Episode 7 – Brianna Blaney

0:35
Alright, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome everyone. I know that people will continue to trickle in and that is no problem at all, but I'll start with our little privacy notice. So by accepting this meeting invite you consent to be recorded for the Scotiabank Women Initiative Master Class. The Scotiabank Women Initiative Master Class team will have access to the recordings. Please do not share any of your personal identifiable information, bank internal or confidential information during the call or via the chat window.

1:07
All right. So with that out of the way and housekeeping done, welcome everyone. On behalf of the Scotiabank Women Initiative, we thank you for joining us today. We're very excited about this particular guest speaker. So today we have with us Brianna Blaney. Brianna, I always say that an individual can introduce themselves way better than I can. So why don't you start by giving us a little introduction about you yourself, Brianna?

1:32
Absolutely Chris, thanks for having me. I'm so glad to be here with all of you. It's the morning for me, but the afternoon for many of you. I'm based here on the West Coast. I'm Brianna Blaney, I'm the CEO and Cofounder of Pocketed and actually also bring two hats to this conversation. I am a multi time founder and still own my first company as well. So I'm excited to share more about my own experience today and the businesses that I have the privilege of building and leading alongside brilliant teams of people.

2:00
Amazing. I'm really excited about this conversation, Brianna. I'm excited for so many different levels. I'm excited to chat about Pocketed, because obviously we've got a new partnership and that's exciting to me. So I do want to talk about that. But I'm excited to talk about your journey as an entrepreneur. So maybe could we start with you giving us an introduction about Pocketed and your journey with Pocketed. And then we'll kind of expand that out on your journey as an entrepreneur. How's that? Absolutely. That's perfect. So Pocketed, we built Pocketed in response to a problem that we experienced as founders. And I'll give you a little bit of back story. My cofounder, Dr. Aria Hun, and I have both built companies and we built them separately. We built companies together. And as many of you can probably relate, we constantly found it hard to find

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money as we were getting our businesses off the ground and then seeking to build those businesses. We know that access to capital is a challenge for all entrepreneurs and that that disproportionately impacts women and other equity deserving founder groups. So based on our own frustrations accessing capital, we wanted to identify a way to level the playing field for more entrepreneurs and we started to look more into other sources of funding. So of course there's, you know, the raising money from investors and taking on equity capital that everybody talks about and I think dominates a lot of headlines. There's accessing debt solutions through your bank or through other financial institutions and other channels. Then the other channel that we identified that was so powerful for us was access to government funding. Our government

3:33
and Canada is incredibly generous. They distribute over $6 billion in grants, tax credits and incentives every single year for for profit businesses and not large, huge companies, but small businesses, medium sized businesses, companies getting off the ground. And when you look at that $6 billion number and you contrast that with the fact that less than 2% of investor capital, for example, goes to women, we wanted to understand how we could level the playing field through that government funding and that was what led us to create pocketed. So we built pocketed with the explicit goal of eliminating financial barriers for entrepreneurs. And we've done that by building a software product that helps you identify the right government, funding solutions for your business in an automated way and through access to support

4:19
and solutions and services around that. So you can actually successfully win the money that you identify. And it's been, you know, an incredible journey. We launched in 2021 and since launching have helped more than 12,000 companies access over $100 million in funding. So it's been an incredible, very rewarding journey seeing the businesses that we support and the impact that that money has on them. Chris. It's money that you know, helps early stage companies make their first hire and and offset those wages through wage subsidy. It's scaling businesses that are able to expand beyond our Canadian borders because they get capital to invest in an international market. It's investing in R&D so you can innovate and solve some of these big global problems that we're facing. So it's really been a powerful journey

5:05
for us and as I think every entrepreneur feels we're very much just getting started. I love that. I love that and I got to say so I do want to dive into the details and I do want to talk more about that impact that you're having and and you know the journey that you've had so far and all of that. But what I want to share with everyone who's listening is when when we first met and and you first, you know introduced me to pocketed, obviously the passion that you have not only for entrepreneurs but but for pocketed and for the platform. And I mean it's very apparent but the first thing that stood out to me as someone who is has worked several years with entrepreneurs and you know we know that one of the gaps is capital, right. Like that we we

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know that. And so one of the first things that stood out to me was

