If your think it’s hard work running your business, you are not alone. Even though small businesses are ruling the Canadian economic landscape (accounting for 98% of all businesses in Canada [1]), your survival rates are not promising; 68% after 5 years, 49% after 10 years [1]. Let’s that sink in. More than half of small businesses will not last more than 10 years!
The odds are stacked even more against those who are in the under-represented groups. The under-represented are businesses that are majority owned by women (accounting for 15.6% of all small and medium businesses), by Indigenous people (1.4%), by minorities (12.2%) and by persons with a disability (0.5%).[2]
As the COVID-19 pandemic plunged global economy into worst recession since World War II [3], under-represented businesses were amongst the hardest hit due to their existing financial fragility and poor economic health [4]. Also, their businesses were likely to be in the most affected industries including accommodation and food services, and retail sectors [5]. Top challenges were loss of customers and income, negative mental health impacts and increase in domestic work [4].
Canada’s post COVID economy does not offer any good news to the under-represented as the recovery is categorized as K-shaped, a starkly uneven division where some parts of economy are recovering well, and the others are sluggish or sinking [6]. The inequality happens along class, racial, geographic, or industry lines [7].
The research project, Building Small Business Resilience (BSBR) aims to address this issue by equipping under-represented small business owners with necessary skills to be adaptive and resilient in the face of any future disruption.
Small business bankruptcies are due to owners’ lack of experience, knowledge or vision with almost half of the failures from inadequate marketing skills [8]. This becomes more critical during major shocks that cause a sudden loss of customers [8] as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic forced businesses and consumers to leap years forward in digital adoption in a matter of weeks [9], and it highlighted the need for businesses to upskill their digital marketing. Ontario Government found only 60% of small businesses had a website [10]. More than half of businesses showed low levels of digital maturity due to low investment and lack of staff with digital skills [11]. 73% of small business owners list digital skills among their top three priorities with the top five skill gaps including digital marketing, social media, data analytics, programming, and web development and design [12].
The BSBR research will develop a Digital Marketing Training Prototype from existing Sheridan’s courses. It will be designed specifically to address challenges faced by under–represented small business owners. The training will focus on how to run an end-to-end digital marketing campaign with a $500 budget. Two cohorts of training participants will test the prototype in their own businesses, run the campaign in the simulated platforms before launching it in the real world. Participants will learn to use data analytics to adjust their efforts and optimize the campaign results.
Participants will be followed up 6 and 12 months afterwards to evaluate the longer-term impact of the training.
- Increase equitable, diverse and inclusive participation in small business sectors
- Develop optimal training courses and tools to bridge digital marketing skill gaps for under-represented small business owners
- Research data will be used to develop other training programs in digital marketing for small businesses
Training participants successfully apply the knowledge and skills from the BSBR program, pivot their businesses online and increase their resilience against any future economic disruption. More successful underrepresented owners will increase equitable, diverse and inclusive participation in small business sectors.
The training prototype can be developed into programs offered by Sheridan College. Learning gained from the project will be applied to the development of other digital marketing programs in Pilon School of Business, Faculty of Continuing & Professional Studies and EDGE Entrepreneur hub at Sheridan College.
Project learning will also be published online.
Garrett Hall, MBA Professor of Digital Marketing & EDGE Mentor-In-Residence, Sheridan College
A Professor of Digital Marketing in the Pilon School of Business, Marketing Program. Garrett primarily teach in the areas of Marketing, Digital Marketing and Entrepreneurship. Garrett is also a Mentor-in-Residence at Sheridan’s EDGE entrepreneurship hub, and a Faculty Advisor with ENACTUS (Entrepreneurial Action for all of US) Sheridan.
Garrett graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Social Psychology & Statistics in 1986. After this, he completed his MBA in 1988 from the University of Alberta with a focus on Direct Marketing and Entrepreneurship.
Garrett brings over 30 years of business management and marketing experience from entrepreneurial and large-enterprise organizations, having held positions across multiple disciplines including advertising agency Account Executive, Director of New Business, Product Group Manager, eCommerce company Business Owner and a marketing & business consultant.
