 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for your time to join us in this webinar. We're really happy to have so many of you online are numbers that mean really great for today's webinar and for the other ones in this series. This is the second of three economic development essentials webinars that the Economic Development Division of the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism, and Skills Training is hosting over a month or so in September and October. If you missed the first of the series, which was focused on investment readiness, it was recorded, and it's now archived in the Rural BC site. And just for those of you who aren't familiar with the Rural BC site, it's www.ruralbc.gov.bc.ca. And if you go to the webinar section of that website, you'll find archived webinars and also registration for future upcoming webinars. And the next one in the Economic Development Essential series is on Strategic Planning for Economic Development, and that's on October 10th. So first, I just want to provide a little bit of context for where the webinar series originated. About a year ago, here in the Economic Development Division, we were hearing directly from communities that training on economic development concepts would be beneficial for local leaders. We heard that some focused information about the role of local leaders in economic development processes and activities would be beneficial for communities and, you know, communities across the province of all different sizes. So in response to that need, in the early part of 2013, we held 15 Economic Development Essentials workshops for local leaders. We had about 400 attendees at those workshops in really positive response based on the feedback that we received at the workshops and also from folks who weren't able to attend one of the workshops. We're following up on them with these webinars. And the three topics that were chosen were the topics that were indicated to be of greatest interest to those that we did hear from. So just a quick rundown on the structure of today's workshop. So in a couple of seconds, I'm going to turn it over to Kathy Kod, as she'll start us off with a brief overview of business retention and expansion information and some new resources that we've just launched to support your work in this area. And then we've got three, I'm sorry, can't start me yet, we're on the next slide. Sorry, yes, please, keep me in the queue. And then we'll have three case studies. We'll start with Perry McDonald and she'll provide us with an overview of Kootenai Business Retention and Expansion Pilots. Peter McGee will talk about his experience leading a BR&E process in Nanaimo. And then Colin will talk about the CAM Loops experience, the Venture CAM Loops Advisors Program. Following the three case studies, well, we've got some time for a discussion and information sharing, which I hope you all participate in and open up your phone line to or submit some questions online so that we can share some information and answer any questions that you might have. So I mentioned that we just launched some new business retention and expansion information and Kathy will be walking us through the details. And that information is on our relatively new Business Attraction Toolkit for BC Communities and the website for the toolkit is on the slide that's in front of you there. So this is an online resource that was launched last spring and it focuses on the stages of investment attraction. So, and it's a community resource to support your economic development work and whether you're a community who's just starting out along the journey of attracting investments or business to your community, or maybe you're looking for guidance on how to host a potential investor that's coming to your community, or maybe you're looking to do what we're talking about here today and support the communities that are currently in your... Sorry, to support the businesses that are currently in your community to stay where they are and to expand. There are tools, resources and support to assist wherever you land across that spectrum. So Kathy's gonna talk about the section of the toolkit and I'm not sure if you can see it on the slide there. It's kind of the top left part of the circle there. It's titled Support Businesses Within Your Community. So we've heard from lots of community representatives such as yourselves and local leaders that this is a key area of focus and more support is needed. So we've enhanced this section. We have built it out, added more information, added some tools to support your BRNE activities. And so with that, to walk through the details, I'll pass it over to Kathy. Kathy told us a policy and program analyst in the Economic Development Division and she led the development of these BRNE resources. So, over to you, Kathy. Well, thank you, Amy, for that. And I'm pleased to know that so many of you are already familiar with the BRNE process so that makes my job a lot easier. But just to begin at the beginning, then the BRNE is an approach that's focused on encouraging existing businesses to stay and grow within your community. Research has shown that in an urban and suburban setting that local businesses are responsible for 80% of the jobs and investments. And of course, this reliance increases greatly in rural settings. BRNE promotes business access and vitality through developing those relationships with local business operators. So it's basically an approach that helps facilitate a dialogue then between local economic development, representatives, and businesses. Through this process, you can find out how businesses are faring in the local economy and come up with strategies and tools then that will help businesses operate more efficiently. Some of the things that can come out of a BRNE are assisting with regional promotion of your community. I mean, what's your business known for? Why do people want to come into your community? It can help your community retain and recruit workers, help companies export and expand awareness of local products. And most of all, lead up to that business networking and collaboration that will develop supplier chains and enhance consumer markets. So I'm going to give you the whirlwind tour then of the online resource that we've developed for you. Although there are many approaches to BRNE, I've featured actually two specific ones, either one of them that can be developed and modified according to your specific needs. I've focused the first one on the structured BRNE process whereby you develop a formal committee that's complemented by a fleet of volunteers. You do a survey, the data collection and analysis out of which come the recommendations that form the action plan. And again, is umbrellaed by that ongoing relationship building. And then the second approach that I'll take you through is the business walks approach. It's a blitz style approach, which is a fast, immediate blitz throughout the community, business community that is, that develops an action plan and again depends highly on an ongoing relationship building process. So for community leaders, it's an opportunity to show how valued local businesses are and to develop an environment in which businesses can thrive and prosper. And for business owners, it's an opportunity for a forum to voice their concerns and ideas for remedies and a chance to be part of the process and the solution. So for the purposes of this presentation, I've divided the structured BRNE process into three phases. So if we could go to the website then, Darby. Yeah, so I'll have to hurry here. So, so I've, I'm sorry. Okay, so basically the three phases are the community readiness and preparation. Second phase is business survey, data collection and analysis leading up to the recommendations. And then the third phase are the recommendations, action plan and ongoing follow up. So the structured process can take up to two years. So the key is to know that you have lots of patients, really good, strong and dedicated project committee and a really good volunteer base. And of course, developing