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it didn't take a rocket scientist to understand the platform. And and that really says a lot. And I know that that you're going to share with us so many other deep value statements about Pocketed. And I agree with all of them. But the first thing the up front is that I've listened to so many new entrepreneurs or maybe pivoting entrepreneurs who are, you know, changing their path, changing their solution, whatever it might be. And and one of the things that I hear all the time is I didn't know. I didn't know how or I didn't know who or I didn't know where or I was intimidated because I didn't know. I didn't know what questions to ask. And so the first thing that I noticed about Pocketed

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was the ease was the you didn't need to know that you were there. That Pocketed platform was there to guide every step. So that's the one thing I have to give kudos for right off the bat, because I think lots of entrepreneurs starting out. That's a big deal,

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you think? Chris, thank you for that. And it's been a journey to get to the place of making it simple. My cofounder is brilliant. She's basically the equivalent of a rocket scientist. So it doesn't love rocket scientists understand it. But I feel very proud to work alongside one someone that is basically that she's not technically, but but you're right. Chris and my cofounder Aria, often talks about the fact that the more you could make complex concepts feel simple, that is a reflection that you understand and are doing a great job of serving your desired audience in solving the problem they are experiencing. Because there's so much about starting a business that is hard. You talked about pivoting entrepreneurs and new entrepreneurs, and I have been both of those things. And it doesn't really matter which place you're coming from.

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Building a business is so hard. It is so freaking hard and it never actually gets easier. The challenges just become different and the more we can help to simplify some of these huge like monster under your bed type things that keep us up at night. And for me as a founder, as an entrepreneur, money is always being in that category. The more we can help to do that to simplify it and most importantly accelerate businesses along their journey in doing so. That is ultimately the crux of it. So thank you for for that. It's it's great to hear that it's it's feeling simple because it's

8:27
I, God bless the government. It's innately not simple, but I think there's a lot of broken things.

8:33
It's available, it's available, but it's not simple

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exactly, and so we can help to simplify it even a little bit. That of course is a is a huge thing we're trying to do with entrepreneurs.

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Well I mean kudos to you because definitely you're you're you're doing that and so and I I love you also mentioned that you know you're continuing to grow, you're continuing to evolve, you're continuing to work on pocketed. So any anything you can share with us on things that you're working on, maybe not specifics on pocketed, but maybe just as an entrepreneur, what are you continuing to do within your business that's that's leading you to that growth path?

9:16
Yeah, it's, it's interesting because as I'm sure everyone here can can relate, building a business takes constant grit. You are never done. And it's it's a question of what is the next challenge that we're going to tackle. When is the next opportunity that we are going to capitalize on. And I fit in the category of people that never thinks we're moving fast enough. I always want to move faster and do more because it is in service of the overall goal. When we are able to offer more and do more and do it better, we can accomplish that the that goal of eliminating barriers for more people and in a more meaningful way. So when I look at our road map for Pocket and the things that we're working on today, it's interesting that you talk about the fact that it's simple. I think we still have a long way we can go to make it even more simple.

10:02
And we talked about that a lot. It's how do we give entrepreneurs the answers to the questions they come to us with. And typically, entrepreneurs come to us with three key questions. Is my business ready for grants? So am I grant ready, yes or no? If yes, are there actually even grants out there that are fit for my business and the things that I want money for right now? And then the third question. If yes, which ones? Please tell me the answer. And I think the simplicity of those three questions is almost, it's almost deceiving. It's incredibly complex to be able to answer those three questions effectively. So right now, we are working on radically reimagining the experience a customer has within pocketed so that they have clarity on those 3 answers immediately. We're expanding

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that. Our database consistently is focused right now on for profit businesses. We're continuing to expand to include programs for nonprofits, arts, culture and and more and more in the for profit space because I think there's so many businesses that have a social impact component to what they do and programs that are historically for purely traditionally for profit focused companies are a fit for them but they also can access other programs that we don't currently focus on pocketed. So we're excited to bring that under one roof. Expansion is obviously a key focus for us. We serve Canada today but expanding to serve our neighbors to the South Down in the US as well as the UK and Australia. And then increasingly developing tools that enable our team to better support our users and our customers.

