[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

People sign in to event beside poster of Featured Guest Speaker, Michele Romanow. Attendee receives a name badge lanyard. Woman stands with a coffee cup, speaking with a fellow attendee.

Anne Sellmer – Small Business Owner, standing in lobby.

Speaker 1: This was amazing.

Maeghen Cotterill – Small Business Owner, standing at entrance to meeting room.

Speaker 2: It’s nice to be in a room full of support and understanding and community.

Tim Schaufele – Small Business Owner, standing at entrance to meeting room.

Speaker 3: It’s good to hear from a person who’s actually been very successful and had some failures. I always learn a lot from people’s failures.

Manuel Garcia - Business Owner, standing at entrance to meeting room.

Speaker 4: She’s willing to try and take the risk no matter what.

Anne Sellmer – Small Business Owner, standing in lobby.

Speaker 1: It was so inspiring to hear her story, her journey, and the risks and the ups and downs, and the rollercoaster of being an entrepreneur.

Tim Schaufele – Small Business Owner, standing at entrance to meeting room.

Speaker 3: Small business owners are the heart and soul of our Canadian economy.

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AN UNLIKELY PATH
Big Dreams Advice Series

Keynote speaker Michele Romanow , Canadian Entrepreneur, Television Personality, and Venture Capitalist, walks back and forth across the stage, with two lounging chairs and a table in the background.

Keynote Speaker Michele Romanow: So I never guessed that my career would go from engineering to being a fish monger, effectively, to e-commerce, to coupons, to now financial services. But I know I got there because I was scrappy. I mean scrappy is finding resources when they don’t seem to exist. It’s constantly turning no’s into yes’s. It’s the stuff that you and I have to do still every single day as small business owners. I really believe that successful people do what unsuccessful people weren’t willing to do. There were so many moments in my career where I was like, what am I doing, this doesn’t make sense, but ultimately I would just do whatever it took to get things done.

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TRY AND TRY AGAIN
Big Dreams Advice Series

Keynote Speaker Michele Romanow: Sometimes we do ourselves such a disservice when we talk about innovation because it’s always associated with like big ideas, are we talking about things that are big enough. All of my great innovations have just come from an extraordinary amount of iteration. I’ve never had this extraordinary confidence in one idea. I’ve tried to pick industries that are growing, so the tides were rising. I tried to find places where, you know, consumer needs were really shifting. But honestly, at the beginning, I had no idea if something would work.

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IT’S THE BEST TIME
Big Dreams Advice Series

Keynote Speaker Michele Romanow: It’s never been cheaper to iterate on an idea. Today if you have an idea for a new product, you don’t have to do market research. You can actually put that product on Kickstarter. Make a two thousand dollar video with some of your friends and say this is my new invention. I have a single prototype and give me your credit card right now if you like this product enough. The market will actually tell you without you risking any capital whether you have a good idea or not. There are so many things that have made it easier to iterate on our ideas. I think it’s just the best time to be growing a business.

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post
Screen Text:
BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR TAKES COURAGE AND SACRIFICE

[Music ends]

Mandy Rennehan, Blue-Collar™ CEO and founder of FRESCO.CA, sits facing the camera on a chair. Behind her is a painting hanging on a light brown wall. Shots alternate between wide angle and close up throughout.

Mandy Rennehan: It’s not for everybody. A lot of people don’t understand that entrepreneurship and being a visionary, it takes a lot of courage, and a lot of sacrifice of your personal time, your mental time, and at times your physical, and so my advice to people is you really need to sit down and take a hard look at yourself and wonder to yourself do you really want to go down this road, as rewarding as it can be, it’s just not for everybody, and you got to be ready!

[Music]

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ADVICE FOR WOMEN IN SMALL BUSINESS

[Music ends]

Mandy Rennehan: Just get up, get dressed and let’s get going. You know what, we don’t need to feel sorry for ourselves anymore, the doors been opened, it’s ready for you to pass through.

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PEOPLE ARE THE HEARTBEAT OF SMALL BUSINESS

[Music ends]

Mandy Rennehan: I’ve often talked about technology as coming into our lives it’s made everything very frenetic, it’s made people distracted, and so now what we are doing is bringing people back into the scenario because people have created technology. And so for me people are really the heartbeat of every business, you need to have their buy-in, they need to believe in your vision, or technology or the bottom line goes nowhere and it means nothing.

