BOLD Leadership Overview

In today’s day and age, it’s nearly impossible to run a business that doesn’t include a digital component. Incorporating digital aspects to your business can look like so much more than just an online storefront. Many entrepreneurs may be missing out on huge opportunities to strengthen their business by not taking advantage of all technological possibilities.

That’s where Alberta Women Entrepreneurs’ BOLD Leadership program comes in.

Over the course of the program, entrepreneurs get a baseline of knowledge about what a digital transformation can look like for their business before creating a plan that fits their needs and abilities. “The Bold Leadership Program focuses on the critical components of building a digital strategy for a business.” Says Gabriela Touma; Bold Leadership Program Advisor. Covering a range of topics from digital marketing to improving the customer experience, the aim is of this program is to get participants thinking about all of the ways, big and small, that digitalization can save them time and money.

A lot of people feel overwhelmed because there is so much technology out there. AWE’s Bold Leadership program tries to give people enough of an idea of what the technologies are about and then how to start to incorporate that into their business.

Some entrepreneurs, like Danielle Cherewyk, focus on mapping out how to automate their business processes, saving their team dozens of hours a week. Others may focus on developing new revenue models so they can start scaling up. Beyond the tangible benefits that can come from putting new technologies into practice, the greatest win can be a shift in business culture.

We want to help leaders start creating a culture of innovation in their companies. Sometimes leaders will feel that all of the innovative ideas fall on them, but we help them build a framework so that they can actually draw on all the innovation and the talents in their team to help move the whole company forward.

“Within The Bold Leadership Program, business leaders will learn everything from how to build a digital strategy, how to effectively leverage current and emerging technologies, and how to understand the drivers of transformation, Touma says, but most importantly we are helping them navigate the digital space with other inspiring women leaders that are excited to learn, collaborate and add to the conversation.”

While teaching the skills is important, AWE recognizes that creating a network of support for businesses as they go through their digital transformation is what takes an idea from concept to execution. Participants have access to one-on-one time with expert digital advisors during and after the course so they can continue to receive advice that is relevant to their unique business.  

“The connections that happen in the program are remarkable. We’ve heard from many participants how much it has changed their businesses!”

Bold Leadership Feature: Janet Caryk

Janet Caryk is a psychologist and business owner based out of Edmonton, AB. She made the pivot to private practice after being a long-term employee at a hospital. Her private practice is called Centre for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. She’s been in private practice for about 22 years now. Janet’s services aid her clients in treating OCD, panic disorders, and more with cognitive behavioural therapy. Rethinking therapy, Janet’s clinic offers group therapy programs, free events, and more for her clients.

In the mid-90’s there was a prospect that healthcare was going to change relating to maternity leave. Although the healthcare changes never took place, it got her thinking, “I'm not going to wait around for my pink slip. I have to do something, and that's when I started talking to my colleagues about starting a clinic.”

After sitting with the idea of owning her own practice, she began to lean into it, transitioning out of her full-time job. “I told my boss at the hospital, I'm thinking of leaving and I'd like to go part-time here. He agreed to that. I think it was like about six months of working part-time I decided that I was going to go full-time with my private practice. Then I developed the clinic with my business partner.”

Initially, Janet participated in an AWE Program to assist her with opening a gym. AWE assisted Janet is examining the decision for every angle. After careful consideration, she decided franchising a gym wasn’t a good decision for her business at the time. “Now, you can imagine that deciding not to open the gym was the best decision I ever made as a businesswoman. It was about 18 months before COVID hit.”

When COVID hit, there’s was a large demand for her psychology services. The increase in demand and limitations in meeting clients in-person lead her to have to make a digital shift quickly. She leaned on the Bold Leadership Program to assist her in becoming more tech savvy. Now, she can host events and appointments remotely and is gaining confident in her technical ability. “I think the most important thing is that I've changed my mindset. I don't automatically say ‘I'm low tech, I can't do that’. I'm no longer low tech. That's not an accurate statement. I'm not high tech either, but I am learning.”