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Because at the end of the day, while technology has an important role to play in this world, especially in allowing everyone at every stage to access funding, you need technology, but there's still a need to support people to give them answers, to provide that human touch. And the more we can enable our team to do that at scale and do it in an effective way, it matters. And we are a for profit business. So that scalability piece is very important. And in the decisions that we make, Yes. Will often try something in what we call the minimum viable product way. Perhaps it's more manual, it's more experimental. It's certainly not beautiful ever, but it's a big piece that we do. So examples of tools that we're developing on that side. And you know, it's interesting because we were asked can't we just bottle one of our team members? Jamie, you've met

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Jimmy. Chris. Yeah. And she's magic. Jamie is magic. And she knows so much about so many programs and everyone says, can we just bottle her? And we go, we can't bottle her, but we can try to replicate some of what makes Jamie brilliant. And So what we've developed is a new artificial intelligence tool that will do some of it. Jamie does, where you can tell us about the project that you want to fund and where your business is growing and what you're excited about as opposed to just matching based on parameters about your company, your revenue, your size, your province having corporation. It'll now do a more fulsome match of relevant programs to fund the things that you are spending money on in your Business Today. And also give you explanations about why programs are or are not a good fit for you to be considering at that moment in time. So we're incredibly excited about the

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impact that has for each of our customers, but also for our team to be able to support our customers. So again all of this in service of that bigger mission of eliminating financial barriers for entrepreneurs and doing it in so many different ways.

13:22
I do have a A a comment in the chat that I do wanna touch on. I know it's a little bit off of what we're Speaking of but I think that it's it's a good point and I think probably that it's a question from a lot of people. So the the question in the chat word for word is 12 month commitment is daunting to me which I feel like an entrepreneur that that's that's just a true statement across the board. 12 months is a long time you don't know where your business is going or what direction or so agreed. So you know if you're willing to commit, you're looking, you're like I think I want to be with Pocket and this can help me but it's that 12 month like we're What kind of advice are you giving when we're talking about that and is there a way to get some sort of consultation to see that this is

14:08
but it's for you and for your business in this time?

14:11
Yeah. Chris, it's such a great question and thank you Samantha for sharing that in the chat. It's a great question. We get asked that question a lot. Why 12 months? And the reality is that grants are not an on demand funding solution. If anyone in this room has pursued funding solutions of any sort, whether it is debt, equity investment or non dilutive funding like grants, tax credits and incentives, you can probably share about your own experiences with the fact that it's rarely there on a dime when you need it. The reality is that grants need to be part of your overall funding strategy. They're cyclical. Certain grants will open up three times per year. Other grants will only open once per year. So if you are serious about grants and incentives being part of your funding strategy for your business, you need to consider it as a long term

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strategy, not just a what's there for me today. And that is incredibly difficult when you are a busy entrepreneur. So within the product you do have the ability to set up notifications on different types of programs that might open in three months that you know are relevant for you. You can also absolutely book a consultation one-on-one with one of our grant specialists where we can support you in understanding the best way to approach grant, the best way to use the platform to serve your needs and that can be aligning it with your hiring plans. If you intend to add employees to payroll this year, they can be taking the time to understand your expansion or where you know you're spending money because at the end of the day in order to use grant successfully you have to spend money. Most grants in Canada work on a reimbursement

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structure, meaning that you have to spend the money before they'll pay you back. And an example of that, you know, you'll hear me talk about hiring the locks. That's a a really popular program for companies of every stage. And if you are hiring someone on payroll, the government will subsidize anywhere from, you know, 50 to 100% of wages depending on when you're hiring, where you're hiring, the role you're hiring for the person that you hire. So it's a great way to help you access the resources in your business through additional people and expertise that they bring to your business, but not have to shoulder 100% of the risk of that financial investment. But it's important to understand that those grants are cyclical. You need to be planning for them. You need to be planning your hiring around the timing of those grants if that grant is a make or break to your ability to hire.