[Music]

Screen text:
TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post
Screen Text:
HOW CANADIAN BUSINESSES CAN PLAY THE LONG GAME

[Music ends]

Joe Chidley, Editor and Columnist for Postmedia, and Bruce Croxon, Canadian Entrepreneur, Television Personality, and Venture Capitalist, sit facing each other on lounge chairs, a pitcher and two glasses of water between them. Shots alternate between wide angle and close up throughout.

Joe Chidley: What's the one thing, or maybe two things, that small business owners typically overlook when they're launching or trying to grow their business?

Bruce Croxon: Yeah, I think, you know, the natural thing, you know, entrepreneurs by their nature are optimists, you see a shiny coin under every rock, and you tend to get very excited when you're faced with opportunities and potential to grow your business, and I think what often gets glossed over in the quest for the sale, and closing the deal this week, is look, in order to build something of any scale, you really do need to put the time into figuring out where the company's going to go, you know, further than a week Saturday. You have to really pay attention to the type of people that you choose to come in and help you do it, unless you're going to be a one man or a one woman show, you're going to need people. And I've seen so many ideas that had potential, get ruined by the lack of attention to the type of people that you put around the idea.

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DEALING WITH TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION

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Joe Chidley: You mention some of the opportunities in IT now, but for a lot of small business people, technology might be seen as a threat to their business model, to their competitive standing, all that sort of stuff. How can small business people who don't have IT departments deal with technological disruption today?

Bruce Croxon: Well, I think the first thing that all small business people need to realize is that all the tools that are available to them and us as consumers, are also available to them as small business, right? So, if you are not technology-savvy, or you feel like there's a lot going on that you don't understand, for goodness sake's, bring somebody into the organization that does. Because it's simpler than you think, and you have to look at it from two sides, you know. One is there's a lot of technology out there that can take cost out of your business, right? I mean, I'll use an obvious example, you know, Uber, right? I mean, I don't drive downtown Toronto anymore because it's way too expensive, it's way too slow, and I have a great experience in an Uber cab. That's taking cost out of my small business, right? That is a cost line for me, and on the other side, I mean, there's lots of opportunities to use technology to increase revenue. When I say that the technology that's available for us as a consumer is available to you as a small business, I mean things like, there should be no excuse not to know who your customer is, what they like to do, what they click on ad-wise on the internet, right, for your marketing plan. All those tools exist for you to really know your customer, and once you get a customer, there really is not a good reason for you to lose them.

[Music]

Screen text:
TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post
Screen Text:
IS IT A GOOD TIME TO BE A SMALL BUSINESS ENTREPRENEUR?

[Music ends]

Michele Romanow, Canadian entrepreneur, television personality and venture capitalist, sits facing the camera on a chair. Behind her is beige wall with circular patterns of different browns and yellows. Shots alternate between wide angle and close up throughout.

Michele Romanow: The environment today for small businesses and entrepreneurs is really strong today. I think customers are craving more then ever experiences that feel niche, that are, you’ve seen the rise of crafts brands in all sorts of industries throughout CPG, and that gives a lot of opportunities to small businesses today.

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WHAT ARE THE CURRENT TRENDS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES?
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Michele Romanow: I think today in the small business world what we are seeing is that a ton of old businesses are going through great digitization trends. Now it’s easier then ever to test your business, and so you if you’ve had a brick and mortar business for example, to go online used to take ten of thousands of dollars to set up your own website, now that’s super easy. With companies like Shopify, where you can test your ideas, you can test new ideas you might have on Kickstarter, and I think that that’s probably the greatest opportunity for small businesses to expand.

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WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR FAILURES?

[Music ends]

Michele Romanow: I think I’ve learned almost everything from my failures, instead of looking at them as failures I look at them as iterations. I think that as you build a business I’ve never had one Eureka moment. I’ve had a lot of interesting ideas in some spaces, tried things and than realized, you know, the little parts of those things that were working, and applied that to my next task, to my next task to my next task. And eventually all those iterations became a big innovation that worked well but it actually took all those little failures along the way to get me there.

[Music]

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WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR EMERGING ENTREPRENEURS?

