The Brant Beacon spoke with the region’s Chamber of Commerce executives in anticipation of Small Business Week, which will take place from Sunday, October 20 through Saturday, October 26, 2024.
David Prang, Chief Executive Officer of the Brantford-Brant Chamber of Commerce, Susan Morton, Executive Director of the County of Brant Chamber of Commerce, and Sherri Barna, President of the County of Brant Chamber of Commerce, sat down to discuss the value and importance of supporting small businesses across the region.
How proud are you to represent small businesses in the City of Brantford and County of Brant?
Prang: “It’s a tremendous honour because we know that small business owners make up the largest employer base in Canada, close to 98 per cent. Small business owners, they’re the experts for the business stuff they’re running and for the most part, they always need a team behind them as well,” he said. “They create a tremendous amount of economic activity in every community that they’re in and for Brantford-Brant we have somewhere between 4,000 and 7,000 overall businesses in the region, 95 per cent or so of them being small businesses, and so you’re looking at a lot of people being employed in our region that rely on the courage and the hard work of small business owners.”
Morton: We tend to have a lot of small businesses in our organization, that’s where our membership is and so it’s really important to us that we make sure that they’re supported as much as we possibly can,” she said. “For the vendors that participate in our Chamber, everything we do helps raise their visibility and we also love helping to create community. We love getting to represent small businesses because we actually really enjoy helping people and just seeing them thrive.”
Why is it important to support small businesses?
Prang: “They invest in our community through both the economic activity they’re doing, but then they’re also the ones that sponsor sports teams and provide prizes and raffles for fundraisers, and their ownership are the ones that are members of our service clubs as well too. They really keep those funds flowing in the community and by making a conscious choice to shop local and by dedicating a large portion of your shopping dollars to our local businesses, it’s one of those ‘rising tides lifts all boats,’ kind of things,” he said. “When you create economic success within Brantford-Brant, other people, other businesses and other entrepreneurs see that and want to invest in that as well because they see that there’s a successful entrepreneurial environment. If you look at a youth apprenticeship program list of all the businesses, they are all small business owners that are taking students and giving them learning opportunities, and helping to invest in that learning experience for students as well.”
Barna: “Small businesses are the backbone of our community,” she said. “Seventy-three per cent of Canadian companies have less than ten employees and that’s why they often need help because they don’t necessarily have their own resources that they can utilize when they’re only working with a few employees and themselves. Ultimately, when we support those small businesses, that’s major tax dollars coming right back into our communities.”
What is the benefit of celebrating Small Business Week in Ontario?
Prang: There’s lots of days, weeks and months that are dedicated to different different things but with Small Business Week, I think it helps to create awareness as we roll into the holiday shopping season that you can get on top of it in advance by working with or looking at a small business,” he said. “I think there’s an element here where we get to support small business by giving them opportunities to learn and engage, but then also, there’s a way of getting the public out and interacting with them as well. We’re really excited for this week because this is the largest celebration of small businesses in the community in about 15 years.”
Barna: “As a small business, to survive the first year and then three years and five years… it’s a huge feat. As an entrepreneur myself, we kind of just plough through those years and don’t take time to celebrate ourselves but it’s a really big deal,” she said. “This week is a great time to really recognize those businesses, put them in the spotlight and give them some great resources to help them become a better business person.”
Morton: “It’s also to remind the community too that these businesses need your support and that they should stick with and support your local businesses. And business to business, look after each other…I tell all our businesses that they need to be champions for each other because things are better when you aren’t working against each other,” she said. “It’s all part of building community, not just business to business but also the business to consumer community. We really want to bring the businesses together and so this week is a great time to bring the businesses to the community and help people understand the importance of supporting local.”
What types of plans and events are going on for Small Business Week?
Prang: “We’ve united with our partners at Enterprise Brant, the Brantford-Brant Business Resource Centre and with the Paris and District Chamber of Commerce to help to incubate those spaces and we’re delivering four different unique opportunities for both the public and our members. We’re excited to relaunch this for the first time in 15 years and hopefully we’ll be able to do an even bigger and better event next year.”
Prang, Barna, and Morton said that the following events are all great opportunities to leverage the resources and networking the week provides:
- Monday, October 21, from noon to 2:00 p.m. – Enterprise Brant Lunch and Learn: Cybersecurity and Fraud
- Tuesday, October 22, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. – Chamber of Commerce Brantford-Brant, 16th annual Trade Show *Open to public
- Wednesday, October 23, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. – Brantford-Brant Business Resource Centre: Networking Made Easy
- Thursday, October 24, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. – Paris and District Chamber of Commerce: Business Succession Planning Seminar with Jeff Noble and Nick Nemes of BDO Private Family Wealth, Madeline Douglas, Waterous Holden, and Jon Shell of Employee Ownership Canada.
“We’ve also got a couple of things to launch internally to the Chamber on the Friday and so we’re excited about that as well,” said Prang.
If you had one message to small business owners, what would you say?
Prang: “I believe that it’s a very exciting time to be a small business owner in our region. We are primed for growth and our region is excited for growth. Whether you’re in the County of Brant or the City of Brantford, I think it’s an exciting time to be part of our region because business is coming and it’s booming,” he said. “There are opportunities in every corner of our region and I think an investment in the Chamber of Commerce movement is essential to get your name and your profile raised in the business community.”
Barna: “Keep going and make the connections,” she said. “The effort you put into the networking world, whether that’s through the Chamber or something else, will pay off dividends. It’s not a waste of time, even if you’re an introvert.”
Morton: “Also, build your brand and let people know who you are and what you’re selling… gain their trust because that matters,” she said. “Don’t be the best kept secret in town, get out there and let people know who you are.”
What would you say to those who aspire to be small business owners?
Prang: “As having once been an entrepreneur myself, it can be a challenge. It’s not just a job, it’s a lifestyle and it’s an experience. I want to encourage people to make careful and well intentioned steps to move into entrepreneurship and do it with the passion that you have. No matter what you do as an entrepreneur, you need to have a passion for people and a passion for service,” he said. “I think that’s where a Chamber can come in to help to elevate that passion with messaging and with connections and those types of things. Entrepreneurship can be a lonely experience, but when you tie-in and work with Chambers of Commerce and other networking groups, you’ve got friends, and you’ve got people that want to see you successful and to reach out. It’s not always money that makes you successful, but the friendships and the networking connections you make as well and a Chamber can help make that happen.”
You recently went through changing your marketing from just the Paris and District Chamber of Commerce, to the County of Brant Chamber of Commerce. Why make that change and what has happened since doing that?
Barna: “Every single week since I’ve been in leadership, I hear the comment, ‘I thought I had to live in Paris to join.’ Now that we’ve done this, I think it helps communicate that anybody in the County can join. It doesn’t matter where you’re from because we serve the County and so we want to make sure everyone knows they’re welcome, and that we service everyone including St. George, Burford, Cainsville, Scotland, Glen Morris, and the entirety of the County. Since we’ve started marketing ourselves like that, it feels like it’s clicking for people now and it’s also helped put on the map. Previously, if anybody went looking for their local Chamber of Commerce, they would never find us and so it just took away all that confusion where people thought they couldn’t belong if they didn’t live in Paris.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
