 the north, starting a small business in Canada here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. I'm joined by Dr. Ken Rogers in Canada, British Columbia. And we're going to talk about two things. One is how you start the business. And there's lots of possibilities. There's so much there. And then how you continue the business. In other words, how you avoid losing the business. Why is this relevant? It's relevant because actually there's a lot of people who are worried about life in the U.S. of A. There's people who worry about Trump winning the next presidential election, the things that he would do to the country and to them, and who invariably scan on the horizon for other places to which to move. And one of the places that seems to be a favorite among a lot of people is Canada. So we talk about Canada as a possibility for survival. Anyway, Ken can help us with that. Ken Rogers is going to help us survive. So in general, Ken, is it harder or easier to start a business in Canada? Well, to just start it, it's about just about the same. The biggest difference between them is the ease of getting capital. And that's easier in the United States. But if you simply want to start a business from your basement, and you're making widgets and selling them at the local fair, you really don't have a main capital problem. Well, can I come and do that? Can I come to Canada and make widgets in my basement? Or will that violate some kind of law, provincial or federal? It wouldn't violate a provincial or federal, but it might violate a municipal, like zoning. You have different zoning rules between different cities, but most cities have a business occupation or home business requirement that in some exclusive districts, you're not supposed to have a home business. But now, given how widely used computers are, a person at home using a computer to business like with COVID, the at-home requirement, a lot of those things are either impossible for the municipality to figure out or it's a waste of time to police it. So if I'm just an ordinary guy like me and I come over there and I stay for a while without any long-term immigration status, am I going to be able to do that? I mean, let's say it's an information technology business. Let's say it's a branch of ThinkTech Hawaii. And so it's all on a computer and the zoning really doesn't reach that. And I just stay and stay and stay. What's going to happen to me when the immigration people find out about me if they ever do? Well, basically when you enter the country, you're only supposed to stay for six months. Now, it's hard. You can move around Canada without anybody knowing. So you may arrive in Edmonton, Alberta by airplane and you end up doing your business in Vancouver. The immigration people might have trouble figuring out where you are and do they waste their time doing it? As long as I stay out of trouble. They usually don't. Yeah, it would be a lot easier for you. Canada is no really difficult for anybody with training and that isn't going to be a burden on the welfare aspects of the society. The ability to enter Canada is very easy. For example, less than a month ago, the Canadian government increased their targeted number of immigrants they were going to allow into Canada this year and they increased it from 400,000 to 500,000. Well, the U.S. equivalent would be to have five million like Canada's population is about one tenth of the U.S. So it's a huge, huge increase. They're standing on their head for anybody with qualifications. If you're a plumber or an electrician, construction subtree, you need to have your certificate wherever you're working and those are pretty easy to get. If you're a lawyer or a medical doctor, that's considerably more difficult because the same as in the United States, there's a professional organization that stands on their head to keep anybody else out. If you're a lawyer with approved standing in Hawaii, you can't just go to California and open up your law business. Now, if you're talking, you're an example of the publishing business. There's not a similar rule of restricting that you could go into that business. So suppose I want to do this by buying a business. I think we're going to take just a moment and talk about that. Suppose I have a million dollars, oh, God should only provide. I suppose I have a million dollars that I want to spend buying an existing business in Canada. Has that changed the calculus? Well, number one, that would put you to the absolute front of the immigration list. Then you'd say accept if you want to start a restaurant. You have that. And if you're coming from China or India or Vietnam, you want to open or a Thai restaurant, we've had in Canada a load of all of those. There isn't any room for any more of those. If you were coming from Mongolia and you wanted to do a Mongolian restaurant, that'd probably be okay or Nepal or Bongo Bongo. As long as it's not something that's there. But for most other businesses, there's not a problem. Now, you can't come to regulated businesses like you can't just come to Canada and open a bank. Yeah, of course. And speaking of banks, you made one comment a minute ago that's really interesting. That capital is easier in the United States than it is in Canada. And I recall also that Canada has a very limited number of banks. And that probably explains why an average guy is not going to open a bank in Canada. And they're all humongous. So how does this limited number of banks, only big banks, only powerful banks, affect the availability of capital for a small business, either in loans. And on the other side, in terms of investment, sale of stock, securities laws and the like, you said it was harder to get money in Canada. Why and in what way? Well, one is the nature of the banks. In the United States, you will have, I'm just pulling out of the air an example, but there's a fairly nice city called Spokane, Washington. Now, if a