those relationships will help alert you to issues sooner and so that you can address them more quickly. In terms of community readiness, you have to know where your community is in terms of developing this process, what the local economics are, what the leadership is, what your current resources are, what your budget and volunteers look like. And what are some of the challenges that you're facing? Is it a decline in economic activity in the downtown core? Are you competing with the big box stores? Is there a scale labor shortage? The next one is the BR&E process then, which is the actual process where you set up the committee, you recruit your volunteers, again with a great diversity and ensuring a dedication of all the people involved, learning what your budget is, setting up your goals, your communication strategy and designing the process and conducting it. And then the next slide would be the recommendations and action plan where you're actually taking those actions and implementing them to develop those solutions then that will help your businesses thrive and prosper. So that's the really important part. And the results that can come out of this are encouragement of these markets, the developing the local supplier chains and holding local events to build ties between local businesses and consumers. And also for further edification, we've developed resources for you. We've got information concerning case studies and an entire list of resources and links that will help you through the process. The next one is the business walks, which I talked about earlier, which is the blitz approach. And this is an approach pioneered by the Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission and I'd really like to thank Kerry Griffiths of that organization for agreeing to share the materials that they've developed. What they've done then is throughout a three hour period they've had mayors and economic development leaders blitz through the community asking three questions. What's working for them, what's not working and what the recommendations are and from there an action plan is developed. So in the website then we've got a toolkit for you that talks about what is a business walk, goes through the process and then has a list of the resource materials then again thanks to Kerry Griffiths from COEBC. So everyone is welcome to use these materials and to adapt the survey templates and the process to whatever needs their communities come up with. So if you have any questions please let me know. Thank you Kathy. Does anyone, should we go to questions at this time? Any questions on there and we're already just a little bit behind so we can go on to the matter. Yeah, so next we'll turn it over to Terri McDonald. Dr. Terri McDonald holds the PhD in Educational Studies from UBC and serves as the DC Regional Innovation Chair in Rural Economic Development at Southcourt College. Terri also has a team of researchers at the Columbia Basin Rural Development Institute at Southcourt College Columbia Basin Trust Partnership focused on supporting informed decision making in the Basin boundary region. So with that I'll turn it over to Terri to walk us through her case study. Thank you. Can everyone, can you hear me okay? I'm going to go ahead. Thanks. Okay, perfect. Thank you Darby and Amy and Kathy for inviting me to join the webinar today to share our experiences here in the Kootenai region. Let me see if I can get these slides moving in the right direction. Here we are. As mentioned, I serve as the DC Regional Innovation Chair in Rural Economic Development, but I also head out a unique partnership here at the college focused on supporting informed decision making. And if it wasn't for the resources at the institute, much of the work that we've done over the last year in a bit probably wouldn't have happened. So it's a great partnership between the Columbia Basin Trust and Southcourt College. A little bit about our institute, we're the only college based rural placed rural development institutes in the country. Other RDIs or CDIs are located at universities so we're uniquely positioned in rural communities. We cover a pretty large catchment area. It's the Columbia Basin Trust area in addition to the boundary. So we go from the Alberta border to big white all the way up to Vermont. So it's a pretty big catchment area with 28 municipalities. And our work really focuses beyond the economic. We're understanding rural revitalization sort of in a more holistic way with respect to economic, social, environmental, and cultural aspects. And we take a truly regional approach. So we look for things that matter across the communities and we try to pull together regional collaboration to address them. That's really exactly what we've done here with the business retention expansion. A little bit about our project. When I started my position two and a half years ago, some of our communities had moved forward with a brief effort and a number were stepping up to the plate very interested to move forward. And from a research perspective, I certainly noted that the different communities were using different surveys. And to get a better understanding of what's happening in our corridors or in our region as a whole, I knew instinctively that we really should be using the same survey. It also became very clear that communities needed resources as we're talking about here. They wanted to do a brief but didn't really know what was involved, what types of resources they needed and they needed tools to help. So that's where the VRDI stepped in. So we did a little bit of research. We formed a regional advisory group and we looked at creating an approach which is still evolving. We're in the second year of a three-year pilot where you can see on point two here this idea of capacity inclusive. A number of our communities do not have EDOs in place. Many don't have anybody paid to do economic development. So we knew that a collaborative approach was really necessary for our communities and we needed to recognize that many of these communities really locked what I call economic development capacity but we wanted them included still. So we moved forward with some process support. The Institute does all the research support. So we do all the data analysis and reporting and report back out to communities. So that's a key piece making it much more affordable for communities to move forward with a brief and we've tied to the BC Business Counts program from EDABC which I'm sure many of you are familiar with about. And then we're looking now, we have about 500 I think surveys to date in the database that we hold for the region and we're looking at not only community but corridor and regional level analysis. The example of the regional analysis was the recently completed manufacturing and technology sector development project. So we were able to do a report and I believe that report is on the provincial BC site. Okay, so as I mentioned, we did some background work and we formed an advisory group and we developed and are responding a number of tools and this is ever evolving as we're really figuring it out as we go. We've put together some training materials and training workshops, one day long workshops for folks that are gonna be undertaking a brie. We have a manual which I believe is posted in the handouts section up on the top there. I think Darby showed you where that is. And we developed an analytic and reporting framework. Some other products, one of the recent products that we've developed is something called a lead sheet. So we're noticing that our communities aren't necessarily following up on action items real time as they're collecting their data. So when the project is finished, we give them a lead sheet to remind them, hey, here are some businesses, if you haven't contacted them yet, you should with things we call low hanging fruit and that can be red flags, businesses that are rating themselves as poor or talking about exiting, they don't have a successor or green flags that they wanna expand but they're having problems finding an adequate site location. So