The Bold Leadership Program helped Janet streamline her back office, which consists of accounting, paperwork, payroll, etc. “I tried so hard to figure out the best way to organize everything and the most cost-efficient way. What AWE helped me do was sit down and really have a hard look at the numbers.” By looking in depth at all her accounting, she was better able to find areas for improvement and opportunity, all while being supported by AWE.

The next big project that her Bold Leadership coach is going to help with is leveraging different online platforms so that her clinic can be easily found, and to measure which platforms are performing best.

“My experience in the Bold Leadership Program was really amazing. Everybody's so helpful, supportive and nice. There is lots of communication, willingness to help answer any questions that you have, and lots of collaboration. I call it my mini-MBA”

Janet’s advice for entrepreneurs growing their business in the digital era:

“You can’t be as successful unless you're willing to embrace the digital components. If you resist these changes, you're just not going to be competitive. You're not going to be able to grow without embracing this kind of technology.”

Janet recently completed the Bold Leadership Program with AWE. The program is designed to support women entrepreneurs who are creating new strategies, and implementing technology and processes that will improve their business performance.

Improving the Customer Experience Through Technology

The past two decades have seen the birth of an unprecedented number of new markets and technologies such as cloud services, warehouse robotics, and smartphones. These new technologies have redefined entire industries, and business owners are being forced to change their business models and embrace digital transformation in order to stay competitive.

The integration of digital technologies into all areas of a business is changing how businesses operate, and also how they interact with and bring value to their customers. Digital technology has transformed consumer habits and caused a shift in customer expectations. These days, customers often rate organizations on their digital customer experience first.

Mobile devices, apps, machine learning, automation and much more allow customers to get what they want almost exactly at the moment they need it. As a result, modern customers expect consistent access to relevant content in relation to what they’re doing at any time, in any location and in the format and on the device of their choosing. In today’s market, businesses must embrace technologies in many forms to deliver an unmatched customer experience. But, for many small businesses the options can be overwhelming. 

Alberta Women Entrepreneurs offers a series of Digital Transformation courses that explore digital transformation topics with experts. Over three sessions, two hours each, participants receive strategic insights, ask questions and talk about technology options with experts. 

For Lori Schmidt, Instructor of the Enhancing Customer Experience Through Digital course, understanding how to digitally transform a business begins with an understanding of what digital competencies are needed to improve operational efficiency as well as the customer experience.

“Our approach has been helping the entrepreneur understand that it is about the integration of digital technologies into all areas of their business. So it is much more strategic perhaps rather than jumping into all the technologies,“ explained Lori. “The course was a primer for our larger Bold Leadership Program. A component of the course is to help women identify and build competencies using digital technologies to enhance the customer experience. It involves understanding what digital transformation is.”

Enhancing Customer Experience Through Digital was designed to be a course that would help businesses shift from pandemic survival strategies, to focusing on long-term implementation of digital technologies for continued growth in their markets. Participants were not only able to identify areas of digital competencies that they needed to acquire, but were also able to apply the technologies with a strategy and valuable feedback from other professionals.

“Everyone got what they needed out of the course in a different way, and the opportunity to work continuously with AWE is huge. It has completely transformed our business and our direction and where we are going, and that gave AWE a lot of value to us.” - Amaris Gamache, Course Participant.

An aspect of the Enhancing Customer Experience course was learning to prepare and execute a customer experience digital strategy by developing an implementation plan. For Jody Craig, mapping out her customers' journey was a valuable exercise. Since applying strategies learned in the course, she has been able to increase her exposure to new markets by using marketing techniques to let people know what she is working on, and inviting new collaborations.

Participants of the course learned how to identify their current level of digital maturity. The course also explored customer engagement through the use of social media, artificial intelligence, data analysis, and multiple digital channels from their first connection with your brand, to following up with customers well after the purchase of a product or service.

According to Jody Craig, “staying in touch with your customers is important.” How a company does that is an equally important part of the customer experience. “Feedback from clients is important to ensure that you are providing a service that is of value. Keeping the lines of communication open is essential to understanding what your clients changing needs are,” she explained.

