Canadian Companies Face Different Challenges than U.S. Counterparts.

I came across an interesting discussion this week online by Paul Ricketts where he put a question out on his blog about the differences that Canadian companies face in comparison to those starting up in United States.

Many of my American business friends and I discuss this on a regular basis especially now that the world is getting smaller every day and Canada’s small business environment is growing especially now that we have a solid economy, great standard of living and a highly educated workforce. Yes, in many parts of the country that goes with 6 months of winter, but Canada is still a great place to start a business.

However in spite of all the good things about doing business in Canada, Ricketts brief survey addressed some of the issues affecting Canadian start-ups. For one, Canada has a small domestic market which is further fragmented by inter-provincial barriers and regulations. This is especially true for tangible goods. Many products are regulated provincially forcing many Canadian companies to seek markets offshore or in the U.S. quicker than developing the Canadian market. For many start-ups this means that many companies are doing business in foreign markets quicker than their U.S. counterparts and this leads to increased costs and marketing issues as companies are forced to tackle markets outside of their home country.

Canada also has a much smaller VC market and angel capital pools are smaller. This means that investors are required to be less patient in there need for returns which forces a lot of smaller companies to grow much more quickly to satisfy investors forcing in some cases quicker expansion and higher risk taking. This is not all bad, however but if you have a product that requires good long term patient investment it can be difficult to find the right investors in Canada.

Because of the size of the market only 30 million people, there is a lack of diversity of industry clusters and sub-clusters and fewer companion companies within those clusters, so a lot of start-ups are forced to go alone or go a long way from home to find companion products and companies that can use their products. Canada also suffers from a lack of large major home grown companies and has limited national and global players with a major presence to act as catalysts for new ideas and to grow management talent. This does not mean there isn’t any real talent there is, just not enough.

Ricketts also thinks that Canadian business owners have a bad case of “ sell-out-itis “ which forces Canadian companies too often to take the big cheque sell out too early or plan a business with short-term or limited thinking where the entire business strategy is predicated on finding an exit.

With that being said, a stable economy, solid work force and a growing market Canada is still a great place to consider starting a business. There are a large number of government business incentives and safe environments. The only thing that we really need is a better climate in general, because sometimes you just don’t need 6 months of winter.

Kensel Tracy, The Marketing Coach is a Senior Partner with the Corporate Coachworkz Inc. located in Ottawa and Chelsea, Quebec and is also the President of Business over Breakfast Clubs of North America now opening in every City. If you have a story that you think on doing business in Canada, he can be reached at kenselt@sympatico.ca.

What's Really Ethical in Government

I recently got an email from a disgruntled conservative that said that he did not sign on at being a conservative to have the current government give a government employee especially a senior manager that gets fired for doing a lousy job a
$400,000 golden hand shake.

I wonder how all those guys being hounded by revenue Canada, the hard working man on the street, that is trying to get ahead feels when he spends 24 months fighting a court case over some grey area with Revenue Canada only to have $400,000 of those dollars be given to an government employee that does lousy work.I think our world is completely upside down.

In government we reward people for doing a bad job. This sends all the wrong messages. One you can't be fired so don't worry do a bad job. If you have work too hard, well go on stress leave and if you stay on it long enough, retire early because of all the holidays you have saved up while you were on stress leave, er a holidays while getting paid.

I don't want this to take away from those hard working government employees only that there is too much of this lining the pockets of too few people who have places the work force where government entitlement is getting out of hand.

Take that other dude, the other ethics type government guy that left the
Federal government for another job with the City as Ethics Manager and got $500,000 in benefits from his new employer to top up his pension or take those employees that went from collecting Provincial taxes when the HST was implemented who left work on Friday, went to the same job and the same desk on Monday, started collecting the same taxes with a different name only more of those same taxes and they got vacation pay and retro active pay because they were doing the same job with a different name.

Sign me up for a job like that. I will do the same job today and call it something else tomorrow , where is my cheque? Revenue Canada is this legal, especially with a corporation. Does this mean that I can increase my salary and not have to pay taxes since its the same job I had the day before.

So ethically, I guess, it only means you take what is given, and if government types have negotiated the gold hand shake for any type of change, you can still do a pretty shitty job and get paid " big time" as long as you hang around long enough and occupy a desk.

So my ask today is ... what's really ethical in government anymore? Does anyone know, all I know is the taxpayer is wondering and sighing and steaming and wonders who he should call. Oh -- I forgot nobody knows who to call all the phones have busy signals and no one is in charge, you will have call back.