we provide that support and the Columbia Basin Trust also steps up to provide support for communities to offset costs of hiring a coordinator or a researcher. So again, that's a great partnership. So what we've decided to do collaboratively as an advisory group is really to focus more on the research and relationship building side of things as opposed to the business walk side of things. So we have structured survey driven interviews that are undertaken by, it varies between one and three people, we'll take on that researcher role and it's data focused but it's not compromising of building a relationship. So we're really taking a strong research angle here and the rationale is that we want the information that we need to support planning at a regional or a corridor level and with good research we can feel comfortable about the findings and allows us that level of confidence that these findings can actually be used. We have a rigorous research protocol and analysis and that's something that we take very seriously and is a big part of the training, the one day workshop. And then again, we've got that regional collaborative model where it's community based but we're really supporting one another. So partners are picking up the phone, talking to each other about what they're learning and how did they go about doing this. So it's a really good collaborative approach and the model is really ongoing and evolving. So to date, as I mentioned, this is actually so much has happened over the last couple of weeks we're over 500 surveys now. We have finished a project in the boundary lower Columbia which is the Trail Rosland sort of mini corridor. We've done the regional manufacturing and technology project with the Innovation Councils here. The CUST has just concluded and Golden is actually 40 plus surveys into data collection right now as is the Slow Can Valley. So we have a couple of other communities stepping up now. Kimberly has started their efforts farward soon and we're talking with other communities in our region about their interest in BRII looking forward to our final year, the 2014. And hopefully we'll have all communities completed but that's ambitious, but we'll see. The other part of the strategy is that this would be a sort of on a rotation and focusing on what we've learned through best practices that it doesn't stop, it's an ongoing thing. Communities should be revisiting this process every three years and should be focused on the follow-up. So we talk a lot about community readiness and I know there's a little bit about this on the provincial site, so I'm not gonna repeat it but it's really do you have the human and the financial resources to support this type of undertaking. We spend a lot of time before implementation of a BRII in a community talking a lot about pre-planning. It's critical that you know what your goals and your objectives are. So we talk about what is your purpose? Are you looking general business climate? Are you looking to better understand certain sectors? What's the geographic scope? We have some communities that are moving forward with multiple communities in a corridor or if it's a community by itself and identify the businesses in your community and the scope of the project. So a number of our communities don't actually have business licensing in place. So it makes it a little bit more tricky for them to find a sample that's gonna be right for them and to identify those businesses but they are managing to tackle this challenge and then looking at whether or not you want a random sample or a targeted approach and again in the manual that I've posted there's some information about how you roll both sampling to meet your needs and your objectives. So what we've learned so far is that businesses do wanna talk. There was some thought when we first started that businesses have been surveyed to death. They are feeling that yes, this is actually going to result in something because communities that have moved forward have done so in partnership with their local government, their Chamber of Commerce and their community futures and any other economic development folks within the community and that sort of shows that hey, we are committed as a community to work together to address the needs that are coming up to these surveys. It's been more about green flags and reds which was a pleasant surprise, meaning that there's opportunities businesses do wanna expand, they're just having some challenges with certain areas. You can expect about four hours per business if you wanna undertake one of these projects and that's from calling, making the appointment, doing the interview, entering the data. We have found that the findings are now being linked to economic development plans and concrete action and that context does matter. So the process does need to be customized to meet the unique needs of each community but it still can be done within this regional model. Okay, so critical ingredients to success. So as I mentioned, you need strong and committed leadership. It sends a really big message. The partnerships are key. You need to make sure that you have the resources in place and you do that pre-planning. Before you start going out and talking to businesses, you need to make sure that you have resources for follow-up, which is critical. You need champions. It's good to start with some short-term success and you need to commit over the long-term to things like business appreciation events and follow-up. The other thing that we've learned here in the Putanese is so far we've done really, I think a pretty good job connecting the findings to economic development planning. The thing that we are struggling with here is really making sure that we're doing that follow-up with the individual businesses, particularly in the communities that don't have those dedicated economic development folks. So now I'm going to turn it to Darby. I have a short video, and that concludes my presentation this afternoon. Good morning, group or government. Can you pin this or that? If there's something you challenge, it's not here, it's in your spaces. Thanks very much, Teri. Hey, yes. Thank you, Teri. Thank you. His experience in Nanaimo, Peter McGee is the Economic Development Coordinator within the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation. His professional background is in communications and marketing, which has lent itself well to the promotion and execution of a successful BR&E program. In his current role, one of Peter's primary responsibilities has been a program administrator of the BR&E program, Nanaimo Business Counts, and that's what he'll be talking to us about today. So I'll pass it over to Peter. Great, thank you so much, and thank you very much for having me on this webinar. It's an exciting process and I'm excited to be included. So yes, I'm Peter McGee, and here we go. So just a little bit about the NADC, the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation. We were formerly a department within the city of Nanaimo and separated about two years ago to form an arms-length corporation, which is now the corporation that I'm in, the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation. As we are right now, we include both an Economic Development Division, which I am in, as well as a Tourism Services Division or Tourism Nanaimo. And we serve the area of Cassidy, which is essentially the Nanaimo Airport, up to and including Lanceville, including Gabriel Island. So right now in 2013, we have a BR&E program, but what I'd like to talk about today specifically is our 2012 BR&E program. It was a very exciting program and I really liked it a lot, so I want to tell you all about it. It was focus group-based, which is a little bit different than the norm, which would be one-on-one interviews. Forum participants were groups by industry sector and discussions would vary based on the industry represented in that group. Each forum was directed by a highly skilled facilitator. That was not me, we hired in a facilitator who's absolutely fantastic. We guide the conversation and contribute to