Start Your Own Small Business in Canada

By Victoria P. Key

A Beginner's Guide to Building Wealth, Earning Freedom and Enjoying Your Life as a Successful Entrepreneur.

 

Ever dreamt of the day when you'd have the liberty and power to call the shots rather than toil day-in and day-out to help fulfill someone else's to-do list? Does the thought of being an entrepreneur excite you? Here's a genie that can make your dream a reality!

 

So many people in Canada ponder about quitting their day jobs and establishing their own business, but the inability to find answers to the whys and how-tos to starting one often prevents prospective entrepreneurs from achieving their aspirations. THIS HOW-TO GUIDE WILL EQUIP YOU WITH ALL THE KNOWLEDGE you will need to start your own business in Canada. This guide will answer the following questions:

• How should I go about setting up a new business?
• Which business entity is right for me: a sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation?
• Do I really need a business plan, and how do I create one?
• Where and how do I find funding?
• What is a SWOT analysis and how do I make one for my business?
• How do I handle taxation, filings, and other formalities?

This book will also answer many other entrepreneurship questions you may be wondering about. This knowledge-packed bundle of pages will give you the power to conquer your fears and help you create a strong foundation on which you can build the tower of a profitable business of your own!

 

Take action! Let your business flourish to what you envision!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loyal & Versatile Publishing
• Release date: Oct 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781777952716

Book preview

Introduction

Chapter One: Before You Start Your Business

Chapter Two: Business Structure and Foundation

Chapter Three: Have a Plan

Chapter Four: SWOT Analysis

Chapter Five: Checklist for Filings and Taxation

Chapter Six: Finding Funding

Chapter Seven: Network

Chapter Eight: Healthy Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs

Final Words

References

Introduction

Show me the attractive paychecks of Canadian men and women working day jobs, and I’ll show you the unhappy faces hidden behind the long and shiny row of zeros. Irrespective of the number on the check, most people working nine to five in the compact glass structures of the corporate jungle aren’t satisfied with their professional lives. This scenario isn’t peculiar to Canada alone. Pick out the employment survey statistics of any country, and you will most likely find a similar pattern. The pressures and constraints of working for someone else are enormous. You have to follow the orders of Mr. Manager. Your time is no longer your own. Every life decision needs to be made in consultation with the person on the top seat. Whether you want to enjoy a day out with your family, or travel to another city to visit an ailing friend, or just need some time with yourself away from the bustle and noise; application letters and permissions are a must. You are a total slave when it comes to freedom of work. No one really cares if you are happy or in a mood, the targets for the day must be met and that’s what’s given prime importance.

Does all of the above stress you out? Are you someone who tries hard every single day to enjoy the job you hate? Do you feel caged mentally and emotionally despite being in the open? Do you ever wish you had more freedom and control over your work? Then you are not alone. I, too, was once a traveller on this road, toiling day in and day out to push through. There finally came a day when my fuel ran out, and I decided to take action. You would have guessed by now what that action would have been. It was to venture on my own, to taste entrepreneurship, to start my own small business.

This decision was massively relieving to me, and it seemed like I was finally breathing again. However, I soon realized that starting a business isn’t all that easy. It requires a set of different skills to be able to manage every aspect of an entity from sourcing to marketing to accounting and everything else in between. Being an extremely ambitious, enthusiastic, and driven young adult, I was willing to learn and equip myself with all the knowledge and skills required to be a successful entrepreneur. But I very soon came to realise that Canada wasn’t like the United States. The entrepreneurial landscape in this country isn’t developed enough. Reliable and adequate resources and training material to enable aspiring entrepreneurs to grow and develop themselves aren’t easily available. For someone trying to embark on the path of entrepreneurship, the thought of setting up a business from scratch and single-handedly managing everything required to run it successfully seems daunting. Whether you are a high school dropout, a young MBA graduate, or someone in your thirties or older, you are bound to need a guiding hand. Your mind is sure to be flooded with a number of different questions: Is my business idea really good? Will I be able to earn a return on my investment? How will I manage accounting and finance without any educational background or support? How should I go about incorporating my business? The list goes on. No one in the world is born with everything that is necessary to start and run a business. I wasn’t, and Canada did not have the required infrastructure and systems to support me and others like me.

