they will consider all entries, including the “boardgames and salad dressing” types of ventures that were so prevalent this season on Dragons’ Den.

So go for it! For more information, to read up on the guidelines for a perfect pitch (remember: Pain Statement + Value Proposition = Elevator Pitch), or to submit your video, click here.

Click here too to watch (and vote on) other people’s video pitches. (They should start coming in soon.)

But move fast: Contest closes Feb. 15, and public voting closes Feb. 19!

This is what marketing is all about

Kodak - Winds of Change

This is a brilliant video from YouTube. It's a 3-minute Kodak commercial produced for internal use that proved so popular they've released it publicly.
Click the screen once or twice to see what could be the best Web 2.0 marketing move of the year.
It takes what was great about Kodak, shakes it up and down, admits the company's faults, and then throws down the gauntlet for the future. Masterful stuff.

(Turn your volume down. The announcer may get a little excited. )
"They've got things in their research labs that will make biometrics look like a Happy Meal toy!"

Surviving the minefield of venture capital

My latest (i.e., my second) Financial Post column is up on the Post’s website. To learn about some of the deadliest landmines facing entrepreneurs who think they want to attract venture-capital investment, click here.

I've always admired the little engraved headshots used to decorate the columns of various writers at the Financial Post – so I am delighted to now have one of my own. I think it’s kinda cute.

Best-Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes: Week 16

Continuing our series of powerful motivational quotes personally selected to get your week off to an inspiring start.

For all the marketers in the house:

"If people around you will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness, for in truth you are to blame.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You can't go blaming the market for not cozying up to your product. Communication is YOUR job.

Don't Bore Your Team: The Leadership Wisdom of Craig MacTavish

It’s a shame more Canadians don't get to read Alberta Venture magazine*. AV provides blanket coverage of business (big and small) in Canada’s fastest-growing province, with wit and style.

And sometime it’s got great information anyone can benefit from.

The November issue, for instance, offered an incisive great interview with Craig MacTavish, the former journeyman hockey player who emerged as a creative and winning coach last spring when he led his Edmonton Oilers to the Stanley Cup finals.

“Craig’s List” of top ten leadership tips should be required reading for anyone in business:

1. Treat players equally. Put no one on a pedestal above the others.
2. Be tolerant of mistakes; otherwise players won’t take necessary risks.
3. Don’t expect players to perform beyond their capability.
4. Be patient with players’ shortcomings.
5. Let players know that you care about them as human beings.
6. Give support to a player in a slump.
7. Involve players in your thoughts and beliefs.
8. Don’t bore your players with too-long and poorly prepared meetings.
9. Present your game plan in a way that players get confident that your ideas are solid.
10. Instill in your team a belief in success.

You can read the full article here.

No teeth, no glory

A while back I was asked to participate in a “graduation day” ceremony for prospective entrepreneurs who had just finished business startup training through the Toronto Business Development Centre.

The grads presented their business plans to a panel consisting of their instructors and me.

It was sort of like Dragons’ Den, the TV show pitting investors against entrepreneurs. Except the mood here was one of graduation-day celebration, rather than the merciless interrogation that the pitchers on Dragons’ Den went through.

Which of course left me in a quandary. When the “students” presented what I thought was faulty logic, or were missing some key connections, what was my role? To keep the mood light and say, “good job,” or go all serious on them? *

My recent column in PROFIT Magazine tells the whole story. Click here.

Excerpt, for those too busy to click:

“I've argued before that marketing is the glass jaw of Canadian entrepreneurs. But there is no excuse for someone coming out of a business startup program not to put marketing front and centre. I thought Google's targeted AdSense messages (online ads you pay for only when someone clicks through to your website) would be perfect for one of these businesses, but the entrepreneurs had never even heard of them.

"And the basic idea of guerrilla marketing — saving your money by piggybacking on other people's contacts and sales efforts — seemed to be a concept they hadn't heard before.”

(Last chance: click here for the full article.)

* You can probably guess how I resolved the dilemma. I feel that sending entrepreneurs out into the world without testing their knowledge and pushing them to the limit is insane. The harder you push them, the more they will be thankful for it later, when the world is pushing back harder than they ever expected.