the discussion when appropriate. So some of the short-term goals of the program were to identify businesses that were at risk of leaving the community, as all business retention expansion programs do, develop an understanding of their issues and concerns and help them to resolve those issues in order to keep them in the area. Identify businesses that are considering expansion or have expansion potential and develop an understanding of their concerns and or barriers to work proactively to help them to expand their operations here and create new jobs for the NAMO residents. Together, feedback about the NAMO business climate. This focus group style of doing BR&E is actually an excellent way of getting feedback about the business climate as a whole because as I'll discuss, we get to touch on a number of different industry sectors, which is a great piece of this type of process. And to facilitate business connection through greater knowledge of the NAMO business space. Some of our long-term goals are to drive resources, organization, community and partnership to economic opportunities, determine the needs of growth and value of companies in the community and watch for business and economic trends. So the way the process actually worked was it would be a two-hour session with a group of business professionals, usually between 10 and 15 business leaders from any given industry sector. And during that session, a professional facilitator gathers information on key issues from participating company representatives. Those company representatives, we'd like to be either company owners or senior management. Those folks who have their finger on the pulse of business decision-making and what impacts that business in the community. Confidentiality on business issues is preserved throughout the entire process. And that's a key element in having these business leaders convinced to actually participate in the program because they're in the company of their peers when we're having these discussions. So confidentiality is a big deal. And information collected through the business forums is managed through a web-based database, sorry, a web-based database system, DC business accounts through the executive pulse software. So these are the forums that we held during 2012, construction, retail, tourism, green tech, professional, scientific and technical. In June, there was no session. And in July, transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, social agencies, large employers, and ending the year with arts and culture. They're all fascinating discussions. And there were different things that were consistent throughout and different things that we'd find different depending on the group we were speaking with. But these are some of the considerations that we thought about throughout the process as well as at the beginning of the process before actually getting into the focus group style VR&E program. Will participants be forthcoming in the company of their competitors? Now this is one of the things that when you're doing one-on-one VR&E interviews, there's no real need to be concerned about this because it's just you and the business owner in front of you. But put in front of a group of 10 or 12 of their competitors in the field, that's certainly a consideration to be taken. How are individual business needs addressed in a group setting? So when you're talking about general trends and general challenges and opportunities facing an industry sector, how are you talking to business A, B or C about their particular business interests? And finally, what is the appropriate balance of information gathering to problem solving? So I'll go through these one by one being cognizant of the time. So will participants be forthcoming in the company of competitors? Like Terry alluded to, businesses love to talk and they want to tell their story. And because we weren't gathering information about business secrets or trade secrets, companies were actually incredibly forthcoming about the different challenges they were facing and different opportunities that they saw in their sector. So we had fantastic conversation regarding just those challenges and opportunities. And that comes with great help from a good facilitator. That's a really important piece of this is finding a facilitator who knows how to move a discussion along, knows how to move from topic to topic. So that's very important. So we found that that was actually really encouraging. How are individual business needs addressed in a group setting? It's inevitable that in a discussion of industry trends, very often the stories will come down to individual business challenges. At which point you need to find a balance between talking about those in the group setting and setting an appointment for later to discuss those. And the latter is often what we would do. We would say that's a very interesting issue and we would schedule an appointment to meet at a later time. It just got the conversation moving so that we got our foot in the door. And finally, what is the appropriate balance of information gathering to problem solving? This process was very much an information gathering process. It was also of course very important to have a problem solving aspect to it. But being that this was the first time we've conducted this style of session, information gathering was a big piece and it was actually a very successful piece. I'll get into what we did with that information a little later. So some of the outcomes of this program was dynamic conversation, one that I thought. In my experience, I haven't found in one-on-one interviews as interesting as they are. Being in a group of industry professionals that don't have the opportunity to meet regularly, it's fascinating hearing from a particular industry sector on what are the different challenges that they're facing in the community. Individual business problems are addressed as I noted, industry-wide challenges are discussed. Excuse me. Cross-industry issues are identified in a way that otherwise would be difficult to discover. So I had alluded to earlier that in talking to all of these different industry sectors, we found certain themes would run across all of the industry sectors regardless of which one you're talking to and that was really interesting. And in that respect, we got a lot of information that we would be able to pump out to the community at large, not focusing on an individual industry sector that would really benefit all businesses. And I'll get into that. It's actually really exciting that we're doing right now. It's right at the end. And economic development is seen by the business community as proactive in supporting businesses in the multiple sectors. So that was important to us as well. We weren't singling out a particular industry. We were trying to be inclusive and to speak to really our key industry sectors, multiple industry sectors. And that was received very well by the business community. So looking forward, we're actually reinstating a similar focus group self-program to be delivered in 2014. This year in 2013, we are doing the one-on-one business interviews in a little bit of a different fashion. We've coordinated with some of our community partners, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Business Improvement Association, and others to administer the program, which has been very interesting and very good for our partnerships. But like I said, next year, we're going to be going back into a focus group style program. The cost and time effectiveness of this style of program administration benefits the team with limited resources or staff, which we are. We are a team of, I would say, two and a half on our economic development side. So going from business door to business door, conducting interviews, that takes a great deal of time, but inviting once a month a group of 10 to 15 people to our office, to our boardroom, has proven fantastic for time management and getting everyone back to their day. And it also presents a fantastic marketing opportunity in that multiple key industries are being considered