typical US city of that size, it's probably three quarters of a million people, they probably have, you know, the Spokane National Bank, then they have the Spokane Second National Bank, and they have, you know, there'll be a whole bunch of local, local financial institutions. Now, those institutions depend on the city within which they're occupied, you know, and the staff remains the same. Now, if you take in California, which has a similar to Canada, you know, you have Bank of America or Wells Fargo with branches all over California. Now, in Canada, we have really five big banks, and they move their staff all around. So the staff, somebody might have been born in Toronto and they're shipped to be a assistant manager of a branch in, you know, near Vancouver. Well, they don't give a hoot about, you know, the local thing, you know, the same way that the bank that's in the US city that's just local, like I remember living in downtown Brooklyn and across the street from the building I lived in was the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn. You know, well, that Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn, when they're making loans, you know, they're all going to be local. They got a feel for that area. They're going to, you know, live or die in that area. And so, when you have a situation like now where we've gone through the COVID, and you're sitting about, will that business survive? You know, somebody had a real hard time in COVID. They're, you know, hanging by their fingernails right now. They go into the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn, you know, and you kind of say, help. They're inclined to, if you go into a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada or, you know, the Bank of Montreal, one of the big five banks in Canada, and you said, I need help. They'd say, you know, here's your notice, your loan, everything you owe is demanded. You know, like just, you know, you can't show any weakness to the Canadian bank. You know, almost, you know, a small business is almost insane to get a financing from a Canadian bank. Well, that's terrible. You know, it's the old thing, the old adage about, they'll only give you a loan if you don't need one. Well, they're pawnbrokers in the sense of, you know, how much collateral do you put up, you know, and right now the, you know, Canadian banks are basically, you know, your business is suffering a little bit. They say, well, gee, if you get your wife to cosign and your personal liability and blah, blah, blah, you know, will accommodate you in three months from now, they call your loan. You know, and all they did was suck you in to put in your house up as collateral if you hadn't already done that. That's a debt trap. So what do you do if you're a small business and the big banks aren't really going to care about you, but you do need a loan, you know, to get your business going? Where do you go in Canada? You can't go to Brooklyn. Well, you, first of all, the easiest money to start a business is really to use the equity in your house. You know, well, that suddenly eliminates an awful lot of people. They don't have a house or if they do have, they don't have much equity in it. But, you know, you can get, you know, funds without the risk that a small business has using the security of your house. As long as it's there and you're making the monthly payments, nobody cares. And, and so you get that money now, then you've got to go the normal, how do you get some money? If you have a problem, the same idea, how do you get some money if you have an opportunity? You know, you start off with your relatives and friends. Yeah. Well, yeah, and they could be lenders, but they could all be investors. And I want to, I want to go to that investment and investment capital, you know, the kind that where the investor is at risk and there's no obligation to pay them back. So how does that work in Canada? How is that different in Canada than in the U.S.? It's friends, family, and so forth. But it's also, you know, venture capitalists and all that, who are willing to take a chance with you. Is that market a less of a possibility in Canada? Well, you've got to start before you get to the venture capital. The venture capitalists require that a business has existed for, usually for a while, or it has a phenomenal game plan. And, you know, they're really not, you know, big risk takers. You know, they really want it. They want a business that's booming along, needs money to expand and that they can, you know, generally require that it's big enough to be listed on a stock exchange where the venture capitalists can get out within a fairly short period of time. Well, the securities laws in Canada, in theory, look roughly the same as the ones in the U.S. But in practice, it's a lot easier to raise money from people you don't know. You know, like, that's where you start to get into securities problems. Like, securities exemption would be, you'd get some money from your father-in-law or your, you know, high school best friend or sort of thing. But the minute you get going one step further from that, you're dealing with, you know, selling securities to the public, which is what securities commissions are supposedly supposed to have under their control. Well, in the United States, there's no great major policing of small business amounts. You know, if you, you know, get money from, you know, 10, 15 people, you know, in the United States, securities commission really doesn't really care or follow it up. Whereas in Canada, there seems to be more staff or something that they make it more difficult for the small guy to go along. And, you know, there's just less exemptions under the securities rules in Canada. Well, if I'm in the U.S. and I own a business in Canada because I bought it or I made it and I stay in the U.S., I'm still living here. Am I going to be able to use the advantage of the American capital raising