Tips from the Foxquilt Den Entrepreneurship Summit
The Entrepreneur Summit was held by Foxquilt at Workplace One in downtown Toronto. This exciting event highlighted some of the challenges that small business and startups face. Industry leaders shared their expertise and advice on People, Marketing, and Finance panels. If you missed it, don’t worry; here are some of the main takeaways from the event.
People panel
You need to be ready to invest; not just in dollars, but in talent.
Understand what talent you need, and make sure your business model aligns with it. Small businesses have to compete in different ways other than just salary when going against large companies that have infinite finance.
When you’re hiring, assess your prospects and ask yourself are they passionate about the problem you want to solve.
Who may be the best fit to work with you isn’t necessarily the best person you’ll get along with on a personal level – and that’s ok!
When hiring, look for a sense of tenacity, curiosity, and humility.
Marketing panel
There are a lot of tactics and tools that are free such as social media. You will have to invest time in it, but it saves you money.
Go for low hanging fruit; make content and write blogs. Get people aware of the fact that you exist. It takes a long time to build yourself on digital.
Invest in the proper things – the things you actually need versus the things that would simply be nice to have. You have to reverse engineer your business.
When you’re still small and revenue is lean, you may want to consider outsourcing a lot of tasks. That way, what needs to be done is done by an expert, and you won’t have to let employees go if you lose any revenue streams.
Finance panel
It’s important to understand your market, the size of your market, the problem you’re solving. It’s about having a really good story, being able to tell it, and have people pass it on.
Entreprepreneurs shouldn’t be asking “What business decisions make me attractive to investors?” That’s focusing too much on investors and venture capital. Instead, you should be focused on your customers and business model.
A lot of business founders put off looking at the numbers and finances. It may be boring, but you have to do it early on.
Look into hiring research interns and recent graduates.
As industry leaders in the small business and startup space, Honeybee Benefits believes that people are a business’ top asset. It’s never too early (or too late) to start thinking about unique talent attraction and retention strategies, and what company culture means for your business.
Find out what Honeybee Benefits can do for your business.