and not just one or two. So that's been really excellent. And before I move on, I live it to before that the information we gathered, some of it pertains to all or if not most industry sectors. So what we've done with that is actually created a seminar series this year to address some of those challenges that were brought up over and over again last year. So they've come on into four categories, which are information gathering, sales and marketing, there's succession planning and long-term strategic planning for small business. And all four of those, we've conducted three panel seminars this year and there's one left to go, which is succession planning. So that's been a good way to show that we're not just gathering information for the sake of gathering information, but we're actually using it to benefit the VISTA community at large. And I've been very successful as well. And that is my presentation, so thank you very much. But at time, oh, did I rip through that? No, that's fine, Peter, that was excellent. But yeah, Darby's just mentioning that we've got a little bit of time, so if anyone has any questions that they'd like to pose at this point in the webinar, please go ahead and do so. You can do it in the Q&A section online there. Yeah, so you have the Q&A top of your screen there. You can type in your question, or you can use that feedback indicator on the right-hand side of the top of your screen there to raise your virtual hand and pose a question to any of our presenters today. And Peter, I know it's certainly a great presentation. Thanks for asking time for this opportunity. Thank you. Discussion after each order to see if people aren't typing away and just trying to, yeah, we do have a question a little bit, so what was the feedback from the participant up to be focused to you? Sure, absolutely, and correct me if I'm not interpreting the question right. Was the feedback within each two-hour session or the feedback about the process itself? I could answer both, I mean. Sure, why not? Let's do that. Sure, let's do that. Excuse me, just getting over a test goal. I'll try not to get you all sick. So the feedback within the session itself, each two-hour session, like I said sort of early on in the presentation, that that was certainly a consideration of will participants be forthcoming or will we hear crickets? Because they're in the company of their competitors. Will they just sit silently in hopes to learn trade secrets? What we found was actually just the opposite. And the feedback within the sessions was incredible. Our participants were incredibly forthcoming about different challenges that they were having. And we found it was actually even more so in the company of their peers in that they were, they seemed to be having the discussion with themselves. They were almost excited by the fact that they were in a room with other people who were sharing the same experiences. Because often these businesses are essentially islands in the ocean and they don't get this kind of dynamic conversation very often. So that sparked some really great conversation that led itself really well to our information gathering purpose. As for the feedback about the process itself, it was incredibly well received mostly because we were listening. That was a big aspect. And I think it's a big aspect. Regardless of how you're executing your BR&E efforts, it's the fact that you seem to be listening to your community. That's a big step just on its own. Is that you're listening and you care and you're part of the community and you want to help. And this program definitely showed that. Definitely showed that we wanted to hear from our businesses and we weren't going to shape our policy or our programming before we had a chance to sit down and have a good discussion with groups of our industry leaders. I hope that answers it. We should move on to columns at this point too. We do have a couple more questions and we'll make our attendees for those questions. We'll definitely have you at the top of the queue for our discussion following columns. Thanks again, Peter and Amy. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, thanks, Derby. So let's move on to the column's presentation. Colin O'Leary from Cam Loops. So with a robust foundation in science and technology coupled with an MBA from the Sotter School of Business, Colin brings an eclectic mixture of business acumen and experience to his position at Venture Cam Loops. Having been a part of many successful business startups and working with numerous new business ventures, Colin can bring firsthand understanding to the table for clients looking to embark in the excitement of their own business startups. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Colin. That's great. Thanks. Hello, everyone. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And before we get into it too much, I should warn everybody that I was actually just over at an EDAC conference in St. John's, Newfoundland. I flew in late last night. So I'm probably not firing on all cylinders. You'll have to bear with me for the presentation. But I'm going to talk to you today about the VK Venture Advisor Program. And this is kind of an interesting program in that we are also doing three business retention and expansion survey ourselves. It's huge value in that it's an excellent program. But we are finding that our BR&E survey was typically dealing with like medium to large size businesses. And so the idea behind the VK Venture Advisors was to come up with a program that actually targeted and focused entrepreneurs and new businesses that were starting up. So with that, I'll get into it here. So the mandate of the program is to help and develop and support local entrepreneurs to achieve success, but provide and construct a feedback, professional advice, and networking opportunities. So the VK Venture Advisors, so in essence, really what it is, was not reinventing the wheel. One way that I often describe it to people and what people can easily relate to is it's much like the Dragon set, which is something that I find naturally captures entrepreneurs anyways, really captures their interest, captures a lot of people's interest actually, because it's something they can relate to and they really enjoy. And that's in essence what this is, except for the differences that they're getting up these entrepreneurs. There's one entrepreneur is selected every month. It's an opportunity to basically pitch their business idea and get professional, constructive feedback on it. But there's no funding provided whatsoever. There's no, this is not a financing program. It's instead, it is purely raw feedback, constructive feedback from very successful people that have been there before them, and also the connections. And connections I found actually have been one of the biggest things that come out of these meetings have been very exciting. So the day of the presentation, what does it actually typically look like? So it's held over at the KPMG office, a very nice office. We provide lunch, happens over lunchtime, because we find that that's actually a very good time for a lot of these professionals. And the entrepreneurs arrive a little bit early and get up for the presentation. And then the idea that the presentation is made to a panel of professionals and experts for around 20 minutes or so. And typically what we find is that it, this way it's supposed to run, but it actually usually doesn't. The idea is the presentation happens first and then the next 40 minutes is open to discussion. But what we actually find is it's very dynamic. And so very rarely will an entrepreneur make all the way through their presentation before there starts to be feedback coming from all directions and questions. And so the panel themselves, who they are, is they are basically what we would call pillars of influence in the community. But these are professionals and business leaders that are very well known, very well connected in the community. They're usually on all sorts of boards, you know, constantly volunteering for different events and things like