Staying on top of communications is another area in which digital transformation can assist with improving efficiencies and quality of customer service. Implementing simple automations can help businesses stay in contact with their ever growing customer base. This includes marketing automation such as email, chat and sales support, as well as operations automation including fulfillment, shipping, tracking and bookkeeping. 

Introducing digital strategies means replacing cold calling with social selling. Customers are already active in social media and that’s where businesses need to be in order to engage. Instead of waiting for the customer to establish contact, businesses today need to reach out to them, build a relationship and help educate them about their product or service.

Customer service teams are no longer restricted to phone and email communications. Digital transformation is not just about being reactive, it’s about using a wide range of channels to provide support. Social media, reviews sites, forums, and communities are all now part of the customer service ecosystem. 

Regardless of what technologies businesses choose to implement, one thing is certain: the companies that do make the choice to transform to digital operations and processes are creating highly engaged customers.

Interviews:

Lori Schmidt - Business Advisor and Coach

Jody Craig, Viewpoint Executive Solutions

Amaris Gamache - The Chic Studio ( Chic and Company Inc., La Seda Silk, Magnifiquely Lashed)

Bold Leadership Feature: Diana Frost

Diana Frost is the owner of a colouring book company called Colouring It Forward. Diana is Algonquin Métis, an artist and a musician. Diana was an engineer for 20 years, then had a dream about creating a series of colouring books and decided to pursue her creative side. “It started with a series of coloring books that I made with artists and elders from different nations. The coloring books include real artwork, and also stories and teachings from the elders. It's a way for people to learn a little bit about the First Nations culture in a positive way.” Colouring It Forward was rapidly successful, with 2500 copies being sold in the first 6 weeks of launching. This captured the attention of CBC, radio, and print news sources. 

When the pandemic happened, retail bookstores were shutting down, which negatively impacted the B2B side of the company. However, Colouring It Forward already had a Shopify website, so Diana began to utilize more digital tools to focus more on selling directly to customers. The Bold Leadership Program assisted Diana greatly; she went into the program knowing she was going to implement what was needed to further her business. With AWE’s support, Diana has been able to optimize the website, merge her email so that everything was in one place, and launch her subscription box with assistance from Angus Gastle (AWE coach).

“I came up with the idea to make a gift box, like an Indigenous wellness box, called Equinox Box. While I was still doing the program, I think it was on March 1, I launched it.” The launch was successful with 30 purchases. Then after some media attention, it took one week for the subscription boxes to nearly sell out. “So, I opened up [sales] for another 50 boxes. And they sold out the next day. Again, I sold 50 boxes that day, and then the next day, they were completely sold out.” The Bold Leadership Program propelled Diana’s business forward in replacing the dependable income she had lost from bookstores closing due to COVID-19.

Diana had a very positive experience in the Bold Leadership Program and expressed great gratitude. “The coaching has been tremendous. Angus has done so much work on my platform and putting me in touch with people. They’ve helped with simplification of my platforms. I really appreciate knowing that there's someone there that I can ask for help. Anything that has to do with the digital platforms, I can ask Angus, and he'll help. Having people you can ask questions to, or to give you feedback is invaluable.”

“I feel like I have a better understanding now where my weaknesses are digitally, and my strengths. The Bold Leadership Program helped me with identifying goals and objectives specific to the digital platforms I was using. As a solopreneur, you don't have a lot of time. You end up putting fires out all the time and you don't have a lot of time to plan. Being part of the program gave me that time; it was forcing me to listen and answer important questions. I knew I had to grow digitally.”

When asked about advice for entrepreneurs growing their business in this digital era, Diana touched on the dilemma many small business owners face. “I think the most important thing is to make sure your messaging is consistent and to be patient. Interact with your prospected clients, or your customers. Try lots of new things but don't try too many platforms right at the beginning. Pick one or two and do it well. I remember at the beginning of my business I was trying to do so much for different platforms, plus doing B2B as well; it was too much.” Diana also highlighted the importance of consistency when using digital tools like social media. “Some people say you have to post every day, but I don't think so. I think what you need to do is be consistent. Make it quality over quantity. Make sure you check back on your posts because if people leave you some kind of comments, they'll want you to responded to it somehow.”