"Gasoline you pour on a smouldering flame"

I had a great chat last week with Suzie Dingwall Williams, a lawyer and former venture capitalist now with Venutre Law in Toronto. She works with growth-oriented entrepreneurs to help their businesses make the right decisions, especially about venture capital.

She agreed with me that too many companies think they deserve venture capital money when they don't. VC money, after all, has traditionally been reserved for a very tiny group of growth-oriented companies with huge (usually worldwide) potential and defensible niches.

“A true VC kind of risk investment has such a disruptive business model or technology that there’s no real model for it yet,” says Suzy. “Nobody is going to back it unless they're willing to risk all their [investment] for a 1,000% return.”

“VC money is gasoline you pour on a smouldering flame.”

Canadian entrepreneurs with more modest growth ambitions often wonder why they can't get venture capital. Here’s your answer: unless you're a smoldering flame waiting to be sparked into a forest fire, you just ain’t their type.

The same conundrum, of course, afflicted the CBC’s Dragons' Den last fall. The entrepreneurs promoting their businesses thought they were pitching a small business investment opportunity.

Nobody told them that the investors (the dragons) were looking to invest in big businesses that are just temporarily small.

You can read more about Suzie in my Financial Post column next week. Or check out her blog here.

Best-Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes: Week 15

Continuing our series of powerful motivational quotes personally selected to get your week off to an inspiring start.

"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."
~John Albert Michener

My take: Experience tells me there is a very thin line between failure and business success. Even the top salespeople will tell you that customers tend to buy on the seventh call.

Our instant-win, short-attention-span society doesn't do much to promote third and fourth tries. But that’s where success breeds best.

Advantage: Small Business

I just noticed a great post by Toronto venture capitalist Rick Segal on his Post-Money Valuation blog last month that aptly demonstrates just why small business beats big business in the long run.

I’ll do my best to summarize the post, entitled Expenses - Doing Right vs. "The Policy."

Segal says a CFO recently asked him to review the expense-reimbursement section of his new employee handbook. While it was well written and detailed, Segal says it was also much too formal and corporate.

He suggested scrapping the whole thing and telling people to use common sense.

• "We need to work as a team to make sure we can hit the home run (grand slam) with the capital we’ve been given. It means watching the nickels cuz they add up to dollars.
  "Coach airfare, duh, smallest car, duh, share cars, duh, cheap meals, duh, best western, duh, skype vs. cell, duh.And that’s just the warm-up.
  "Everybody needs to look at every single expense and reduce it."

If you can break employees' feeling of entitlement, and establish trust instead, writes Segal, “you'll be amazed at how little you will have to worry about this stuff. People are generally good.”
Read the full post here.

Canadian Entrepreneurship Test

In the early days of this blog (nearly two years ago!), I wrote a post about PROFIT Magazine's National Entrepreneurship Test, which we produced while I was at the magazine back in the '90s.

The test still holds up as a fun and insightful way to test your ability to think and act in an entrepreneurial manner. But the link went dead when PROFIT's website was restructured into Canadian Business Online last year, and I can't find it on their site any more.

Fortunately, I made sure when we published the test that we let people know it was freely available for reprinting and reuse by anyone in a non-commercial, educational context. So a quick search found that the test still exists online - or at least the revised shorter version, geared to Internet attention spans with 12 questions instead of 40.

So here's to the Entrepreneurship Centre of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., which took PROFIT up on its offer and republished the test.

Find out if you have what it takes by clicking here.

"Year of the Canadian Entrepreneur"

A new year has begun.

Today, January 8, RoyNat officially launches "The Year of the Canadian Entrepreneur," a multi-sponsor promotional project designed to celebrate Canadian entrepreneurs. The official website is www.yoce.ca.

The project includes a renewed, 12-page Entrepreneur section weekly in the Financial Post, as well as a series of 20-page inserts, the Essential Guide for Entrepreneurs, to run throughout the year in Canadian Business and PROFIT magazines.

There are also plans for a travelling entrepreneurship exhibition to tour the country this spring.