that. So people know them. And they're also very well respected and like I said, very well connected as well. And so it's a unique experience to be able to tap into this panel, typically during a meeting we'd have anywhere between eight and 12 of them actually sitting around a U-shaped table in front of the entrepreneurs. So let's go to the next slide here. So what's expected of the entrepreneur? So the first thing is the entrepreneur has to prepare a presentation. This is actually something that I will work with the entrepreneur on. We'll actually spend easily about eight hours before the presentation. It's working on it together. Part of the reason behind this is that we don't want to, I don't want to waste the professional, the advisor's time really. I don't want to waste anybody's time. So I want to make sure everybody is as prepared as possible so everybody gets the absolute most out of the experience. The idea at the end of the entrepreneur comes in and they're supposed to address professionally or where they're uniform if they've got one. They're supposed to bring the product. We try to sample the product as much as possible. It really helps the advisors wrap their minds around it. I also asked them for an executive summary of a forehand and a bio so they can actually circulate it to the advisors so they can try to think about things the week before. And I asked them to actually look at the bios for the VK venture advisors. And that way they can actually target their questions. So we have an accountant, we have a lawyer, we have an insurance professional, a finance professional, a real estate professional. So we kind of cover the gamut of everything, HR, marketing. And the idea is that this is a chance for them. They don't have to have all the answers. So this is their chance to actually ask questions and say, well, I don't really know where to go with this. Like this is where I am right now. I'm thinking about doing this, but I don't know. What do you guys think? And they can actually get professional feedback for free. And it's better than just a one-on-one kind of interaction because the advisors interact with each other. It's actually quite exciting to witness because it's a very lively discussion. They all actually disagree with one another, talk about experiences they've gone through and during their career. So it's quite good actually. As far as what's expected of the advisors, so I ask that they review the business plan obviously before the meeting. I also ask that they give professional feedback that's constructive and in a respectful manner. Unlike the dragons then, we're not going after drama. I try to keep it as constructive as possible. The idea is not to get up there and pair somebody's ideas to shreds. It's instead to get up there and still asking the tough questions though. Because it's the reality of when these entrepreneurs go out there to start their business, they're going to come up against these challenges and they better have answers. And that's the idea. It's to repair them before they really get going. The biggest thing about this next point is to try to make beneficial network connections. This is absolutely the hidden kind of bonus of all this. When we started doing this, I didn't really anticipate these network connections playing such a major part in things, but that's really probably the best takeaway from all of this. And the idea is they're also supposed to provide a free follow-up professional appointment to the entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneurial Canal Access were free after this on one-on-one, an hour with the accountant, an hour with the realtor, an hour with the lawyer, which is great for them because they often have quite a tight budget. So some of the outcomes, very, very positive feedback from the entrepreneurs. That's not very surprising, but very positive feedback from the advisors, which is something I did not anticipate because this is a volunteer thing. And they really see it as an excellent way to give back to the community. And so this is something I didn't anticipate, and it's actually been nice to have this from both sides. Very constructive information and connections. The connections are absolutely unbelievable that have come out of this. For example, one of the very first entrepreneurs was Red Seal Chef. He lived in Jamaica for a while and he's supplying cheesecakes to five-star restaurants. He's coming back to Canada where he's born and raised and he wants to start up his cheesecake business in Canada. And he kind of didn't really know where to go. We got out of this meeting, he got a mentor with a fellow named Bryce Herman, who is extremely well-connected in the community and with hospitality. Bryce managed to hook him up with a commercial location for 50 cents on the dollar, all of the equipment already included, and it was a least-to-own arrangement because Bryce knew the owners. And so, I mean, that is something... I remember the entrepreneur just coming out of that and saying, I would have never found that on my own. Like, this is unbelievable. That's an example. I mean, just our last presentation we had was with Oda Lee Awesome, who are a really unique kind of food manufacturing company in town. And we were able to, through, again, through some of these connections, we were able to link them directly to somebody very high up in the Paterson Group, Dennis, who was able to get them in front of the right people that have their products carried in, Save On Foods, Coopers, Overweighty, that whole Paterson food group, which is, again, something where the entrepreneur was just like, this is unbelievable. I didn't really even know how to get into a grocery store, let alone access to multiple chains right across, I think, Western Canada. So that was pretty amazing. So that gives you an idea of some of the connections that come out of it. The other things, we get increased community awareness for venture families. This is something that I think a lot of us struggle with. But I don't know about you guys, but we get a lot of what's economic development and what do you guys do for the community. This is something that is, it's kind of a sexy program. It's actually a bit kind of marketed, but it gets really, it gets people excited and interested. And something that's kind of unique is I'm actually getting professionals in the community approaching us and saying, by the way, I'd like to participate as an advisor for the speaking venture advisor program. I'm hearing about it in the community. It sounds really exciting. And I'm now getting entrepreneurs on a regular basis coming in and hearing about this program, which is great because it's driving clients through the door in essence. Because a lot of these advisors are the owners or CEOs of companies in town, and not only that, then we also have the entrepreneurs coming in. So the pretty great outcomes. And yeah, I think I've finished it a little early, but that's a logo we came up with a brand for and everything, we have a website. And it's just kind of a, it's a difference program, like I said, just specifically targeting new venture creation, which is kind of a unique thing to go after and for a lot of fun. So there, I hope you enjoyed it. I don't know, Darcy, if you want to take it, or Darby, if you want to take it from here, or? Thanks, Colin, that was great. Yeah, absolutely. So now we can shift over to our discussion portion of today's webinar, and there were a couple of questions that weren't addressed when we had last set that for a period after Peters. So, but in the interim, while we speak to those, I certainly encourage the rest of you, and I'll just steal a camera away from you, there, Colin, back to us. So yeah, I certainly encourage the rest of you to please put in any questions out in the Q&A there, or we'd love to talk to you too. So if you use that feedback button again on the top right-hand corner, you can raise your virtual hand there, and again, we'd like to speak to you for sure. So, after those come up, I'm just going to drag this out so we can see it here. And