Client Feature: Tracy Fortin

We sat down with Tracy Fortin, Founder of Flawless Interiors and current PeerSpark™ participant to learn more about her business, what she has gained from the program and what it takes to work with your spouse every day.

Q: Tracy, tell us more about your business.

A: I once heard my job described as a conductor of a highly aesthetic orchestra.  I love that – and it’s so true.  Really what we do, is take people’s needs and wants as they relate to their home or office spaces and turn them into plans that can be implemented.  Our clients are super busy and don’t have time to be running around from supplier to supplier to determine what will function and look the best in their space.  So whether they are renovating an entire home, building a brand new home or remodeling an office – we take that stress off of them right from the start all the way to the finish.  From permit ready architectural drawings to the last placed accessory – we make sure their design projects are done right.

Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced as you started to grow?

A: By far, knowing when the right time to hire has been the biggest challenge, and still is.  Getting comfortable with making mistakes helps.

Q: What advice do you have for those looking to run a business with their spouse?  

A: Get really clear on each of your roles right from the start.  Define expectations and be sure to hold to each other accountable.

Q: How did you find out about AWE? 

I attended a Learning Day event and met an AWE staff person who was promoting the PeerSpark™ program.  I knew it was exactly what I needed at that time for my businesss.

Q: What is your biggest take away from PeerSpark™? 

A: Being the architect of your own life takes fearlessness and a vision for your life plan.  You have to believe you can achieve and on the days that you don’t, have people in your corner who can believe for you.  That’s what PeerSpark™ is.  We were all in similar places emotional even though our businesses varied so greatly.  We are constantly lifted each other up and motivating each other to keep going.

Q: Who do you go to for advice? 

A: Well aside from my PeerSpark™ ladies, I read a lot.  There are so many inspiring books that have kept me excited about both running a business and the design industry.  My most recent favorite book is called “In the Company of Women” by Grace BonneyIt’s filled with inspirational advice from  female entrepreneurs around the globe.  I also have other friends who run their own businesses – so it’s a hazard of being an entrepreneur that we are constantly taking to each other about ways to do business better.

Be sure to follow Flawless Interiors on Facebook and check out their website www.flawlessinteriors.ca

Interested in learning more about the PeerSpark™ program and how it can help your business? Get in touch with us today! 

Celebration of Achievement Reception Re-Cap

We were thrilled to celebrate with some amazing women entrepreneurs, community partners, sponsors, friends and family on May 18, 2017 at our Celebration of Achievement Reception. 

This year we hosted the event at the beautiful Oasis Centre in Edmonton. The room was filled with joy, excitement and buzz. With over 200 people in the room, we were honoured to receive greetings from the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, The Honuorable Navdeep Bains and hear MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark Jon Carson share his welcome from the Government of Alberta.

The event was dedicated to not only celebrating our 2017 Celebration of Achievement recipient, Jeanette DeBruin, but also announcing the recipients of our Emerging Entrepreneur Award, Emerging Innovator Award and Upsurge Award.

The anticipation built as a video of the finalists in each category appeared on the screen (to view these videos, please click here). We also had a surge of social media which had #AWECelebrates trending on Twitter. Check out our favourite tweets here.

We were thrilled to announce the following as our 2017 Award Recipients:

Jeanette DeBruin, AltaPro Electric, 2017 Celebration of Achievement Award Recipient

Kristi Stuart and Jill Belland, Barre Belle YYC, 2017 AWE Emerging Entrepreneur Award Recipient

Lane Edwards, Pura Botanicals, 2017 AWE Emerging Innovator Award Recipient

Nancy Klensch, Summit Kids, 2017 AWE Upsurge Award Recipient

From Left to Right: Jeannette DeBruin, Lane Edwards, Nancy Klensch, Kristi Stuart

We were very excited to celebrate with these amazing women. We would also like to extend a huge congratulations to all of our nominees and finalists. You are all doing amazing things for our communities and local economies.

A special thanks goes out to our presenting sponsor, ATB Business. We could not do this event without you! Thank you for recognizing the importance of entrepreneurship and making it a focus for your business. We would also like to thank Grant Thornton for your help with our nominee selection process. Thank you to Hillberg and Berk for the beautiful gifts for our recipients and generous gifts for all attendees of the awards program. And last, but certainly not least we would like to thank Quinn Ohler from Global Edmonton for volunteering her time to emcee this year's program.

Our awards program will open again in 2018. If you know someone who would be deserving of one of our four awards, let us know! We can't wait to celebrate with you all next year.

2017 Celebration of Achievement Recipient Announced

Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) is pleased to announce Jeanette DeBruin as the recipient of this year’s Celebration of Achievement Award, which recognizes an exceptional woman entrepreneur who has built a business in Alberta with a significant impact on the economy and the community.