While not an official part of the consortium that bears its name, Canadian Entrepreneur (i.e., this blog) will be taking part. My new column for the Financial Post will run in the newly expanded Entrepreneur section every other Monday.

Today's column looks at the seven reasons why Canadian entrepreneurship is alive, and well, and growing. Click here to read it.

Plus, if they want to use the URL "CanadianEntrepreneur.net," they can just give me a call. In true entrepreneurial fashion, we'll work something out.

Best-Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes: Week 14

Continuing our series of powerful motivational quotes personally selected to get your week off to an inspiring start. This week we hear from a real Canadian entrepreneur.

“Had the men who undertook any great enterprise since time began realized half the obstacles and discouragements they would meet, they would never have started. But fortunately they didn't – and don't.”

Sir William Van Horne (1843-1915). (American-born taskmaster who completed the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada’s greatest megaproject; he later served as president of the CPR, where he oversaw much of the industrialization of Canada)

My take on it: I’ve talked to countless successful Canadian entrepreneurs who have said that if they had the chance to do it over again, they wouldn't. It was just too hard, they say, took too long, cost too much (financially and personally).

I’ve never known whether to believe them or not. Their very natures usually dictate they do something impossible every day.

But the real takeaway for Canadian entrepreneurs is this: Do your planning. Plan some more. Revise the budget to account for all the obstacles and delays you can imagine.

Prepare for the worst, and no setback will break you.

Clear the Track - Here comes Kaboose!

Toronto online photo-sharing company BubbleShare, a Web 2.0 technology in search of a business, has just been snapped up by Toronto-based Kaboose Inc., a collection of advertising-driven portals targeting kids and parents.

You can read about the $2.25-million deal in Mark Evans' Maple Leaf 2.0 blog here.

Kaboose is a pretty fascinating company with a worldwide growth plan. If you want to know more, you can read my Kaboose profile from the latest issue of PROFIT Magazine. Just click here.

Small Business: Stronger than you think!

Over on our sister blog, Selling to Small Business, I've just posted the results from a Statistics Canada study that reports that Canadian small businesses are actually healthier and last longer quite a bit longer than many people believed.

It's a 2005 study, but this is the first time I've seen it.

The main point: "Of all firms that were created during the 1990s, roughly one-quarter ceased to operate within the first two years. "
"Just over one-third of these firms survived five years or more, and only one-fifth were still in operation after 10 years.”

Although StatsCan's tone is pretty sombre, this result is much better than the statistic most people quote: the fallacy that 80% of all small businesses fail within five years. In fact, 20% last ten years!

For more, click here to see the post at Selling to Small Business.
Or click here to go straight to the StatsCan report.

Stayin' Alive in 2007

A new story on OhMyNews International (a Korea-based site devoted to user-created content) offers five useful tips for thriving in 2007.

Then it boils the key messages down to three - in a gem of compression that's worth repeating here.

Exercise.
Save.
Be more social.

Click here to read the whole story by Nicolas van der Leek. But really, those five words are all you need.

Best Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes, Week 13

Let's start the year off right with an inspiring yet intimidating quote that sums up the most challenging business task you face.

"To succeed in business it is necessary to make others see things as you see them."
- John H. Patterson

John Henry Patterson (1844-1922) founded the National Cash Register Company. Wikipedia decribes him as a "business innovator, sales genius, social progressive, patriot, and benevolent tyrant."

Patterson was one of the most influential business leaders of his time. In the period 1910-1930 it was estimated that one-sixth of U. S. business executives were former NCR executives. (Probably the most famous person hired and fired by Patterson was Thomas Watson Sr, who went on to found IBM.)

In writing my book, Secrets of Success from Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies, I decided that the final "secret" of top Canadian entrepreneurs was their ability to communicate - to influence customers, employees, financial backers, suppliers and other interest groups to share their own excitement about the mission and future of their business.

I didn't realize that John H. Patterson had said the same thing - better - a century earlier.

Your M&A advisory for 2007

My buddy Grant McMillen of McMillen & Associates Inc. reports that this is a wonderful time to consider selling your business.

In his recent yearend report he noted that M&A activity on a worldwide basis continues to boom. In the first nine months in 2006, transactions passed the $3-trillion mark!