[Music ends]

Michele Romanow: My number one piece of advice for new entrepreneurs is to start now. There never feels like a great time to start a business, you never feel like you are totally ready, you never feel like the idea is perfect. But as soon as you start, you start the cycle of iteration that eventually gets you into a business that you are really proud and excited about.

[Music]

Screen text:
TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post
Screen Text:
BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR TAKES COURAGE AND SACRIFICE

[Music ends]

Mandy Rennehan, Blue-Collar™ CEO and founder of FRESCO.CA, sits facing the camera on a chair. Behind her is a painting hanging on a light brown wall. Shots alternate between wide angle and close up throughout.

Mandy Rennehan: It’s not for everybody. A lot of people don’t understand that entrepreneurship and being a visionary, it takes a lot of courage, and a lot of sacrifice of your personal time, your mental time, and at times your physical, and so my advice to people is you really need to sit down and take a hard look at yourself and wonder to yourself do you really want to go down this road, as rewarding as it can be, it’s just not for everybody, and you got to be ready!

[Music]

Screen Text:
ADVICE FOR WOMEN IN SMALL BUSINESS

[Music ends]

Mandy Rennehan: Just get up, get dressed and let’s get going. You know what, we don’t need to feel sorry for ourselves anymore, the doors been opened, it’s ready for you to pass through.

[Music]

Screen Text:
PEOPLE ARE THE HEARTBEAT OF SMALL BUSINESS

[Music ends]

Mandy Rennehan: I’ve often talked about technology as coming into our lives it’s made everything very frenetic, it’s made people distracted, and so now what we are doing is bringing people back into the scenario because people have created technology. And so for me people are really the heartbeat of every business, you need to have their buy-in, they need to believe in your vision, or technology or the bottom line goes nowhere and it means nothing.

[Music]

Screen text:
TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

We see people milling around a Michael Hyatt TD placard that is placed on an easel. Someone is handing a name badge to a guest. A name badge is seen on someone’s neck. Michael Hyatt is speaking to a woman in the lobby.

Stephanie Goertz – Small Business Owner, standing in lobby.
Speaker 1: I thought the event was phenomenal.

Katheryn Macdonald – Small Business Owner, standing in lobby.
Speaker 2: Hearing Michael talk about the importance of the people at the end of the day no matter what business you are in; you have to have good people.

Lara Johnson – Small Business Owner, standing in lobby.
Speaker 3: The importance of putting your own people first even before the customer.

Stephanie Goertz – Small Business Owner, standing in lobby.
Speaker 1: It’s what we thrive on, it’s our hairdressers, it’s our massage therapist, it’s our artists, it’s our makers, it’s our appliance repairman.

Katheryn Macdonald – Small Business Owner, standing in lobby.
Speaker 2: We employ, you know, so many people that are taking care of their own homes and their own families and so being a part of the community and giving back through employment is really important.

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OPPORTUNITY AND CONSISTENCY
Big Dreams Advice Series

Keynote speaker Michael Hyatt, Canadian entrepreneur, television personality and venture capitalist, walks back and forth across the stage, with a brown leather chair, small round table and a podium in the background.

Keynote Speaker Michael Hyatt: There is a consistency to success, there is a consistency to opportunity and to making it; people that show up and have a very consistent march make it. What you are going to find in your business is there is never one thing you are going to do to make yourself successful. I know you think there is one deal or one client or one event; that’s not true; we’ve become successful in very much a twenty-mile march. If you show up, keep showing up. You’ll probably beat most competitors, and if you have a consistent march you and you don’t lay your hat on one client or one event or one partnership, you’ll be better off as well.

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AUTONOMY AND PURPOSE
Big Dreams Advice Series

Keynote Speaker Michael Hyatt: Sixty-three percent of people that work for anybody in North America are just disengaged. Only 13 people are actively engaged trying to row the boat in the right direction and bail out the water. Well whose fault is that? It’s your fault, it’s my fault, it’s our fault as leaders. We do a bad job of engaging our staff. At Harvard and MIT many years ago, they basically took people and gave them a manual task and they said the faster you do it the more money we are going to give you. Faster more money, faster more money, manual task, and the more money they gave them the faster they did it, manual task. As soon as they made it slightly creative, cognitive, thinking, the more money they offered them? The worse they did. Humans get to a point where they want two things; they want autonomy and purpose that goes past money.

