This week (October 19 to 25th, 2014) is BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada) Small Business Week. The idea behind this series of events is to celebrate entrepreneurs, as well as Canada’s small and medium-sized enterprises. This is an annual celebration of entrepreneurship that the Business Development Bank of Canada has been organizing for 35 years.
Each year, around 10,000 business people come together at Small Business Week events across Canada to learn, network and socialize. These events are conferences, seminars, information sessions, luncheons and trade fairs. Your small business should find out about your local events and consider attending one, even if it is only to network with other small business owners.
As part of Small Business Week, there is also a webinar hosted by EDC (Export Development Canada) on “How to Grow Your Business Through Exporting”, to let small business owners hear from exporting companies (who started out as small businesses like themselves), share their experiences on how they grew their company.
According to the BDC, 98.2% of businesses in Canada have fewer than 100 employees. Also, there are about 1.1 million companies in Canada and 99.9% of those businesses are small and medium sized companies. With numbers like these, every week should be small business week!
Besides attending any of the various Small Business Week events that are already planned, you can do other things to celebrate Small Business Week. You can plan your own event or reach out to a fellow small business owner and take him or her out for a coffee and a chat in order to celebrate and exchange wisdom.
If you have office space in an office business centre, you could consider asking the management to hold a networking event or a meet and greet in one of their boardrooms, meeting rooms or seminar training rooms. This will allow you and your fellow small business owners within that facility to interact and celebrate Small Business Week.
Another way to celebrate Small Business Week is to reach out through your blog and social media channels, to educate customers, clients and vendors about Small Business Week and the role that small businesses have in Canada. Let them know some of the numbers that the BDC has published and the importance of small businesses like yours.