Peter, we did have a question that I think kind of following up to the question you were speaking to before, and the question is, do you anticipate doing this every year? I'm bringing the video back to you. Can you speak to that? Sure, absolutely. We're dedicated to doing some sort of BR&E effort each year. I personally am a huge fan of this style. Just after having done it the one time, it was a bit of a pilot in the way that we were doing that focus group style session. But it was just so great, and I would be very happy to do that every year. And I know that we're, like I said, we're reinstating that style program in 2014 with a little more focus on problem solving. We've already done the program, so we're really focused on information gathering and also problem solving. But this one, we've gone through the process of information gathering about challenges and opportunities. Now we're really going to get to the heart of the matter and really address individual business issues to see how we can do that. We're still structuring that program right now, but I would love to see an iteration of that style program every year. I think it's really effective. Queuing up here. So Peter, another question for you. This did follow your presentation there, but the question if you're not able to see it and others won't be, so I'm going to read it out. So a question for Peter. Do you think businesses were more comfortable with a third party facilitator as they were, and in quotations, outsider? They were an outsider who had no opinion or bias and a continued question. Do you think the convo would be as dynamic if the facilitator was someone from the active department? That's a good question. Maybe. The only thing that I would say maybe not would be at each of these two hour sessions, members of the economic development team were present. That was sort of a big piece of it, just to really tie up to the program to make sure everyone knows that it's the economic development office that's doing this. Maybe I'm biased, but I don't think we saw any hindering of the process by our being there, which makes me think that if there was a member of your economic development team that was a professional facilitator that was very knowledgeable about different business sectors that I don't think that would really be a problem. The important piece is that the facilitator is capable. That's a big one for me, is that they're very good at moving a conversation along. Like I said, we were worried about hearing crickets, and I really feel like if we didn't have a professional facilitator, we may actually have heard crickets. So I really attribute a lot of our success to the fact that we brought in someone who does this for a living, so that was important. Being in an outsider, I'm not sure. Maybe, depending on the group. Now if I could ask all the attendees to actually help us by actually ensuring that your line is muted, and that's star six, because what I'm going to do is open up the lines here, and Emily, you've raised your virtual hand, so I'd ask you actually not to mute your line. I'd do the opposite with star six here in a second. So I am going to take things out of lecture mode, and hopefully the audio will be good enough that we can start a discussion here. So just a moment, please. The conference is no longer in lecture mode. Emily, are you there, muted, and... Sir, yes, I'm here. Please go ahead. Okay, I guess my question. I understand that BR&E programs are meant to be preventative and help you to engage with businesses throughout their business life, but what happens if you encounter a business where they're already feeling very frustrated or very tangled in their operations and how do you help them to untangle that knot? Do any of our presenters... No one else will, sure. So I think it would depend on what the business issues were. A big part of what makes, I think, economic development so successful is our ability to link to resources in the community. So if it's an expansion real estate issue, we can link to our real estate partners. If it's something in financing, then we can go that route as well. So I wonder if, depending on the business issues that they're having, if they're already frustrated, then it might be a different process than, like I said, sort of the information gathering side because that's already been done for you. They're giving you all that information and then it's right into sort of business as usual, which is problem-solving, and getting them the right resources to get them on track. I wonder if that's sort of an answer. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Other presenters want to speak to my question here for Jerry, it looks like. So here it is. So back to Terry. She mentioned those communities that don't have active capacity, have some challenges getting back to how to address the capacity challenges of these very small communities, rural areas. Terry, can you speak to that? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Debbie, for the question, because that is our big challenge here in the Kootenies with, as I mentioned, a number of these communities having what I'm referring to as limited economic development capacity. And in fact, I had an email from one of our partners this morning about just feeling a little bit of anxiety about releasing their business retention and expansion findings and feeling a little bit out of the loop with respect to what supports are out there. So what we're looking to tackle from a regional level and through the advisory group that actually got together last week, we're speaking of this very thing. And what we've learned so far is that we do have a number of supports, business supports, that operate on a regional or a sub-regional level. So the example being the community futures groups, the innovation councils, the colleges, and we also have something unique here in the Kootenies. It's the Business Basin Advisory Program, and that's something that's offered through the Columbia Basin Trust. So what we've realized pretty quickly with these smaller communities is they themselves don't even know what supports are out there, nor do their businesses. So a couple of things that we are moving forward with to tackle this very thing is one of the communities that has just finished, when they release their business retention expansion findings to the community, which is going to be happening within the next month or so, they'll be doing it in conjunction with the Business Support Fair, where they'll be inviting some of these folks to come in and speak to the businesses about what supports are out there. The other piece is really plugging this information back into community partners in the smaller communities so that they have a list and an overview of who they can refer to. So it's not that they're not willing and able to refer, it's just they don't know who to refer these businesses to. So it's an information gap, I think, is a big piece. The other strategy is to formalize a bit more of a regional support network so that people can really feel free to pick up a phone and if they don't know who to refer to, they can start asking around and getting those referrals in place. And then I guess the other piece, this being a pilot project, and of course myself being a researcher and this being an applied research project, really paying close attention to what gaps are existing within our region. So what challenges are these smaller communities facing and what are the gaps in our region with respect to the supports that are being asked for through this business retention and expansion project? I hope that answers your question. I mean, we really are figuring it out as we go, but the information gap was a low-hanging fruit piece for us that communities just didn't know all the great supports that we do have. So we'll start there. Thanks, Terry. Thank you. EQ Advisor, I recall. How often are presentations made to the panel of advisors? We typically, we aim at one a month, one per month, and the idea behind that right now is that it is a time commitment from the