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So it's really important to be thinking about the long term strategy. So yes starting with the consultation, if you are new to grants especially is a great place to begin and our team can help to support you in in developing that strategy if you're not ready to make that commitment around the consultation because they are an investment. I understand that too We offer free office hours twice a week. But you are welcome to join and our team will walk you through grants, walk you through the platform, help you understand how to use it and get the most out of your experience in the platform. So you can support your own funding journey in a structure in a way that makes sense for you. I love that And you know what it it makes me think of how we discuss it within within the bank all the time. Is that really you want to take pocketed or or the idea of that grants. But I'm going to say

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Pocket 'cause that's the only way you should do it, is that you want to add them to your team, right? Like you wanna. So it's not just a matter of that's it. My whole business is gonna depend on my two months with Pocketed. Like it's you're really just like you would build that relationship with your financial advisor at the bank to use that as a solution. You also wanna build your relationship with Pocketed and with Grants in general to have them as long term solutions. And so that it's an ongoing resource for your business, not a I'm going to get this one and then that's it. I'm I'm done. I don't need it anymore. Right. Exactly. It's well said, Chris, and I love it. I think if Pocket can become synonymous with grants, that would be a huge win for us in Canada. Keep pushing.

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But you're right, it's it is best if it's a long term strategy and we want to help you get to a place of value realization as quickly as possible. Always anyone in business should be seeking to do that with and for their customers. And I actually think this is an example of an area that we have more work we can do. And you know, I could talk literally all day about the many hypothesis that we made building pocketed and how many of them, most of them were completely wrong and we've had to pivot and adjust and respond accordingly. I could tell you all day about that and I'm sure we're going to get to some of those today. But it's an example of where we have more work to do. I think we have more work to do to figure out. We know that our people are amazing at helping companies think through their strategy and their funding road map and identifying where grants can fit in that funding journey. But how do we replicate

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similar experience in technology for those that can't justify their stage of growth, the spend on a human doing it for them. And that is something that, you know we talk about a lot. It keeps us up at night because we want to find a way of serving every stage of business and we've been at every stage of business. We've been pre revenue startup, we've been bootstrapped entrepreneurs who only could spend the money that we earned. We've been growth entrepreneurs with funding from external investors. So we understand the pain points that exist at every stage of that journey and of course everything in between. And we want to find a way to serve everybody with that same experience through technology. And that our commitment is continuing to work toward that goal. In the experience you have in our platform,

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absolutely you can still access humans because as much as we love for technology to be the end all, be all people want to do business with people and there's something wrong with that. And we've made that available despite the fact that our early days, Chris, we did not make that available to people, which was a painful lesson to learn. So we responded and you know based on demand we've made it available and it's it's changed everything in our business.

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So. So let's dive into that. Let's talk about the good, the bad and the ugly on your on your journey and I'll let you decide if we're starting with good, bad or ugly. But on your journey let's talk about some of those pain points some of those, you know, huge wins, some of those as an entrepreneur and and you don't have to give absolute specifics but like what were some of those lessons that you learned and how you learned them and what were some of those aha moments for you when it came to you being an entrepreneur any of the times that you you have been and and give us some of those life lessons that we can learn from gladly. So it is I often say that entrepreneurship is a constant lesson in humility. I wake up every day and it's really just a question of what am I?

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Feeling it today, not am I feeling today because it's constant and it's OK. And I think talking about that as an inner normalized way is important because we move so fast that we break things and we do fail. And we want to normalize that for our teams as well because we expect them to move fast. Work with 80% sometimes is good enough as a starting point And some of those notions that make sense in startup but stop making sense as you scale. So ask me again in five years, Chris, whether we still have those samples today. Yeah, today, I mean, Pocketed was born out of another business failing. Pocketed was born because the last software company, the first one that my cofounder and I had built. We had built this incredible people and HR technology company,

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IT for restaurants and retailers and we had a pilot five in the market. We had a flight booked to Chicago in April 2020

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and then COVID hit and we built a solution for restaurants and retailers which early in COVID were two of the most heavily impacted spaces. So we ultimately, despite pushing through for the summer all made the decision that that business was early enough and de risked enough. We hadn't taken outside capital. We still got to make our own choices, but it was early enough that we weren't going to continue building that the timing was wrong in that business. And I think the the lesson there for me is something that I bring forward and pocketed every day, which is that even if you're set out on a path, you need to be open to the idea that that path is wrong and that parts of that path are wrong and that you may need to redirect or change course or whatever language and analogy you want to use on that.

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You need to be prepared to be open to that. You need to read the signals. You need to be constantly looking for information, but also ruthless and pursing that information for the gems that are relevant and be able, willing and ready to make hard decisions. You know, I've never regretted making a hard decision a day too early. I almost always look back at them and say, shoot, I should have made that hard decision months ago.