The Edmonton-based co-founder of AltaPro Electric will be recognized at the 2017 Celebration of Achievement award reception on May 18th at the Oasis Centre in Edmonton.

Read the full release here.
 

We're Hiring!

Are you interested in joining a dynamic team passionate about helping growing businesses that are shaping Alberta? Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE), an organization dedicated to enabling women to build successful businesses, is searching for a Program Coordinator to join our team. We provide unique programs and services to women in business through mentoring, advising, financing and skills and network development. Our ideal candidate is a is an organizer extraordinaire who loves to create great client experiences by implementing excellent programs.

Interested in learning more? Click here.

Client Feature: Deidra Helmig

We sat down with Deidra Helmig, Founder and Senior Consultant of Boreal Services Group and current PeerSpark™ participant to learn more about her business and the advice she has gained since joining the program.

Q: Deidra, can you tell us more about your business and how it all got started?

A: It all started when I was working for my family business. They needed help writing a safety program for the business. I knew nothing about safety. They ended up putting me through the courses that started from very basic to advanced. From there I ended up working as a Safety Officer within my family's company. 

During that time, I was picking up my daughter from school one day and was chatting with another Dad about what I did for work. I told him I was a Safety Officer and as it turns out, he said he was looking for someone to help build a safety program for his company.

I ended up taking the contract and continued to work a combination of freelance and full-time in my role for my family's business. Eventually referrals continued to come in and four years ago I decided to leave the family business and run Boreal Services Group full-time.

Q: What would you say were some of the key challenges when starting your business?

A: There are always challenges I am facing as a business owner! There is always so much more work to do on-top of the work you are getting paid for. It's okay to learn and make mistakes- I still make mistakes some days.

Marketing was a large challenge for me when I first started. I have always been shy about talking about myself and selling what I do. At first I relied solely on word of mouth, which is great but not always sustainable if you are not getting out there and marketing yourself.

Another challenge has been cash flow. At times clients will take 30 to 60 days to pay, but the bills keep on coming and they need to be paid right away. I have spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to manage money, especially with the nature of the industrial construction industry!

Q: How did you first find out about AWE?

A: My first experience with AWE was at the 2015 Learning Day. I attended with a friend and fellow entrepreneur. At Learning Day I found out about PeerSpark™. I realized then that this program was going to be a great opportunity to help connect me with other women entrepreneurs and gain formal training from a business standpoint. 

Q: In the PeerSpark™ program there are a variety of workshops to help you as a business owner. Which one would you say has stuck with you the most?

A: I would say the Leadership and Human Resource sessions. In the last year we made our first hires. We hired three people! I don't think I would have had any idea of how to do that if it hadn't have been for the HR session. 

The Leadership session was more about me. To be a leader, you have to have people to lead. It was a good eye opener about how I work, what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are and if I want to get better at them or accept that they are my weaknesses and hire help where I need it. 

Q: What advice would you give to someone who is looking at expanding their own entrepreneurial journey?

I would highly encourage others to get involved with some sort of a group. Whether it’s formal like PeerSpark or whether you can gather your own group in more of an informal setting. Running a business can be lonely and frustrating. It's good to have a network to lean on who really understands. Sometimes friends and family members don't always get it because they don't have their own businesses.

AWE has provided me with so much information, resources and guidance. I am currently considering expanding globally and would have never thought I could really do it if it wasn't for my network in AWE and seeing other women take the leap and do it! Everyone has been so generous with knowledge and experiences.

Another important piece of advice I would give is to take care of yourself! I dedicate time every day to go outside, walk and spend time with nature. When I find myself getting too busy to do that, everything seems to fall apart. Self-care is critical.

I also encourage entrepreneurs to read everything! Even if it's not business related. Once again, you may say, "I'm too busy!", but I definitely recommend it. Right now I am reading Chris Hadfield's book and have been able to take away so many lessons about life, leadership and more.

Be sure to follow Boreal Services Group on Facebook and check out their website www.borealservicesgroup.com 

Interested in learning more about the PeerSpark™ program and how it can help your business? Get in touch with us today! 

What You Need to Know About E-Commerce

We sat down with Ashley Janssen, CEO of Code and Effect and Former PeerSpark member to ask her about everything e-commerce and what you need to know as a business owner.

Ashley is facilitating Building Your E-Commerce Business on August 30 in Calgary. You can register here.

Q: What does a successful e-commerce website need to include?

That is a really big question with a number of different answers. The short answer is that you need to actually set up and be a business, you need a strategic plan including financial management, you need to pick the appropriate platform for selling your products, and then implement a detailed marketing plan. (Whew!)