systems to invest in my business in Canada? Do people do that? Sure. You know, like, if you're a Canadian and you can go to San Francisco and ask the Bank of America to lend you money, they may do so and therefore a Canadian investing money raised in the U.S. in Canada. If you're an American and you have a business in Canada, obviously you can raise your money under American rules, then it's very easy to, you know, switch from U.S. dollars to Canadian dollars and be invested in your Canadian business. Yeah, there's all these cross border issues. I mean, for example, I could have a business in the U.S., call it a corporation and stay in Delaware, I guess. And I can open up a, I get a little space somewhere in Colonna Canada, for example, and I open up a little shop there using the American business. But I wonder if, you know, if that's the best way or should I instead organize a Canadian business, either provincial or federal? Well, if you were taking your example, you're setting up business, you'd be next door to a McDonald's, next door to a Burger King, the next door to a Home Depot, the next door, you know, the endless number of the businesses in Canada are international businesses, you know, where their headquarters are in the U.S., you know, so just because yours is a small one, you know, you may call it Joe's Plumbing and you've got, you know, an office in Seattle and an office in Vancouver, you know, it can just be the same when you're raising your money in Seattle for your business in Vancouver or vice versa. Well, is there an advantage for me to, you know, come across the border one day within my, say, my six months stay or however long it is? And, you know, find a lawyer in Colonna or elsewhere and say, incorporate me, make me a corporation or an LLC or some kind of limited partnership, what have you, and create my business as a Canadian business. Is that a benefit to me? And if it is, is it better to do provincial or federal? Sorry for interrupting. You probably don't even need a lawyer. You can probably do, incorporate the business online, which I assume you can do in the United States though. It's easier in some states than others. Yeah. So is there a benefit in me creating a business in Canada as opposed to taking my existing business and opening a branch? Probably because you, you know, if you have just the Canadian only business, you know, you call it Joe's Plumbing Canada as opposed to Joe's Plumbing US, because you've got to file a tax return in Canada for the Canadian business. Well, if you've got business in both countries, or if you're an American taxpayer and you got a business in Canada, like in its, or let's say an American corporation with business in Canada has to deal with the tax problems of both countries, you know, which is for a small business is just a colossal pain. I mean, think of one of the reasons small businesses have difficulty is dealing with the tax code, then it doesn't matter if you're talking Kandor or the US. I wouldn't have to deal with the tax code either way. For example, McDonald's sells a lot of hamburgers in some city in Canada. It's an American company, a multinational, whatever it is. They're going to have to pay Canadian tax, right? They're going to deal with multiple taxes, right? Well, yeah, they probably have a complex corporate structure. They probably have a, you know, McDonald's, British Columbia, which might have, you know, 30 of their, 50 of their branches or something, but they may, they may even get down to narrowing the, more than that because of different provincial tax, but they probably have a McDonald's Canada, the McDonald's, you know, whatever. And then they just consolidate those companies. That's different for a mega corp has little trouble with the electronic accounting, whereas an individual, you know, or a little weed business, you choke to death on accounting fees and legal fees. Speaking of which, I went and looked up, see if I can find it, I went and looked up how to start a small business in Canada and found a, an outfit called Healy, and Healy Consultants. And the first thing they tell you is the cost of establishing a Canadian entity. So for a tax resident, I guess that means an LLC tax resident, $10,000, and I'm not giving you the small change here, for a limited partnership, $12,000 for a PLC, I'm not sure what that is, $12,000 for a branch of a foreign company, $13,000 for a representative office, that's an office, $12,000 for a Canadian LLC package. I guess that includes a lot of consulting, $24,000, and so forth. And then there's this maintenance thing where I guess they charge you for, you know, downline services. But this is really expensive. You said, you know, you could go online and establish a company, but there are consultants out there who have these ordinary fees. What am I missing? You know, like laws, like the big numbers you were just quoting is, you know, in line with my comment that, you know, you can, small business has a great problem because they don't have adequate accounting and legal advice. On the other hand, the impediment to starting a small business and succeeding in it requires that legal and accounting advice. And they're just, you know, at such exorbitant amounts in dollars compared to other occupations that the, you know, the fees are chockered, an impediment to starting a small business. Well, it's not only starting it, it's continuing it. And I wanted to spend some time with you about that. So let's assume I start my business, you know, and I'm sure there's lots of other considerations beyond what we've discussed. But let's assume I have my business, it's operating, it's running. I'm all set. What about the costs of continuing it? What about the costs of getting, you know, employees or people who will do the work? What about the, you know, the general way when I call it, administrative expenses, legal expenses? And what about the mistakes I could