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EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY
Big Dreams Advice Series

Keynote Speaker Michael Hyatt: In the near future, all companies will be technology companies; all companies of relevance will be technology companies. Software in the cloud is utterly going to eat the planet. And you want this; it’s going to get cheaper, faster and better. There are going to be two types of companies in the future. The winners will modernize. You need to take your business, break it down into logical steps and ask one question: where can I bring in technology to start bringing out manual labour and make myself dramatically cheaper, faster and better. Accept technology start using technology.

Screen text:
TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music ends]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

Screen Text: IS IT A GOOD TIME TO START A BUSINESS?

[Music ends]

Michael Hyatt, Canadian entrepreneur, television personality and venture capitalist, sits facing the camera on a black leather chair. Behind him brown drapes with beige patterns hang behind a black leather couch. An orange pillow sits on the right side of the couch. Shots alternate between wide angle and close up throughout.

Michael Hyatt: It’s never been easier to start a business today, and that’s fantastic, and that’s because today technology is so much more advanced then it was even ten years ago, it’s like ten thousand times cheaper to start a business today, and that means that a lot of people are doing it, and that’s fantastic, but it’s also still very hard to have a business and get it going, I mean we, the tools that are available for people are fantastic and the resources, but fundamentally all the things that you need to do to start a business and run a business are fundamentally the same that they were a hundred years ago.

[Music]

Screen Text: WHAT IS THE NUMBER ONE SUCCESS FACTOR?

[Music ends]

Michael Hyatt: The number one thing I look at is immediately the entrepreneur, I always say that a fish rots from the head, and I have to really, really feel that I have a connection with the person running the company because all start ups and all early stage businesses have to pivot, and I'm really calculating the entrepreneur’s ability to pivot. And you know, can they take the feedback; do they hear what I say? Or do they listen to what I say and can they accept feedback and can we have a debate about it, and can we move the business forward. And I also have to like the product and the market and everything else, and I have to see a way that the business is actually going to generate cash flow, I think people forget in this time of technology that all businesses are really only valued on their future cash flow potentials and that’s always been true, and always will be true.

[Music]

Screen Text: HOW CAN SMALL BUSINESSES STAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE?

[Music ends]

Michael Hyatt: In the next three to five years, there will be a tremendous transformation in all businesses with this kind of idea of AI. Right now we are putting in very, very, very significant jumps in technology that transform big parts of businesses, and I think in the next three to five years, all companies will be kind of bifurcated into two; ones that start accepting and using some kinds of what I call prediction machines or artificial intelligence in their business to make things cheaper, faster and better, and ones that don’t. Any company that modernizes the store with these kind of technologies in the next three to five years will do dramatically better.

[Music]

Screen Text: WHAT SHOULD ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS CONSIDER BEFORE MAKING THE JUMP?

[Music ends]

Michael Hyatt: We glorify the entrepreneur; get out there start your own business, and I think a lot of people do it without thinking. Starting a company is very, very difficult and it can be very punishing mentally on yourself, on your relationships, on your family, and really I think maybe one in ten, or one in twenty, and maybe that’s high should actually run a business. Imagine going down a tunnel where there is no light necessarily at the end of that tunnel. It’s a very, very hard path and I don’t want to take it away from people because I think it can be a wonderful experience, but it always cost more, it always take longer, it’s a lot harder then you think, so be very, very prepared.

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

Name badges are laid out on a table. A server is seen cleaning up a food station. People are sitting at a round table and someone is drinking a glass of wine. Close-up of a plate with food that has been eaten.

Carina Alfa – Event attendee, standing in lobby.
Speaker 1: In reality everything she said was interesting, it permits us as entrepreneurs to feel that we are not alone in that.

Denis Michaud – Event attendee, standing in lobby.
Speaker 2: What hit me the most was the personal experience of Mrs. Watier, who didn’t always have it easy. One phrase I retained was “prove them wrong”.

Ixcaret Ponce – Event attendee, standing in lobby.
Speaker 3: She said that happiness is that we are better with the word “to be” then the word “to have”, to me that part was very touching.

Denis Michaud – Event attendee, standing in lobby.
Speaker 2: The entrepreneurs are the business people that go and take the risks and are the foundation of the economy.

Screen text:
PROVE THEM WRONG

Keynote speaker Lise Watier, Canadian entrepreneure and philantropist is on stage speaking in front of a podium to an audience. Shots alternate between wide shots and close ups.