The long answer is that, as you will see in my workshop, there are many strategic planning and business administration steps that need to happen behind the scenes before an e-commerce platform is selected and items are sold. These steps are the building blocks to setting up a successful e-commerce website. They include building a cashflow spreadsheet to make sure the numbers work, setting up the business properly through incorporating and getting everything all your business numbers, GST, licences, etc.

Then you can confidently go through the process of selecting the right e-commerce platform, payment platform, and template for your business.

Once your e-commerce platform is setup, you can’t just hope people with come to it. It is at least as much work as a traditional brick and mortar business. You need to have a marketing plan, social media and social validation, email newsletter marketing, Adwords and online marketing with landing pages, blogs for organic search results….I could go on.

Q: How do Google Analytics and Keywords impact your website overall?

Google analytics and keywords are vital to the success of an e-commerce website. Your analytics, if properly set-up, are an important decision making tool that you should be checking regularly. Your analytics are what tell you what parts of your website and marketing campaigns are effective and when you need to make changes/updates to your website.

Adwords with effective landing pages can be instrumental in educating and raising awareness to potential customers and, in turn, driving sales.

Q: What systems (tools) do you recommend to someone just starting out with their website?

This is also a hard question to answer because there are so many variables. You needs tools/systems for: productivity, email, accounting, e-commerce platform, payment platform, newsletter management, analytics, landing pages, social media management, etc. The answer to which one in each category, is, “it depends”. In my workshop I will go into more detail about some of these and give more clarity on how to make educated decisions about which tools are right for you.

Q: How has your website evolved since you first started your business?

Well, it has been a decade so that is a long answer. The short version is that we have redone our website 4 times, recently rebranded from AgileStyle to Code and Effect, and each time we get a bit better at communicating who we are and what we do.

We started out mostly building brochure type websites and evolved to custom development and web applications.

Q: Tell us more about Code and Effect.

Our tagline is: “Need software but don’t know where to start? Let us help”.

We do custom software development. Customers come to us when they can’t find an off-the-shelf solution for a business problem. We work with them to find their pain points and develop software that solves that pain.

Rather than specializing in particular industries, we serve any small or medium-sized business that has unique processes requiring unique software. Some examples would be custom e-commerce, membership portals or customer management systems.

Q: Any other advice you would like to share with a website newbie?

A website is just a small part of your overall business strategy, even when you are an online business. It is a just one of many tools at your disposal. Your website is not your business but rather a platform for serving your customers. Just building a website is not enough, there are many other things, as I will go over in the workshop, that must be done in order to make your website effective.

Join Ashley and AWE for Building Your E-Commerce Business on August 30, 2017 in Calgary.

Spring Greetings from Marcela Mandeville

Marcela and her beloved companion, Callie.

Spring has officially sprung and it’s such an exciting time of year! I love those first few warm days when the sun is shining and people start to emerge from their winter hibernation. Patios start to fill up, the dog parks are abuzz (my personal happy place) and the anticipation for fun days ahead is almost palpable.

For me, spring represents a time of hope – hope for the opportunities the future holds. This spring our team is working with some incredible entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses to turn opportunities into growth. Here in Alberta, our PeerSpark accelerator program spring cohort is kicking off soon (space is limited!) and will provide support and resources for women who are ready to take their business to the next level.

But, we’re also on the move! Our team is hitting The Strip in June for a Canadian Trade Mission at The 2017 WBENC National Conference and Business Fair with Business Women in International Trade and an enthusiastic group of women who are looking to expand into new markets. Though the saying is, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” we’ll make an exception for all of you and will be sharing success stories and learnings from both of these programs over the next few months.

As much as there is to look forward to, we can’t forget to reflect on how far we’ve come, which is why we’re celebrating some exceptional female business owners who have made significant achievements in the last year. We hope to see you all at this year’s AWE Awards on May 18th where we’ll recognize four outstanding women for their contributions to the business community.

So, as we help women entrepreneurs in Alberta “spring ahead” – so to speak – we want to thank our funders, sponsors and partners for your support and look forward to seeing you at all the Awards ceremony next month!

Client Feature: Stacy Nehring

We sat down with Stacy Nehring, Operations Manager of UTV Canada and current PeerSpark™  participant to ask her more about her business and the value she has seen from mentorship.

Q: How did you get involved in UTV Canada?

A: My Dad started UTV Canada 10 years ago. I joined him as a part-time employee seven years ago, which quickly turned into a full-time role after only a year as we reached new levels of growth! My job included everything from sales calls to shipping to sweeping the floor. I am now the Operations Manager.

Q: If you could give advice to anyone coming into a family business, what would it be?

A: My advice would be to keep the business in the business! It's not easy to work with family at all times. At the end of the day, you want to be able to have family dinners together. Put your family first, business second.