What is digital transformation and what does it mean for your business?

Written by Lori Schmidt, AWE Bold Leadership Program Lead.

For some business owners, digital is about technology. For others, digital is a new way of engaging with customers. And for many entrepreneurs, it represents an entirely new way of doing business. None of these definitions is necessarily incorrect, but such diverse approaches often trip up leaders as they reflect a lack of alignment and common vision about where the business needs to go. This often results in piecemeal initiatives or misguided efforts that lead to missed opportunities, sluggish performance, or false starts.

As women entrepreneurs push forward with their digital agendas, it’s worth pausing to clarify vocabulary and sharpen language.

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing your culture, how you operate and most importantly how you deliver value to customers.

A definition from The Agile Elephant emphasizes all the ways businesses may need to adjust their existing practices: it reads - “[Digital transformation] involves a change in leadership, different thinking, the encouragement of innovation and new business models, incorporating digitization of assets and an increased use of technology to improve the experience of your organization's employees, customers, suppliers, partners and stakeholders.”

Digital transformation is also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, be agile and get comfortable with failure as you try things out. An important element of digital transformation is, of course, technology, but often it's more about shedding outdated processes and legacy systems than it is about adopting new technology. It’s also about meeting customer needs and providing value in brand new and rapid response ways. It’s important for a business to build out a full strategy to execute digital transformation. Studies show businesses of all sizes that implement a digital transformation strategy, grow their businesses significantly – usually by a minimum of 20% - and can out pace their competitors if done quickly. 

“ Sometimes it takes a crisis to turn people’s mindsets around.”

— ITWC CIO Jim Love

COVID-19 is also setting the agenda and the priorities of where to focus digital transformation efforts, such as facilitating the needs of your new, remote workforce. But digital transformation stands for much more than suddenly working from home over Zoom, it’s about asking you and your business to rethink how you are delivering value to your customers in this digital world.

The key takeaway here is that business leaders must have a clear and common understanding of exactly what digital means to them and what it means for customers and how to convey that opportunity and vision to their people. It’s about transforming your entire business starting with defining your vision and then building out a digital strategy. But it is not an easy feat. It truly is a change process – a constant change process. And in all of this you, as a leader, need to be that CMO, Change Management Officer. 

Entire companies are thinking about this same question. What is it that we need to do as leaders to steady the business and build through all this disruption?

Here are six quick tips to consider as you lead digital change:

1. Adopt a new kind of mindset. Remind yourself that change is good. Be ready for organizational shifts. Be ready to change tasks frequently and help your people be more comfortable with that too. Remember that uncertainty is here to stay.

2. Follow your industry. Be aware of what is happening in your industry. What are the drivers and what creates pressure for change? Those pressures will ultimately also create pressure for you and your business to change too.

3. Try to constantly learn new things. Take any opportunity to learn and gain new expertise. Read the publications in your professional area. Attend webinars and other learning activities on topics that you think might be relevant for your work now or in the future. (A quick note here – please follow reputable sources. Be careful what you read as it can also lead to stress and fear. There are, however, lots of positive, credible sources of ideas and support for the path forward.)

4. Network with your peers. Networking is the best place to get information that might not be publicly available. What are others seeing and experiencing? How are they handling it?

5. Be ready to support your organization. Culture change is something that cannot be forced; it requires the support of every member of the organization. New business models are not effective if no one is working according to them. New organizational structures do not work if members are fighting against them. You need to be able to support your team through all of these adjustments.

6. Help your team see and buy into the unifying purpose of your organization. When the disruption is constant, businesses need to transform continuously and fast. That is why it is important to help your people be prepared - with a new mindset, new skills and motivation around a renewed purpose.

The pandemic has accelerated the timeline for everyone, and businesses that once mapped their digital strategy in one to three-year phases now have to scale their initiatives in a matter of days or weeks. Having the knowledge of what digital transformation is and what it can do for your business is more important now than ever.

Alberta Women Entrepreneurs is hosting webinars on different digital transformation topics, click here to learn more.