Speaker Lise Watier: From nineteen-sixty-eight to nineteen-eighty six I had thousands of women who came to take Lise Watier courses at the Institute, as well in as Trois-Rivière, and there I got the idea of launching my own line of cosmetics. She did a market study for me and the results were disastrous; no one wanted to buy a Quebecois product, no one would have wanted to buy a product by Lise Watier, no one believed in it, it was zero. I could have been discouraged because… but then I said I will prove them wrong, they are wrong, you will see. And forty-five years later we were the first best selling cosmetic line in Quebec, and the third across Canada, by brand. So you know sometimes, when people don’t believe in it, but you believe in it a lot, we tell them, and we especially believe it, we shall prove them wrong, they are wrong. It was a phrase that followed me my whole life.

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THE TEAM AND THE DREAM

Speaker Lise Watier: As an entrepreneur, one thing that is very important is to have a team that supports you, a team who believes in your dream, because it is those dreams that start…everything starts with a dream in the end, but the dream eventually becomes more than a dream, it becomes an intention to succeed, and that is stronger than a dream.

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NEIGE

Speaker Lise Watier: When I had a fire in nineteen-ninety that destroyed everything, things were not going well. After this fire and everything, I launched a perfume that saved my company. I woke up one morning and told my family I was going to launch a perfume called Neige. Neige was the biggest success of a perfume launch in Canada, with a budget of twenty-five thousand dollars, and you know, launching a perfume usually costs millions.

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EQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE

Speaker Lise Watier: I led the way in the battles of my era and it became a precedent, but I believe today, with the men and women gathered here, that businesses are better when we gather all the intelligence, that of both men and women.

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TO BE IS BETTER THAN TO HAVE

Speaker Lise Watier: It is not the acquisitions and the dollars that will bring you happiness, it is who you are, how you are with your family, in your relationships, in your friendships, in the way you act with people, your collaborators, those you are with, because it comes with the verb “to be” which I hope you will remember is better then the verb “to have”.

Screen Text:
TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

[Music]

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TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post

Screen Text:
HOW DO YOU FIND THE ENVIROMENT FOR SMALL BUSINESSES IN QUÉBEC?

[Music ends]

Lise Watier, Canadian Entrepreneur and philanthropist, is sitting on a small beige couch and faces the camera. Behind her we see some white shelves and a few ornaments sitting on them. Shots alternate between wide angle and close up throughout.

Lise Watier: The environment in Quebec for small businesses is in my opinion currently very positive. There is help right now, be it governmental, or financially through banks, and that is something new, something that was not available to me during my time. I find that it is positive, and a lot of young people are starting a business while keeping their regular job, devoting 50, 30, 45% of their time to their new enterprise, all the while keeping their regular job. So we see a nice evolution. A lot of young people want to apply themselves to entrepreneurial endeavours, and that is wonderful.

[Music]

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THE EVOLUTION OF WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

[Music ends]

Lise Watier: So the business world has evolved a lot in terms of women in the workplace. Women are better prepared than they ever were fifty years ago. They are also equipped because they are learning things that fifty years ago didn’t exist. By that I mean, there were no courses, there was no mentoring, it was a lot harder and today I think that doors are opened. There are no walls. There are now stairs that we can climb, when in my case I dealt with walls.

[Music]

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WHAT ADVICE CAN YOU GIVE YOUNG WOMEN?

[Music ends]

Lise Watier: The advice I can give is to have to be sure…to have absolute faith in what you want to do, in the product you want to offer. Having this absolute faith permits us tackle any obstacle, any opposition, and to be absolutely certain that we will offer a better service than is already on the market, or that is superior in quality. We always have to surpass ourselves, and offer a better service. We can’t repeat what is already there.

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MY VISION

[Music ends]

Lise Watier: The vision, my original vision stayed the same because I surrounded myself with passionate people who really shared my dream, who shared my ambitions, to offer a quality product, to have complete respect for our clients, and to innovate, and I think that this team that is still here today is achieving that goal. I hope they will even surpass their goals, because I am seeing amazing results, and I am always very very proud of my company.

[Music]

Screen text:
TD Small Business Banking Presents
BIG DREAMS ADVICE SERIES
With Financial Post