make? Well, one of the main mistakes most people make is they know nothing about accounting and they start their business with, in the back of their mind, you know, how they're going to make a profit. You know, they kind of add the, what are the costs and what will be the selling price. But they don't really have a clue on how you do the accounting for that. And then they make the cardinal mistake of virtually all small businesses. They think profit rather than cash, you know, is that, you know, how do you project and keep control over your cash? You know, and that's where the difference in the, in the attitude of Canadian banks really hurt, you know, or where your, you know, main mistake many people make is they just have inadequate capital and they're unable to get it, you know, and it shows up eventually as a cash, cash flow problem rather than, you know, a net profit problem or the outlook for the business will still be fine, but they die because they get choked out on cash. Yeah, you've got to be able to pay your bills. So what about the human resource, resource aspects, you know, in Hawaii, we have a lot of issues and troubles and challenges about hiring people with complying with all the requirements. Same time, you know, and this, this goes to the Uber experience, Uber experience with the taxis, you know, about a, for example, is it an employee or is it an independent contractor and a lot of litigation going on around the country over that issue. And, and companies are trying to allow for the gig economy and the gig economy wants that, you know, a good part of the workforce wants that. But, you know, we have a very, what do you want to call it, a troubled, you know, a labor market. And sometimes you think there are too many jobs and sometimes you think there are too few jobs that never really sure these days in the wake of COVID, whether people want to stay in their jobs or not. And what kind of jobs are really attractive or not. So how is that going on in Canada? If I want an employee to help me work on my widgets, am I going to be able to find one? Or is it going to be a challenge and a showstop? Well, I thought you made a bit of a mountain out of a molehill in your description of the difficulty of getting an employee in the United States or getting one in Canada. I mean, I ran a business in Salt Lake City for a while and, and it was really quite easy to attract a new employee and, and fit them in. And, you know, the same in Canada. I mean, you know, as normally, you know, if you have an opportunity, a job that you need to get filled, you usually get quite a few applicants you get to pick and choose. So it's not a problem. No, no, small businesses can, you know, get people, you know, difficulty, you know, example, you don't have adequate accounting. So the first, you know, one of the early people that small businesses hire is somebody to do the bookkeeping, you know, and if they have a, you know, if they go to KPMG, they can't afford it. You know, so you get Joe Smith CPA or Sam Jones CPA and, and you don't have a clue whether they'll do a good job for you or not. But, you know, at least you're going to get some professional help there if you can afford that. You can get, sorry, I was going to say, you can get, you know, services of any sort in Canada or the U.S., but, you know, as long as you can pay the piper. What about the notion of hiring people across the border? Suppose I want somebody who is skilled in widgets. Does a small business in Canada want to look across the border? Are there impediments to doing that? Well, I mean, since, you know, I'm a bit of a news junkie, and, and I see a lot of, you know, cities like El Paso, Texas, where, you know, every morning there's a big flood of people coming across the border to, to work at the U.S. Now, if you go to, you know, Detroit, there's a huge number of people that live in Canada just across the river, you know, and they cross, you know, the, the same bridge all the time every morning, you know, especially working in the medical field. You know, I don't know what percentage of doctors and nurses in Detroit live in Canada and work in the U.S. Well, actually, when I, when I read up on this, I found that that's a great need in Canada. Canada is looking for medical professionals and there's apparently a shortage of them and a lot of health companies want to find them. Yeah, that ties in exactly with, with federal governments increasing the immigration quota and they're specifically after people that are qualified and they've agreed to ease some of the restrictions. You know, if you're have a medical doctor's certification from, let's say, India and, you know, you come to Canada, normally you have a lot of problem getting that, you know, acceptance of your training. Well, what they've done is they started to study the foreign, what qualifications does the foreign certification really have and therefore making it easier to get so that the person from India that took their college education in India, you know, and they want to come to Canada, they have a lot easier time getting their medical credentials approved and therefore they can work. That's great. That's always been the problem with, with skill and you know, like the medical profession has, you know, in Canada, probably one of the ugliest unions, and I use the term union, because really it, that's what they are, is a union designed to protect those that have the credential and keep anybody else out and make any buddy with, you know, partial credentials, you know, treated as non-existent. What about the east and west issue? I mean, you have a different culture in Canada in the east. You have a lot of diversity all over the country and including the west, but in the east the culture is different. It's a French, a lot of people are, be French as a first language, and they don't speak as much English as you would like. What about hiring somebody from, you