In 1988, Garrett started his career as an Account Executive with Young and Rubicam in the Direct Marketing arm of Wunderman Worldwide, the world’s largest direct marketing agency at the time. Garrett managed the marketing for various clients such as Book-of-the-Month Club, IBM, AGO, and Maclean’s Magazine.
In 1992, Garrett started as the Marketing Manager of Education Book Clubs and New Business Development with Scholastic Canada, an international publisher and educational marketing company. He managed a team of 10 people in the $23+ million Book Clubs department in the areas of creative & design, production, marketing, and all aspects of sales. He set up marketing performance measurements to control costs and integrated direct marketing principles into creative design. Garrett was also responsible for the launch of the Babysitters Club brand into Canada.
From 1996 to 2009, Garrett owned The Added Touch Group, an online, catalogue, and physical retail seller of consumer household, fashion accessories and gift items. During peak season, Garrett supervised more than 100 employees and a staff of seven department managers through all aspects of the offline and digital businesses; including marketing, sales, strategic planning, forecasting, budgeting, internal controls, human resources, operations, technology, internet, accounting activities and more. With the power of Direct and Digital Marketing, The Added Touch was constantly researching our products, customer behaviour, and responses to promotions.
Under Garrett’s leadership, sales grew to $7.5 million and the customer CRM grew to 835,000 contacts. In only six months, pure internet sales grew from $0 to $600,000 and the digital customer base increased from 0 to more than 170,000 contacts. In 2009, Garret sold the business to an American company called Gardens Alive, a $500 million revenue online retailer and began his own consulting business.
During his time as a consultant, Garrett assisted companies looking to expand into new markets. This included Garden’s Alive, which launched nine brands into Canada in 2009, generating more than $25 million in Canadian sales.
Sujinda Hwang-Leslie, Doctor of Creative Industries
Program Coordinator, Professor of Marketing, Sheridan College
Dr Sujinda Hwang-Leslie has been working as a designer, art director, creative director and marketing director in the digital media and marketing field since 1993. During that time, she bought one business and founded two start-ups.
Her first business, Applied MultiMedia (APMM), was a division of Applied Learning, an ASX listed company in Australia. She took part in the management buyout and became one of the four partners in the business. APMM offered training solutions to top tier companies in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore including ANZ, BHP, Coca-Cola Amatil, Telstra, Woolworth and Australia Post. It won several Masters of Multimedia, Real Estate Marketing Awards, and Australian Institute of Training and Development awards.
Her second business, a start-up called 1024 Design, started as a digital design agency and grew into a marketing firm, offering digital design and marketing consultancy services to mainly start-ups and small businesses. Sujinda worked with both B2B and B2C clients in Australia, UK and Thailand from various industries. Her top tier clients included Shell UK, Shell Thailand, Amcor and CDX.
Her third business, a start-up called 1024 Simulation, offering integrated big data solutions for transport simulation and analysis. Clients included Deutsche Bahn Engineering and Consulting in Germany, South Africa and UK, and SNC-Lavalin in Canada.
Currently, Sujinda is a Marketing Professor at the Business School, Sheridan College. She was part of the team to develop the Graduate Certificate Creative Industries Management Program, which was launched in Fall 2019. She also developed curriculums for two visual communication design courses, six digital marketing courses and three micro-credential courses. In addition, she led the team to create integrated experiential learning platforms for students to practice the latest digital marketing technologies.
Sujinda received a Bachelor of Communication Arts (Motion Picture and Still Photography) from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand (1989), a Postgraduate Diploma in Design Studies from University of Technology Sydney, Australia (1992), and a Doctorate of Creative Industries from Queensland University of Technology, Australia (2009). Her thesis was an interdisciplinary study of Graphic Design and Marketing.
Sujinda is an Australian and Thai with Chinese and Burmese heritage. She was born moderately deaf so she is keenly aware of the challenges of being under.