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It's so funny that your .1 of my greatest mentors said something that really stuck with me and I have. I've used it almost daily since. And and he said, if you're going to fail, fail fast.

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Learn the lesson. Take it and keep going. Fail fast. Don't sit in it. Don't dwell in it. I love it. Fail fast. And that honestly for the past year since he said it, it's something that I, I try to live by. And so it's exactly what you're talking about is like, you know find those gems, learn those lessons, but keep pushing, keep keep moving forward. We talk about that word that you just said. We talk about it all the time. It pocketed. We wanna fail fast and we want to fail forward always. So you want to learn from it. So you are incrementally evolving in whatever approach you're taking and there's always lessons and the things that don't work. So we have very much a culture of experimentation in pursuit of failing fast because we have to be able to test what works. And it's interesting

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because best practice in building a business we've all heard everyone say this. Go out and talk to potential customers and ask them what their needs are and what their pains are and then build to solve a problem and like always do that. That part is not really the core of my story here built to solve problems always please. But it's that asking people what their problems are and what they need isn't enough because it's people are often we don't really understand what we need. We don't we don't understand what we need, but we know what the problem is. If you ask people to design your product and design your solution for you, you may find that you build the thing they ask for and nobody comes. And we definitely fell into that trap a little bit in our early days. We built with people asked for as opposed to observing and watching and learning and building what they really need.

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And there is a messaging and a marketing and all sorts of other challenges that go along with that approach. But building to solve the problem is ultimately the goal. And sometimes that looks a little bit different than what your customer thought they needed. So that's a different challenge to overcome again in messaging, but building for the real, real problem, solving for the real problem as opposed to just what people ask for because they're not intentionally trying to mislead you. It's just that they didn't understand. And you know, the other one that I talk about again, Chris, in pursuit of moving fast is I talked to an entrepreneur of the day. He's had this idea for a year. And I finally said to her

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throw up a landing page with a form, get expressions of interest through that form as an incredibly quick way to validate whether your idea has legs. And that's actually what we did with Pocketed. We threw up a landing page, had a target for the number of signups we wanted to see to be able to deploy our alpha of the product. And we oversubscribed our alpha launch by more than 500% in 48 hours. And that told us this was a pain that validated that this isn't just a pain. People talk about, this is a pain they want to solve and that they will use a solution to solve. And that was for us at the beginning of this relentless commitment to speed experimentation and failing forward.

25:55
I love that. And one of the things I'll point out and I think is really important and I think it's important for, for, you know, leadership within your career. If you're not an entrepreneur, say no. We have some Scotia bankers that are intently listening to the conversation. But also if you are an entrepreneur, I think it's important for that too. But I think oftentimes we skip to solution too quickly. So I think it's important, like you said, is really deep dive into those pain points because sometimes you can't know what the solution is if you haven't really discovered what the problem is or what the pain point. Totally. And so I think, and I think we're all guilty of it. I know I'm guilty of it is sometimes you just want to solve it. So you go right into, well, here's the problem. Oh, I know how to fix it. I know how to fix it.

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Right. And so, but you haven't actually taken a really deep dive into the problem, into the pain, into when does it happen, how does it happen, Who does it happen for? And then then you can really develop that solution like you were saying is that, you know, you can take it away and develop that solution as opposed to just quickly trying to Band-Aid, which is what occurs when you move to it quickly. Right. Is that you just Band-Aid solutions? Because you're like, I saw this tiny little problem, but because I didn't expose the entire pain point, I only solved this tiny little bit of it. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, that's a great point. And the one area that I think moving fast to build is is smart is yes, I understand the problem, but then do move fast to build and try. If you are

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building technology, for example, which you may or may not have built, tech and non tech companies then try to build solutions without writing a single line of code. Validate if somebody actually wants that solution before you develop the code around it. Because developing code is expensive. It's a different type of investment and it's harder to pivot and nately. So if you're able to test it with almost a service approach and then build it into a product and productize that solution, there's power in that. And it's something that our team is actually really good at and has gotten more disciplined on over the last 18 months. Yeah. So, Chris, another lesson I do want to share with this group because, you know, we all know that you shouldn't do this, but we did this thing. So in the startup world, there is this celebration of growth