know, thousands of miles away along, you know, the horizontal frame of Canada? And do they, do they stick? You know what I mean? One of the problems in Hawaii is that people don't understand what Hawaii is about and they come out here and then they find out that it's really not, not their cup of tea and they leave. And so the big question is always, do you really appreciate what you're getting into? And I think, you know, will it work out for you in a place that's different from where you came from? What about that issue that's called the cultural arbitrage between, you know, the east coast and the west coast in Canada? Well, your geography is wrong. You know, it's not east and west. Really, there's one province in Canada, Quebec, you know, where Montreal is in particular, it's the largest city. And there is a cultural difference between Quebec and everywhere else. Although about half of Montreal's population are speaking English and deal, you know, with Canadian companies and deal in English, well, they do it. You know, but, you know, the farthest east in Canada, like Newfoundland, when they had the oil sands developments in Alberta and they needed thousands and thousands of workers and in Newfoundland, you know, the problems with all the fisheries and they, you know, which had been their main occupation ended up where, you know, there was just airlifting fly them from Newfoundland to work in the oil sands in Alberta and they kind of fly in, work for two weeks, fly them home for a week and then fly them back, you know, for another couple of weeks. And that is very common. Now, there's lots of people go back and forth between, you know, Southern Ontario or Ontario in the west, you know, so that, you know, it's really only Quebec that you don't have the transference of people. You know, now I would think you're more likely in Canada to be able to hire somebody, you know, from New Brunswick or Ontario for your business in, in Kelowna, British Columbia or Vancouver, British Columbia, then you would be, you know, if you're in Texas to hire somebody from Massachusetts or vice versa. Yep. Okay. We're running out of time and I wanted to ask you one last thing, which is, you know, your taste on this, if you were doing it. So, Query, would you do a business in, well, in what form would you do the business? Generally speaking, as a startup business. And would you do your own business or would you buy somebody else's business? You know, I mean, on that point, we know a lot of mom and pop businesses, they go out of business because their kids don't want to participate and their kids have other plans. And so they can't continue the family line in the business. That makes businesses available for sale. So would you do your own or would you do a purchase of a small business? And, you know, finally, would you do a provincial organization or a federal organization? And what are the choices would you make for you, Ken, your preference? Well, in legal form, I'd rather have a corporation to separate my individual affairs and liability. You know, and a corporation is an inexpensive item to create and to maintain. And it doesn't require, you know, that you can do it online. You really don't need, you know, major expertise to help you. Well, then, well, I don't know what else. Well, would you do it, would do it provincially or would you do it in the federal? Well, if you're starting in a one province, it's really, and you then want to expand to another one, you have a pretty simple process of inter provincial registration. And provincial corporations are easier to do and easier to maintain than the federal one. But, you know, the federal one is no, no great difficulty. Like it's not a burden for somebody starting a new business to incorporate and be incorporate with either in one province or in or federally or in a province with an extra provincial registration. That's not a problem at all. And if you were me, if you were me, and I say I was trying to have another chapter, and I was going to I really like to establish a business. Oh, where would you go in Canada? What province would you go? And what would be your advice on whether to establish this, you know, as an American company or a Canadian company? And in what in what form for me, who I would have sort of a tenuous immigration capability. So I need to be nimble that way. And would you recommend that I get capital before I come or I get it after I come? Well, that choices a little bit like like thinking, you know, if you were going to go to to the United States, you know, you have different places, you know, if you're if you're going to say, well, gee, I'm going to pick San Francisco or Boston, you know, the first reaction, or, you know, thing to say, gee, that might not work because it costs too much to live there. You know, where if you're saying, I want to go to, you know, Mississippi, you may say, well, you know, do you know the general culture? Like in Canada, you certainly wouldn't go from Hawaii to Quebec, you know, like, let's say to Quebec City, which is about the, you know, sixth biggest city in Canada, about a million, close to a million people. But it is totally French speaking, you know, so that unless you're fluent in French and want to do your business in French, or you can employment in French, then you wouldn't go there, you know, where you could do in Montreal, it's got a mix of French and English. But, but if you picked, you know, New Brunswick, you know, it would cost the standard of living would be quite inexpensive, not unlike Nevada. You know, Nevada, you know, you can get a house in suburban Las Vegas for, you know, a fraction of the price you could get in Seattle or, or, you know, dream in New York. I mean, you'd have to go how, you know, New York, Philadelphia type of city, you know, how far out in the suburbs you have to go before you got a price that's reasonable. So you have the choice of where to go