Same People

It doesn't matter where I go, people are the same. I'm not saying this is a greyscale world filled with the dullness of predictability. Quite the opposite. The same in that people want to live a life worth living, whatever that means to them.

This week I travelled to Medicine Hat to give a talk on Adventures in International Branding, and tomorrow I give another on AI Quick Wins, both for the latest cohort of the Trade Accelerator Program (TAP) with Calgary Economic Development. I do eight to ten sessions a year across Alberta with this team. Each session, or cohort, has between 10 and 15 businesses taking part, and each business brings one to three people from their team.

I meet a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners. Small and large.

Expanding a business is scary. What works here might not work there, wherever there may be. It is expensive and risky and, frankly, scary. You need to believe in your brand, and you need to find a partner or distributor you can trust to introduce you to this new market.

My message to these brave souls is always the same: start with the truth. If you aren't clear on what you do, why you do it, who you do it for, and why they care, you are not likely to be successful here or there. This isn't doomsaying, just an observational perspective.

Today's cohort couldn't be more different from a socio-economic-business-maturity-annual-revenue perspective, but everyone had the same energy: I'm scared but won't show it 'cause I've got this, even if I wonder if I do. $10K to $1M in annual revenue shared the room, the fears, and the excitement of growing.

I love this.