Q: When you started out at UTV Canada, did you see a gap in the mentorship you had from a business standpoint?

A: Absolutely. None of us within the family have any business background whatsoever. My Dad had other businesses he operated but none were like UTV Canada. To make the company what we wanted it to be, we definitely needed some formal mentorship to help it grow.

Q: Where did you look for business mentorship when you were first starting out?

A: The only help we had in the beginning was a family-friend who has a similar business in the RV industry, so we spoke with him a few times.  That's really the only mentorship we had except from people like our accountant or lawyer. In terms of business strategy and mentorship related to that, I didn't find that until I joined PeerSpark™ .

Q: How did you find out about the PeerSpark™  program?

A: Through an event with the Leduc Chamber of Commerce. A representative from AWE was there and my sister and I were able to learn more about the program. It wasn't until an in-depth conversations afterwards that I realized that this was the program I needed!

Q: What would you say is the biggest takeaway you have had from the program?

A: My biggest takeaway is the network of women I am now apart of. Even though we are all in totally different industries, we share the same struggles and are able to help each other through it and provide feedback and advice.

Q: What PeerSpark™  session would you say has been the most valuable to your business?

A: Definitely the Strategic Planning for Growth session. Our business was affected by the downturn and this session and mentorship helped me realize how we can move forward. We are adding a new retail line to our business this year and we are so excited!

Q: Would you recommend the PeerSpark™  program to others?

A: Absolutely. I talk about it to every woman business owner I know! The program provides great value and has helped our business tremendously. 

Be sure to follow UTV Canada on Facebook and check out their website www.utvcanada.com 

Interested in learning more about the PeerSpark™ program and how it can help your business? Get in touch with us today! 

Guest Blog: How Can Being a "Jill of All Trades” Relate to Financing?

Do you know that women account for 40% of all tool sales? Well, a good number of us get tired of waiting for someone else to do the work for us, according to Ann-Marie Campbell, a Home Depot Executive. "As women become more empowered," she said, "they come into Home Depot and say, Hey, I can do this. I don't need my husband or partner to do it for me…"

While moderating the lunchtime panel at the AWE Learning Day on February 22nd, I brought my home toolkit onto the stage to impress upon the 150+ business owners in attendance that just like the toolkit a contractor brings to your home to do their job, a financial toolkit is similarly required when it’s time to scale up your business.

Just like the multi-head screwdriver, measuring tape, hammer, nails and cordless electric drill that you keep in your basement or garage, what are the most-often requested components of a financial toolkit?

The application is the starting point and creates an overview of your business. At this stage funders want to know what product or service you provide, who owns the business, who you bank with, current financing in place, the amount you are requesting to finance and why.

Next, depending on whether you are seeking funds from a traditional source such as the bank, or from alternatives including angel investors, venture capital groups, grant providers or asset based lending/factoring organizations; the required document list will vary. Financial Statements are key and provide a picture of past performance; some financiers will request a business plan, cash flow projections and maybe your bank statements for the last 4 months.

Your accounts receivable aging, list of customers, inventory and equipment summary, as well as GST and payroll deductions status are possible ‘asks’. Market size, competitors, exit strategy, management team resumes, website address, social media accounts and a personal financial statement round out the list of possible requirements.

Phew! Are you exhausted just reading the list?!

Applying for financing may seem daunting and never-ending but in most cases it’s not. If your documents are up to date and you supply everything requested at the time you complete the application, most financiers will provide you with an answer quickly – e.g. equipment lease financing may take as little as 24 hours, factoring line 3-5 days, simple bank loan 5-10 days …

Financing involving grants, more complex debt and equity partners will take longer – be sure to ask how long the process is expected to take so that you don’t panic. Also, begin the process sooner rather than later and lastly, ask for help!

You know, I was thrilled with the number of women who raised their hands to let me know that ‘YES’ they own power tools! Ladies, it’s not that big of a stretch from power tools to financials – follow the instructions and you’ll be well on your way!

About the Author

Judy Perdomo
President, Liquid Capital Rockyview Inc.

New Support for Alberta’s Women Entrepreneurs

The Alberta government is helping Alberta’s women entrepreneurs expand and grow their businesses through the Community and Regional Economic Support (CARES) program.

Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) will receive $101,863 in funding through the CARES program for PeerSpark – a program that brings together like-minded women entrepreneurs to explore opportunities for accelerated business growth in a peer group setting. With programs starting in April and November of this year, PeerSpark will encourage leadership and business skill development while introducing participants to key resources, networks, grant programs and trade experts.

AWE’s PeerSpark program has shown tremendous potential for business and community success with graduates reporting average year-over-year revenue growth of approximately 20 per cent and an average of one to two new jobs created, with some businesses doubling in size within two years.

Read the full press release here.