Bethany Osborne, PhD (Adult Education and Community Development)
Dr. Bethany J. Osborne teaches in the Community Worker Outreach and Development and Social Service Worker programs at Sheridan. She was delighted to join the Sheridan team in 2015. For over a decade before coming to Sheridan, she both developed curriculum and taught in community development and social service work programs at the University of Toronto, Guelph Humber University, George Brown College and Seneca College.
Bethany is an innovative educator and researcher with over 20 years of experience building and engaging diverse communities. She has her MA in Adult Education and Community Development in the collaborative program in Women and Gender Studies and a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto. Over her career, she has worked with non-profit organizations as a researcher, educator and consultant, enjoying a key role in supporting community transformation through innovative and creative program and project design, grant writing, and working with leadership to develop dynamic learning communities.
Bethany has worked extensively with different immigrant and refugee groups. Over the last decade, she has focused her research on women’s experiences of state violence, focusing on forced migration, precarious immigration status and incarceration. She is particularly interested in the impact that violence has on learning, and how communities impacted by violence can be rebuilt. Bethany is committed to participatory action research and often uses creative modes to engage with the communities she is working with.
Bethany has both worked and travelled internationally, including a 3-year term in Bangladesh where she worked with women in rural Bangladesh employed by fair trade organizations in order to increase their sustainability. She has published extensively in U.S. based media sources, academic books and journals and has had the opportunity to presented conference papers in both Canada and internationally.
Research Administration and Support
Noreen Javed, Hub Manager, EDGE Sheridan College
Lisa Kember, Business Development Lead, EDGE Sheridan College
Michelle Keast, Research Grant Coordinator, Sheridan College
[1] Government of Canada. (2019). Key Small Business Statistics – January 2019. Retrieved from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/h_03090.html
[2] Government of Canada. (January 2020). SME Profile: Ownership demographics statistics. Retrieved from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/h_03115.html
[3] The World Bank (June, 2020). COVID-19 to Plunge Global Economy into Worst Recession since World War II. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/06/08/covid-19-to-plunge-global-economy-into-worst-recession-since-world-war-ii
[4] Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce (CWCC). (May 2020). Falling Through the Cracks: Immediate Needs of Canada’s Underrepresented Founders. Retrieved from https://canwcc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Falling-through-the-Cracks_CanWCC_May2020v19.pdf
[5] Dua, A., Mahajan, D., Millan, I., and Stewart, S. (May 2020). COVID-19’s effect on minority-owned small businesses in the United States. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19s-effect-on-minority-owned-small-businesses-in-the-united-states
[6] RBC Economics. (December, 2020). Navigating 2021: 21 Charts for the Year Ahead. Retrieved from https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/navigating-2021-21-charts-for-the-year-ahead/
[7] Aldrich, E. (December, 2020). What a K-shaped recovery means, and how it highlights a nation’s economic inequalities. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/k-shaped-recovery-definition
[8] Statistics Canada. (1997). Failing Concerns: Business Bankruptcy in Canada. Retrieved from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/61-525-x/61-525-x1997001-eng.pdf
[9] Baig, A., Hall, B., Jenkins, P., Lamarre, E., and McCarthy B. (May, 2020). The COVID-19 recovery will be digital: A plan for the first 90 days. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-covid-19-recovery-will-be-digital-a-plan-for-the-first-90-days
[10] Ontario Government. (2020). Ontario and Canada Helping Small Businesses Go Digital. Retrieved from https://news.ontario.ca/medg/en/2020/06/ontario-and-canada-helping-small-businesses-go-digital.html
[11] Bédard-Maltais, P. (April, 2020). The Digital SME. Retrieved from https://www.bdc.ca/en/blog/pages/digital-sme.as
[12] Startup Canada (October, 2017). Next-Generation Skills and Technologies Proven Key in the Advancement of Canadian-Owned Small Businesses. Retrieved from https://www.startupcan.ca/2017/10/next-generation-skills-technologies-proven-key-advancement-canadian-owned-small-businesses/