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at all costs. And that has been a celebrated headline for a lot of years. Uber is an example of that, where everyone just celebrated their radical growth. We work an example of that. And we didn't focus enough on sustainable growth or profitable growth or building standalone sustainable businesses that didn't require outside investment to operate and stay alive. And when we got started, it was in 2021 when everyone was talking about, you know, market is frosty was the word that was often used. What a weird word, but it was the frothy. And you should be taking investment and you should be spending money on growing at all costs and getting as many users as you can. Well,

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he did that and raising money was the right thing for us. Absolutely. It helped to accelerate our grow. So it's actually not comments about that, but it was that we lost discipline on building revenue, generating business and building and focusing on activities that built us to be a sustainable business. We lost sight of that. So when the markets started to crash in 2022, we took a really hard look at ourselves. And despite the fact that my cofounder Ari and I have both built service companies that required us to bootstrap and make money, we knew that we lost sight of some of that discipline and pocketed. So we spent a year reworking our business model, experimenting with different options to add value to our customers and I

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ideate with them things that they actually wanted to pay this off. And that for us was a game changer. We went from just trying to report on huge numbers of users that used our platform to wanting to report on outcomes and wanting to report on satisfaction that we generated for our customers and aligning our interests with our our financial model. The way we made money, being aligned to our users and the outcomes they were achieving, which ultimately is access to capital. So when we refocus on how do we make money as a business, it was a game changer and it was hard. We had a hard year and had to work in the trenches and things that were not fun to do in our business and look at ourselves in ways that we're not super flattering

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to ourselves and be very honest about where we were needing to redirect energy from things that felt good. They were those like the vanity metrics that look good and feel good to the things that actually move the dial for us mean that we can pay our employees, mean that we can operate this business and continue supporting our users, our customers in achieving that goal of eliminating financial barriers. So we, I'm really excited to say have had a massive growth on that as a result of our teams diligence. We put money front and centre in our business paired with experience because ultimately those two things go hand in hand and that focus for our team is let's not just get more and more and more but let's support

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the people that are here. Let's make a difference for the people that are here. That attitude and that focus was it changed everything in our business. So I'm proud of our team for that transparency because that I mean it truly is it comes down to and I I mean this with no offence but it comes down to quality versus quantity and I think that that you see that in business often and I love the the vanity model I haven't heard it referenced exactly like that but exactly like you said it feels good it looks good but is it actually truly what our business needs down to the basics and so something that we say you know all the time in in the financial industry is like don't forget about the basics and and you it's funny you mentioned the term frothy. We use the word churn. Like, you have to keep the churn moving,

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right. So it, it can't just be about the fancy dive show all the time. Sometimes it has to be this slow and steady that like you said, to keep that quality assurance. Right. So, yeah, thank you for sharing that in, for being so transparent because I think that's definitely a challenge that I think a lot of entrepreneurs need to know that it that happens to everyone and doesn't and doesn't mean there's not going to be success in the future. Right. So thank you for sharing that. Is there any other challenges or tips and tricks we that you want to share with us? Yeah, I think there's two things. So, you know, in in the spirit of what you just shared, Chris, we talk a lot about how we need to build the engine. Right. You need to have the engine that does work. It is, it is for liable. It's predictable. It keeps the lights on and that is a big part of what gives you the gift.

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And then focusing on investing in and driving growth. And if I think about that in our context, you know, Ari and I talk about the fact a lot that when you're in a place of survival mode, when you're in a place of constant chaos, you can't think strategically in the same way. You need to keep the lights on. It's different. And I I share that because I want to transition into something else that I just want to acknowledge, which is that

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entrepreneurship in so many ways is a privilege. And I feel privileged to be able to be an entrepreneur. And I feel very fortunate that

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I am not worried about paying rent because if that's a concern, it you need to take care of you and your family. And sometimes that means you have to let that that needs to drive decisions that you make in your business and as an entrepreneur. And you know we hear a lot in the startup world, this idea of raising what's called a friends and family round. And I recall sitting with a a brilliant panelist on a panel who looked out of the audience and said my friends and family have no money. It's not an indicator that they don't believe in me and what I'm building. I don't have that community that has money to spend in my business. They are spending money on their own families. And I think the more we can help to overcome some of these stereotypes around entrepreneurship, the more we can stop telling entrepreneurs.

