Unlocking the Power of Work Mobility: How we 10xed our investment participating in Startup Canada’s Nova Scotia Tour Stop
Nov 30, 2023
Want to learn more about how you can leverage work mobility to stimulate growth in your business, or your career? Join our FREE Digital Nomad 101 webinar on Dec 7th, 1:00-2:30 pm AST. Get the guidance needed to start your work mobility journey and learn why Pictou County, Nova Scotia is a great destination for digital nomads and remote workers.
It’s no secret that 2023 has been a challenging year professionally for many. If you work in tech, your LinkedIn timeline has been filled with weekly layoff announcements. Many small business owners struggled to survive, as consumer purse strings tightened and corporate budgets were slashed. There were constant reminders that in the business world we’ve built, we are all line items on balance sheets.
🤮🤮🤮
#thecrushingweightofcapitalism
The start of 2023 was especially difficult for The Maker’s Collective. Direct to consumer course sales plunged, the rate of b2b deals closing slowed, and then stopped. Business as usual wasn’t working. The typical customer segments weren’t buying. We needed to make a drastic shift.
So, we decided to start moving.
Prior to 2023, most of our business was done through a partnership network we have established in Ontario. Rather than trying to introduce new offers within these existing networks, our strategy to turn the business around was to take our existing programming to new places.
Enter Startup Canada, and their incredible cross-country tour.
Startup Canada is a not for profit that aims to be the gateway to entrepreneurship ecosystem in Canada. They over-deliver on that value proposition by a wide margin.
Led by CEO Kayla Isabelle, and Tour Manager Lauren Macready (two of the hardest working, most kickass people you’ll ever do business with - seriously the pace these two operate at is 🤯🤯🤯), the Startup Canada Tour brings entrepreneurs and organizations together to facilitate learning, networking, and collaboration through a series of world-class conferences. They are super-connectors, and the environment they have created provided the conditions we needed to re-imagine what success for our business might look like.
After connecting with their team and exploring opportunities to collaborate, we decided to make the investment to participate in the Halifax stop on their 2023 tour, where we would deliver a workshop to their audience of entrepreneurs, and serve as guest expert mentors.
As fully remote workers ourselves, we decided to run our business from Halifax for a week, which would give us the opportunity to book meetings, and follow-up with folks from the conference, while being able to spend time on the coast, enjoying the slower pace of life, the incredibly welcoming community, and the proximity to the ocean that Atlantic Canada offers.
The value of travelling to this new market, both for a digital nomad travel experience, and to intentionally develop new business opportunities, greatly exceeded our expectations.
- We learned that while our skill sets and our offers held value in Ontario, they filled an even bigger gap in Nova Scotia.
- We learned that the business culture in Atlantic Canada was much warmer and more welcoming than some of the Ontario ecosystems, which can be territorial and challenging to engage with, in as meaningful of a capacity.
- We learned that establishing trust and building meaningful relationships in person accelerates timelines and gets deals closed faster.
- We learned that things generally cost less in Atlantic Canada than they do in Ontario.
- We learned that sometimes, the best way to move the needle in your business is to move your business to new places.
Accelerated by the trust built seeing us in action, we established relationships with a handful of Nova Scotia organizations and within 5 months of attending the conference, we closed new deals that represented a 10x return on the investment we made travelling to Halifax. It was so effective, we re-invested some of that revenue to participate in a second stop on the Startup Canada tour in Calgary, Alberta (more on that later).
However, the best outcome of the Halifax Startup Canada tour stop was not the immediate revenue (although in the short-term it gave us some breathing room). By far the best thing to come from our work mobility experience in Nova Scotia was meeting the wonderful folks from Pictou County Partnerships.
Wade Tibbo and Cindy James from Pictou County Partnerships were in the audience for our workshop, which allowed them to see first hand the types of educational experiences we can provide. They connected with us after our workshop, and we immediately found alignment in our goals to support entrepreneurs, and to help entrepreneurs and employees alike to embrace the power of mobility.
This experience opened our eyes to the layered value of workforce mobility. Not only is developing a workstyle that embraces movement a valuable strategy for individuals and small businesses, communities like Pictou County can also significantly benefit from workforce mobility by developing unique talent attraction strategies to bring remote workers and digital nomads to their communities.
Being an ecosystem partner with Startup Canada produced a 10x return on our investment. AND, while we did not set out with the goal of developing a new offer, the discovery we did on the east coast gave us the insights needed to develop a new program that will benefit both Canadian communities, and movement-enabled talent who are looking to explore incredible communities like the coastal region of Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
Next week, we are launching our first Digital Nomad Talent Attraction Program, in collaboration with Pictou County Partnerships and Ignite Atlantic. On December 7th, 2023, our free Digital Nomad 101 webinar will introduce you to the landscape of workforce mobility in Canada, a detailed guide to start your journey as a digital nomad or remote worker in Canada, and a deep dive into why Pictou County, Nova Scotia, is a prime location for folks with digital skills who are looking to stimulate forward professional momentum by embracing being part of the most mobile workforce in history.
Want to learn more about how you can leverage work mobility to stimulate growth in your business, or your career? Join our FREE Digital Nomad 101 webinar on Dec 7th, 1:00-2:30 pm AST. Get the guidance needed to start your work mobility journey and learn why Pictou County, Nova Scotia is a great destination for digital nomads and remote workers.