Despite sensing that my journey wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, I was determined to find answers and build the bridge to my dreams. I conquered every stumbling block with patience and perseverance, and successfully established not just one, but a number of start-ups of my own. This book is a melange of my experience and learnings. To anyone wanting to start a business, this book could work as a perfect how-to guide of entrepreneurship. Having built the business of my dreams on Canadian soil, I would now like to use my experience to help my fellow Canadians to build theirs. Here is a brief overview of what this book can teach you.

Starting a business is not just about selling a product or service to customers. It involves a lot of background work. There are also a host of pre- and post-sale activities that you as an entrepreneur will have to think about. The first and foremost step is to assess your suitability for the job. You aspire to start a business, but is entrepreneurship the right fit for you? It’s always better to test the waters before diving in. A certain activity or profession might be the best in the world, but you can only derive value out of it if it suits your individual life circumstances and personality type. Once you have ticked the box of suitability, next comes the business idea. A unique, well-researched, and thoroughly analyzed business idea can do wonders for your entrepreneurial venture, whereas simply hurrying into incorporation without critically thinking through its feasibility, profitability, and scope is equivalent to setting yourself up for failure.

Third on the list is organizational structure. Every entrepreneur needs to choose whether their start-up should be a sole trading concern, a partnership, or a corporation. Each of these organizational types has its own set of rules, formalities, advantages, and disadvantages. A lot of your future decisions with regard to the different aspects of your business will depend upon the option you choose. For instance, how you maintain your accounts and how taxation works for you will vary depending on your organizational type. This, in turn, will affect your costs, and will also determine the number and kind of employees you hire. Reports and technical documents, too, are an integral part of a business. The task of preparing them isn’t restricted to the period after incorporation, though. A business plan is an elaborate pre-incorporation document that every entrepreneur must prepare. This will not only help you develop a better understanding of your business from all angles, but is also vital for arranging funding for your venture. A SWOT analysis and competitor analysis are among the other business evaluation and research documents you will have to prepare before you start. Finance is the lifeblood of any business, and the lack of adequate funds is one of the greatest reasons why many great ideas never see the light of day. Convincing a venture capitalist or an angel fund to invest in your idea requires a solid business plan. Aside from this, you should also be aware of how to approach these financiers and what should comprise that killer business plan. The government also has policies in place to fund certain kinds of businesses, and knowing about them can really aid an entrepreneur in solving the difficult finance puzzle.

The final step in preparation for entrepreneurship entails inculcating the right habits and developing the soft skills necessary to succeed as an entrepreneur. Building and maintaining connections with the right people can help you with your business in ways you cannot imagine. How to network? Where to find networking groups? How to manage relationships? How can networking help you in your entrepreneurial journey? These are some questions every person wanting to succeed in the business world must have answers to before starting off. This book will help you with all of the above, and will, in essence, prepare you for entrepreneurship. As you flip through these pages, you will learn about every facet of starting a business, from the technical to the fundamental. While this book can theoretically equip you with the required knowledge, implementing it to realize your entrepreneurial dream will require action from your end.

No matter what you do in life, everything is difficult before it is easy. The fear of failure, the fear of being judged, and the fear of taking risks are some of the hurdles that many aspiring entrepreneurs face. Many of us out there let go of our passion and spend all our time living someone else’s dream. As Steve Jobs rightly said, Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice. [Most] important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

It is normal to feel scared and anxious when embarking on something new. The lack of knowledge is often the cause of fear, and many entrepreneurs fail to understand this. Reading and understanding the contents of this how-to guide will give you the confidence to fight these fears and take that bold step. With this book around, you will find a way to answer all of your whens, whys and how-tos.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.—Walt Disney.

Your dream life is just a few pages away. So put away all your fears and apprehensions, and read on to get a little closer to where you always wanted to be.

Chapter One: Before You Start Your Business

One of the huge mistakes people make is that