is a, what's the cost of living? B, what's the weather? You know, like you may say, well, I really don't want to move to Midland, Texas, you know, or, you know, because it's too hot for me, or I don't want to live in Las Vegas because it's too hot. But, you know, you have the question of weather now in Canada, that's a fair difference. It's kind of like saying, you know, what's the difference between Seattle and Minneapolis? You know, Minneapolis is a wonderful place in the summertime. You know, Seattle is a wonderful place, 12 months a year. You know, no, that's my biased opinion on weather. So you have really a choice of, you know, what's the city like? Is this a nice place to live? It's not unlike the choice of what neighborhood would you move to? You know, in each big city, normally has, has a bit of everything. But, you know, it's, it's, Well, I want to move to a place where my market had the money to pay for my goods. You know, whether I had to ship them out or sell them locally, I would want a certain amount of prosperity there because that would, that would raise the possibilities of profit for me, wouldn't Yes, but you've got to define market, you know, and that's one thing where there's an advantage in the United States to opening a new business because there's an awful lot more people per square mile and a lot more people close to you. Now, if you just compare opening the business in Salt Lake City, doesn't give you the same market as opening a business in Los Angeles or in, you know, anywhere in Pennsylvania or, you know, near New York City or anywhere in New Jersey, you know, because, you know, if you're sitting in Salt Lake City, you've got to, you know, two and a half million people in the Metro, but then you got 500 miles to the next nearest place, you know, you've got, you know, of any size, you know, you're Boise, Idaho going one direction and Las Vegas in another and Denver in another, and then if you go straight west, there's nothing, you know, till you get to San Francisco. Well, you know, I think, I think the market, yeah, that's the size of the market is a big difference. I mean, if you're a plumber, you don't need that big a city, you can pick, you know, where you can, you know, have cost of living may be more important than size of market. Yeah, there's another thing too. We had a show yesterday with a guy who was in Laos, and he said, well, it's a nice place, you know, and the people try hard and it's very interesting from the cultural diversity of it. But he said, you can never forget that it's corrupt. This is sort of a corruption quotient. Matter of fact, you know, this is a metric. There are people who study this in Southeast Asia and tell you how a given country, you know, does on a scale of corruption. And so it's a question of business climate. And that's my last question of comparison to you today. Business climate. Now, arguably, every city in the US has its own business climate, some more appealing, others less appealing. But in general, Canadian business and the climate, you know, the community climate that accepts new businesses, accepts new business people, new entrepreneurs, new ventures. How does that compare with the US? And in terms of, you know, dealing in terms of honesty and corruption, how does that compare with the US? Acceptance is pretty well the same. But in terms of the corruption stink, you know, in the US, you know, if you just mentioned corruption and you say New Jersey, everybody accepts that that smells like the worst state. It may or may not be true. That's just the image. Similarly, in Canada, you'd have Montreal, you know, as having, you know, you hold your nose to it in that attitude. No, that may be because I have always been a Western Canadian and have that particular bias. But certainly, that's the image that you've had in areas I've lived. But really, it's pretty easy to start a business. It's just really, really difficult to succeed because you just don't have the access to adequate capital, ease of capital. There are no programs that really work for, at an early stage. For example, you know, there's a wonderful lender in Canada called the Canadian Development Corporation financed by the Feds and they provide a whole bunch of money. But hey, you have to have been earning income and secondly, you have to have existed for a year. You know, well, how do you get that for the, you know, that kind of restriction is there. But everybody just doesn't have enough capital. They don't have the ability to focus on cash and cash flow. And they don't have the ability to accounting to keep track of that. You know, other than that, people have great ideas. They, you know, willing to work hard. You know, to me, small businesses is the key to capitalism. You know, we don't need, you know, Walmart and Amazon to crowd them all out. Yes, absolutely. We got to close now, but I want to overuse some thoughts. It reminds me of the wines in France, how France is getting a little warmer than it used to be. Climate change is changing the temperature. So the wines in Britain are doing better. And Britain is becoming the new France for wines. This has been a subject of a number of articles I've seen. And so what I'm saying is this is all dynamic. The business climate is dynamic. The geopolitics, climate change in general is dynamic. It changes the way our two countries deal with each other. Certainly, you know, if Trump wins, that's going to be a major factor in our relationship and in the motivation for a lot of people to leave town. So what we see today, what we identify today as the strengths and weaknesses and the comparative benefits are likely to change. Those things are likely to change. So we'll have to follow it, Ken. Ken Rogers, a retired businessman in Kelowna, British Columbia, joining us for discussion of view from the north in every way. Thank you so much, Ken. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.