Business Tips From Jules
I’m a big fan of the show Dragon’s Den (and Shark Tank, btw). Today, I saw that the CBC had published an interview with the newest Dragon, Bruce Croxon. And boy, was it ever a bad interview! So I thought I’d republish the questions but fill them out with my own answers, which hopefully, will be more helpful to other small business owners or wanna-be owners out there:
CBC News: What was your first business experience? What did it teach you?
Julie Laurin: I tried selling crafts door-to-door in my neighbourhood when I was a kid. It was a horrible experience. Some of the paint hadn’t even dried on some of the pieces. One of the neighbours gave me a quarter out of encouragement but the rest discouraged me from continuing. That taught me that some ideas are really not worth pursuing!
What elements make a small business successful? What skills do you think a small business owner needs?
A lot of people will tell you that multi-tasking is key, but I disagree. You have to be able to plan things properly, you have to be organized, you have to have some knowledge of what you’re doing (like basic finances) and then know how to find the missing knowledge that you need to make your business successful. A lot of people make the mistake of going into business thinking that they can just do what they did when they used to work for an employer, but it’s not like that. Your employer took care of everything from marketing to sales to finances to customer service. When you work for yourself, at first, you have to do all of that on your own. It’s a whole lot of work so I have to reiterate the fact that proper planning is key.
There’s a lot of talk about Canada lacking in innovation and productivity — what do you think needs to happen to fix that?
I agree with Bruce in saying that technology investment is necessary but I’d also like to see a change of mentality. I’d like to see Canadians become less risk-averse. Let’s teach our kids to be independent, let’s encourage girls to learn about money, let’s have more grants for young people to learn about things like marketing, merchandising, technology, accounting… we have to create a culture that wants to invent and wants to be innovative. There seems to be a lack of desire for that here. I think that the idea that we have low productivity is bullshit. Canadians have the least amount of vacation and sick days than their other Western-nation counterparts. We’re extremely productive. We just don’t tend to move that productivity towards creative work or innovative products. 
What was one of your biggest business setbacks and what did you learn from it?
So far? Not having properly documented some of my processes early on. You need to make sure that you keep documentation on things like coding standards, change logs, etc. You can do a job and forget about it or you can improve what you’ve done in the past in order to provide even better service later on. I prefer the latter option – it just makes life easier for everyone.
What did you enjoy most about being a small business owner? Anything you dislike about it?
I like that I can define my workload. At one point, I had 12 clients at once, plus my full-time job, plus two other side projects. Now, I manage a portfolio of about 3 to 4 clients per month. What I don’t like? I can’t think of anything I don’t like about it!
What’s your best advice for balancing life and work as an entrepreneur?
Life comes first… always. If you properly plan your schedule, develop processes, and hire people to work based on those processes, you can free up a lot of time for yourself to just manage the beast instead of working constantly and not having time for yourself, your family and your continued learning or interests.
What other advice do you have for small business owners in Canada?
Don’t let anyone define what your business should be… in other words, if you don’t want to grow, don’t. I have no desire to grow this business right now, other than keeping it as a side gig. People have thrown comments my way saying that I should grow but growth just for the sake of it is stupid. If things are going well, if you’re enjoying yourself, and if you’re seeing profits year after year, nothing has to change. Do what makes you happy. Be realistic about the prospects of your services or products – if people aren’t buying, that’s a pretty good sign that you may not have started with a good idea and it may be time to either change it or abandon ship. People seem to have two problems: not having the guts to start and not having the guts to quit.
