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.
Read MoreAnother reason why I’m in business
One of the reasons why I wanted to create my own business was to provide artists, non-profits and small businesses with a modest web presence and creative publicity services because I knew that I could help them get started in the online world. So many friends and business owners that I knew were missing the mark – they either weren’t online or their presence wasn’t that great. I knew I could help out in some way. Most of all, I wanted to make websites using WordPress because, in the long run, it saves my clients a lot of money that would have been spent on hiring a web developer on a regular basis. I’m not trying to hurt my industry – I’m trying to make it easier for those with a small or modest amount of cash flow to be online and grow their presence.
But there’s another reason why I went into business. Obviously, the extra cash helps a great deal! I’ve always wanted a part-time job to supplement my income but part-time work, especially work that you can do from home, is really hard to find in Ottawa. What I really wanted to do with some of that cash that I earned through this business was to fund my ideas and projects… finally! You know when you have a million ideas floating around in your head and each one of them costs money but you can’t pursue any of them because you can’t afford it? Yeah, I really wanted to pursue some of them and now I can. How awesome is that?
So I’m using this opportunity to tell you about my first project: “Her Voice”. I just released a very simple WordPress website for it over the weekend. The raison d’etre is this: I want to build an online community for women in the arts in Canada, with resources, funding info, mentorship programs, etc. Community-building takes a really long time and I’m not expecting this thing to grow overnight. BUT, I am also introducing something really new to the arts community: privately funded microgrants. I’ll be setting some of my own money aside to fund ideas and projects and little things like business card grants! There’s absolutely nothing in it for me, other than the ‘feel good’ feeling of being able to help out a cause that I really believe in. In turn, I’m hoping that it’ll influence other people to give away money, too. Through Her Voice, I’d love to donate regular grants so that artists of all kinds (filmmakers, writers, dancers, sculptors, comedians, etc.) can pursue ideas that perhaps may not be funded through government grants or any other sources of funding.
It’s also my hope to expand this idea into other domains. I’d like to fund athletes. I’d like to fund scientists. I’d like to fund new start-ups. That’s one hell of a grand vision, isn’t it? 
Hey, I can dream.
For now, please check out the website and help spread the word!
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The never-ending quest for better tools!
After months of thinking about it, I finally bought myself an iPad. I had been spending far too many nights sitting in a computer chair, at my day job and then at home. Sitting all the time does not do the body good! I wanted to be able to work but in a more comfortable position. I wanted something lightweight. Since a lot of my time is spent doing research for some of my clients, particularly for new publicity ideas,it made sense to get something smaller than my laptop but powerful enough to do the job.
And now, I’m typing this blog entry with two fingers while listening to classical music on the CBC radio app. I’m super impressed with this thing. Ok so the keyboard is a pain to work with… But other than that, it’s proving to be just the tool I needed!
I have a long trip ahead of me this weekend as I head out for a speaking engagement at Laurentian University in Sudbury. But I’m confident that I’ll be pretty productive during the 7 hour bus rides there and back.
And speaking of tools, I finally purchased a Basic membership for 37 Signal’s project management web app, “Basecamp”. I’m loving that so far, too!
If you’re curious, here’s a list of tools I’ve purchased for this business:
1) iPad
2) Basecamp
3) Freshbooks (invoicing and more)
4) Elegantthemes.com and woothemes.com licenses
Technically, the theme licenses aren’t tools but if I hadn’t invested in them, I’d have to develop custom themes for each client and that would be much more time consuming and much more expensive for the client! Plus, Woo themes and Elegant themes come with built-in admin panels that make them so much easier to administer. If my coding time is diminished by these features, then I can pass on the savings to the end-user AND give her a product that is easier to use in the end. That makes me happy.
Got any tool recommendations for me? I’m still hunting down cool apps to use on my iPad, so feel free to share those with me too!
Read MoreA great film about lay-offs
I saw the film “The Company Men” recently and loved it. If you’ve ever been laid off, or even if you’ve never experienced it, you should see this film. It’s interesting because it comes from the perspective of high-ranking business people – how do you deal with a loss like that when you’re used to making a lot of money? What do you do when you’ve been working for the same company for over twenty or thirty years? What does it mean to do business with integrity?
I enjoyed it because I experienced my first lay-off last year (and it was done via email.. no, I’m not kidding) from Magmic Games last year. That experience was one of the things that inspired me to go into business so I could do things the right way.
The film reminded me of the initial loss I felt, the denial, the interviewing & job-hunting game… but it also made me reflect on the beauty of change. If you’ve ever been laid off, I’d love to hear your story. Did you end up going to a new job, did you start your own company, did you take time off?
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