advisors. So we are volunteering, so we don't want to take up too much of their time. But also right now, probably our biggest bottleneck with it is actually finding new businesses that are really ready to go. And that's, I mean, like I see a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm sure, you know, during my peak, I'm sure I'm seeing at least 100 a quarter. But the problem is, there's a big difference between an entrepreneur who just walks through the door of an idea and an applicant and an entrepreneur that has a fully fleshed out business plan has already like registered a trademark for their name and blah blah blah and or has a prototype or has lined up sales. And that's kind of more of the entrepreneur I'm looking for with this, just so that we, because I don't want all this energy and effort to go into an entrepreneur that walks away and just never starts the business. And so that's why it's limited to one to a month. But we might start to ramp that up to twice a month if we can start to feed in more entrepreneurs that are really ready. So, yeah. Question here? Oh, we've been doing this all the time, yes. And we might be having just a little bit of feedback there, so if you haven't, if you don't mind muting your line unless there was a question there and please do pose it if that's the case. So again, you can raise your virtual hand or type it in through the Q&A there at the top if any of you are just listening in as well. Do you have any success stories or lessons learned you would like to share that we've highlighted here? So here's the Business Attraction Toolkit as well as the Business Retention and Expansion Week and Business Logs Program. And our presenters today have kindly made themselves available to you if you do have additional questions. Here is their contact information and it looks like we do actually have another question. So, Carolyn, you've raised your virtual hand. If you do get our sticks, please go ahead and pose your question. Hi, this is for, I'm sorry, I forget your name, but for Adventure Kamloops. Colin, there we go, sorry. Colin, how did you know or how confident were you that you'd have enough of these entrepreneurs to make a go of the program? Did you do any initial, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, sorry, no, that's totally a tough question. And it was, it was quite hard kind of making that decision, but I had, like I said, I don't know about your community, but in the first quarter of the year, I see a lot of entrepreneurs. Like I actually joke, it's kind of like trying to drink out of a fire hose, but we actually try to like find ways of like slowing down the inflow and making sure we're only capturing people with really strong ideas. And so I was lucky enough, I can't take 100% full credit actually for the program because a long time ago in Kamloops, there was something called Business Care that was existing in Kamloops and it was similar. It was along the same lines and it had just kind of faded out into nothing. So really I kind of, I resuscitated the program and rebranded it and actually chaff changed it quite a bit, but I mean the essence, it was there. And the biggest thing is that I had the, I had the contact information from the people that were the advisors before. So that's the other half of the story is actually lining up the advisors and getting them on board. And so I started contacting them and said, do you have any interest in trying to get something like this going again? Like would you participate if we did it? And had basically overwhelming feedback from them that absolutely we loved it. And this is, we were very sad to see it go. We'd really like to participate. And so having that support from that side and knowing that I would see a lot of entrepreneurs, I basically decided, okay, let's just give it a shot. Let's give it a go. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. I also, I mean, I did other things to mitigate this. Like for example, I partnered with our university PRU and I actually talked about this program and they have two streams of entrepreneurship. One of them is the management entrepreneurship and the other one is just new venture creation in business. And so I go in and talk to the classes and I participate in other kind of class events and things. So that kind of helps to see to me kind of a steady supply of entrepreneurs besides what I get normally in the community. So I don't know if that answers the question or not, but. Yeah, definitely. Thanks. Yeah, no problem. I do have another question for either Terry or Peter if there aren't any other questions from any other people out there. Do you wish to speak to, is it the same question or? No, no, a different question. A different question. I'm here. I'm here. So this would be for either Terry or Peter. But how did you ensure that any of the home-based businesses were reached in your efforts? Or were they or were they not maybe? Well, that's a good question. That's actually come up. One of the areas that's undertaking the degree right now is in the Silken Valley where the majority of businesses are actually home-based businesses. So it really was sort of get the key partners sitting down at a table and talking about all the businesses that they knew. The other strategy, and it was used by the Innovation Councils as well, was to when they did a business interview with a company, they asked that company if they knew of others. So it's sort of called, it's sort of the snowball technique to try to uncover some of these home-based businesses, particularly in the communities that have a high percentage that are very interested in what's happening with the home-based business. The other piece that we did and piloted with the Silken Valley was we created a shorter survey. So we took the BC business count survey and we cut it from, I don't know, I think they have 97 or so questions and we cut it down to 30 questions and selected the questions that were most applicable to home-based business. So customizing the survey was also a real key piece. These businesses really don't want to sit down for an hour and a half interview, being asked questions that don't relate to them in any way. So yeah, I guess the two things would be the short survey and then the tapping into local knowledge about where these home-based businesses are and then using what I call the snowball technique to start uncovering those that we've missed in the first sort of list of businesses to contact. Does that help? Yeah, thanks. Great. Sure, yeah, that was a great answer, Karen. I'll follow it up with an issue. That's a great answer. The way we've recruited folks to participate in our program was based on NAICS COAS and our business license holders with the city. So if there were businesses without a business license they wouldn't even be on our list. For consideration and many of the sectors, a home-based business wasn't as applicable but for some they were such as healthcare. If we had a senior care company that was working at home they would be in the group. So they were represented certainly. Although we didn't have a group particularly for home-based businesses it would just vary depending on the group and depending on how their company fit into the context of their sector and the context of the group that they were speaking to. But we didn't particularly reach out for home-based businesses. We sort of came upon them a little more organically. Great, thank you. Thank you. Meeting to wrap up here. So President, I say thank you to each of our presenters today. Thanks very much for very engaging and informative presentations. I'd like to point to the attendees back to the handouts section. Again, those materials won't be available at the end of the year. So I know Teri would be the materials she has up there as well as the APTF of today's slide. So I encourage you to download those now. Also I'd like to emphasize again that we will be putting out a survey all the way in a couple of days here. Please keep an eye out for that. Please provide that. Otherwise, thanks very much everyone.