More importantly, he says, values for mid market and smaller companies continue to improve. “This is partly driven by the financial buyers – private equity groups or high net worth individuals – who are looking for opportunities to invest their money. Many transaction values, expressed as a multiple of EBITDA, have been in the 6 to 8 range. One recent one, the acquisition of a mid-sized Canadian company by a multinational, was reportedly at a 14 times multiple.”

For 2007, “the pipeline continues to be strong for both buy and sell mandates,” says Grant. But never think that deals are easy to pull off.

McMillen characterizes 2006 as the year where “close didn't count.” He says he was involved in one transaction that “imploded” the day before closing, and another deal that was put on hold after the Letter of Intent was negotiated.

To ensure your deals don't implode, have the best legal advice possible. Maintain open communication at all times. Anticipate potential problems and head them off.

And listen to your instincts – if you sense your partners in the deal are concerned about something, approach them openly and try to get it fixed. They’re probably as afraid of surprises as you are.

Best Ever Entrepreneurship Quotes, Week 12

Continuing our quest to find motivation and ideas in the experience of others.

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."
- Abraham Lincoln

Who better than Lincoln, who presided over a massive Civil War, knew what an enemy was - and the need to turn them into former enemies? This is obviously a skill demanded on all levels - personal, business, political. More importantly, it's also an attitude - a vision of what could be if you look beyond day-to-day grievances.

Some of the most powerful business deals I know have been forged by companies that are (or were) competitors. Who knows you better? Who else knows your market? Who has more resources you can leverage than the businesses that are most like yours?

In this week of (relative) peace, think about how you could make your life easier by making today's "enemies" tomorrow's friends.

Two more milestones on the road to wherever

This was a busy week for me, which could be why I just wrote my first post of the week - late Friday afternoon.

And suddenly I find we've hit two milestones.

My previous post (Burn Your Treehouse) was the 400th post in this blog's history - which means I've written more articles for Canadian Entrepreneur than I ever did for PROFIT Magazine, the Financial Times or Equinox Magazine, my three previously-most-prolific outlets.

Plus, today (or very early Saturday morning) we will hit our 15,000th visitor. A drop in the bucket for some websites, of course, but a milestone for Canadian Entrepreneur. It took us 14 months to get our first 5,000 visitors, six months to get the next five thousand, and less than three months to land the latest 5Gs - so we're still on a growth trajectory.

Thanks to all who visit. Thanks for all your comments and support.

Please accept my best wishes for a great Christmas holiday season.

And thanks to Carly for decorating the cookies above.

Burn Your Treehouse!

Check out the blog of Calgary-based CambrianHouse.com, a developer of crowdsource-produced software*, for some great insights into entrepreneurship. If you click here, they’ve collected the best five entrepreneurship/startup related posts into one handy file.

My favourite post (so far) is “Burn Your Treehouse.” In this article, the authors suggest that when many people start companies, the first thing they do is turn their back on the customer – just like the little boys who build a treehouse and hang out a sign saying “No girlz allowed.”

The author (presumably Cambrian House founder Michael Sikorsky) recalls doing exactly that when he started his previous, company, Servidium. “We bunkered ourselves in and built the best web development framework in the world…. It had database abstractions, security and templating mechanisms for separating presentation and business logic. It made tea and buttered your toast and even gave us a patent. It did everything - except sell.”

He admits his company was un-customer focused. “We got so caught up in the genius of our very own framework that we forgot to include the customer as part of the process.”

The price paid for this was a product nobody wanted. “By the time we realized the error of our ways, it was too late. The product never sold and we were never more than a wannabe product company kept afloat by professional services.”

So how do you stay out of the treehouse and engage customers early? “You force it,” says Sikorsky. “Build the most compelling feature of your product and get it out there. Just build it and see if you’re meeting an unmet demand. If no one is willing to spend any credits on your product or service, you’ve got your answer.”

Bottom line: Make the gap between product development and revenue as small as possible.

Click here for the full post (there's lots more). It’ll make you laugh, cry and smarter.


*If you want to know what that means, the next issue of PROFIT may help.)