As a business owner, I think a well crafted survey can provide you with a wealth of information about your customers. Creating a good survey, however ( as I have learnt), can take time and effort. It can’t be too long, shouldn’t have too many open ended questions and has to anticipate the needs of your audience. One of my goals is to get more general information on my readers and where there interest and more importantly, their challenges, lie.

As many of you know, the federal budget was released last week. They now give these budgets descriptive titles - this one is Making Life More Affordable and Supporting the Middle Class which is an interesting focus (I imagine they have a marketing department that comes up with these). Given that the biggest economic headline from the last year or so has been inflation, I suppose it is important that this budget is seen as an effort to help make life easier for Canadians. Unfortunately, the budget does not have much in the way of inflation targeting nor is there anything significant for small businesses. There are however (as always) some items of interest.

I would like to preface this by saying that as I was going down the rabbit hole of the digital economy, I realized that the term has almost become synonymous with business. The number of business that do not participate in some kind of online activity (whether it is your entire business or some part of it) is increasingly shrinking:

Hope everyone is having a lovely start to the new year! As a gift please find a mild rant below (please feel free to email me with your own opinions on this):

I’ve had various conversations with people on the subject of small business and personal finance which start with “my friend told me”. This can be compared to a game of broken telephone where the original knowledge is interpreted by the various recipients and often results in amalgam of truth and opinion, presented as fact.

As the start of the new year approaches, many of us are thinking about things we want to do differently. Of course the start of a new year is essentially a social construct. January 1st was chosen by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. to honour the god Janus (after which January is named) and as part of his efforts to align the calendar with the seasons. The Julian calendar forms the basis for our modern Gregorian calendar (which mostly just corrects for leap year which had not been taken into account). Other cultures celebrate the New Year at various times during the year and are often not a fixed date but depend on lunar cycles and may be celebrated over a number of days.

It is hard to believe that we are approaching the end of this year(I was just getting used to writing 2022). It is the time of year (between holiday preparations, Christmas shopping and trying not to overeat) that we tend to take stock of where we are, what we have done over the past year and what we want to do in the new year.

Many of us (often in spite of ourselves) are at least somewhat interested (and often excited) about Black Friday and Cyber Monday without, perhaps, even knowing why. I thought it would be interesting to (superficially) explore the psychology behind this phenomenon.

When you are in the earlier stages of being in business, you tend to be significantly less discerning with who you take on as a client (you have a business to build and you need to pay bills). Also, as an optimistic newbie, you don’t necessarily have the experience to identify clients who are going to be problematic.

In recent news, businesses will now be able to impose a surcharge to customers who pay by credit card. In the past, Visa and Mastercard specifically prohibited businesses from doing this (this was a standard clause in their agreements) If you were found in violation , your ability to accept credit cards could be revoked. This condition has now, however, been overturned as a result of a class action lawsuit that was filed in Canada (It is interesting to note that the prohibition still remains in place in Quebec).

The Quebec provincial election is quickly approaching and will take place on October 3rd. While it looks like the incumbent CAQ is going to win, by an even larger majority than the previous election, there is a possibility that the polls aren’t entirely accurate.

As most of you might know, the Canadian and global economy is experiencing some significant challenges.

The most significant impact for us, as individuals, can be seen in the guise of inflation. We have all noted the increase in prices of groceries and gas (I know for me it has started to become a common topic of discussion with friends and family as we bemoan the price of vegetables or contemplate the alternatives to driving our cars).

I’m generally not a huge fan of aphorisms (happy wife, happy life is one that irrationally annoys me). Recently, however, a colleague advised me to “fake it until I make it” in response to my own doubts about a situation and it resonated with me.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2019, 54% of all businesses had between 1 and 4 employees. It is likely (70% according to some sources) that the majority of these represent businesses with a single founder/employee/shareholder.

We know that every small business needs a marketing strategy. Whether you provide services (like myself) or products or a combination of both, the most important thing you need to know is how you are going to bring in customers.

The current financial environment seems a bit bleak right now. The pandemic, war in Ukraine, housing issues and other factors have led to supply chain disruptions, labour shortages, a plummeting stock market, and inflation. Almost everybody has been directly impacted with one of the most significant consequence being an increase in our expenses and a corresponding decrease in our net worth.

I will admit some bias in my title this week. I am currently in the middle of vacation (having written this newsletter in advance) and am hopefully enjoying it without work distractions! Admittedly, as a small business owner, it is difficult to completely detach from work. The line between work and our personal lives is much blurrier and our responsibilities are often weightier. If we don’t respond to a customer or a supplier or a bank on a timely basis, the very existence of our businesses could be at stake or at least the consequences could be significant. Some of us might be able to delegate, but it is often challenging to relinquish control.