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Just go raise that easy $500,000 friends and family room. Like, what is that? Literally, what is that? So yes, entrepreneurship is a privilege. And it's so important to build your hype squad, whatever that may be, whether it's your peers, your mentors, your advisors, whoever it is that is there with you in the trenches as things get hard, because they do and they will, that's it helps you keep moving forward. It provides perspective. And it also means that when you have those really hard days, you have people that you can go to. So again, recognizing that it is a privilege to be here speaking to you, it's a privilege to have done what I've done. And I'm. I'm grateful to find a way and pocketed to help pay that forward so we can level that playing field and make it so that this piece of entrepreneurship stops being a privilege. Because if we can eliminate that barrier stops being a privilege

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in the same way we need to make it more accessible to more people.

35:00
I think that's fantastic and thank you for sharing because I say all the time that I I have the privilege of of working with entrepreneurs on a regular basis and and and day in and day out getting to mean inspiring entrepreneurs like yourself and not

35:18
not being an entrepreneur myself. So having you know a Scotiabank that is nothing but a huge support of of entrepreneurs in general but of of my career path. And so so having that that safety net of this phenomenal corporation supporting not only would I love to do and what I'm passionate about which is working with small businesses and entrepreneurs but also supporting those entrepreneurs and and their businesses. And so I definitely consider that to be a huge privilege. So thank you for sharing how how you feel in your appreciation. And I also would like to point out that that's why we have partnered together and that's why we're aligned because the value statement of of what you believe as an individual and as an entrepreneur as well as of of your business is

36:04
providing this access to capital for for everyone equally fairly you know across the board. And and obviously the Scotiabank women initiative believes the same that we want to provide that access to capital. And and so I think that's why we're able to work together. And I I'm proud to do so. And so I really do appreciate you sharing the the transparency and and and the appreciation. I think it's important to appreciate where where you've been where you've come from where you're going and who you're doing it with. And the other thing I wanted to say is I love, I would love if one day when we talk about that family and friends round because we hear that term all the time in the small business world. I would love if that meant when you sat down all your family and friends and asked what you just said for their support, for their understanding, for their, you know,

36:50
their ear for their but not for their money. Right. So. So I I hope that that's what that term means one day is that you've basically sat them down, be like, so when I go crazy with, you know, running around and my ideas and I'm unavailable because I'm so busy for four days in a row and you haven't heard from me or when I need to make that last minute meeting work and I'm it like I am my business right now. So I need that extra support or whatever it may be, whatever it looks like to that individual entrepreneur. I hope that's what that means is that they're building that team around them and that once they've got that set they can actually find that access to capital with you know financial institutions and pocketed and you know and and and and

37:36
so thank you for sharing that. I I very much appreciate it. Very much appreciate it.

37:41
Thanks, Chris. I love it. Yeah, I love it. I think if I could just say one more thing, please. When you're talking about startups and small businesses, and for all of us in this room, share your business in the chat. The cheapest thing we can all do, but that is a massive gift to entrepreneurs. Go and follow their channels. Engage with their content. Leave them a Google review. Share your feedback about their business. Refer a friend. Those small actions cost you nothing. The most powerful action we can take to support other entrepreneurs is to support their businesses and amplify their message. So do that every day. Find a way to do that. Leave one review, like one thing. Share one piece of content. Share 1 nugget of wisdom you took from that entrepreneur

38:27
and that goes so far. It goes so far. So please entrepreneurs, share your businesses in the chat. Share links so we can make sure we are following, engaging, amplifying and supporting because we have to practice community. That is an action that we have to take in order to make sure we can achieve success and build everyone up.

38:48
I love that. And Brianna, let's lead right into that. Dive deeper into that for me. Talk to me about community. What does that mean to you as an entrepreneur? What does that look like? Where are those spaces where you found your community or where you suggest others find their community? Yeah, absolutely. So I feel so incredibly fortunate to have unbelievable community around me. And it's interesting because another partner of yours, actually, Chris, the forum is where I started foraying into community as an entrepreneur. And many, many moons ago I participated in a brilliant program they do called E Series and I flew out to Toronto. Fortnite. I remember it was a big investment for me at the time and my business is only a year old. We were still early, we were still small, but I made the investment in myself and building my business. And again, not everyone can do that.

39:35
The form does offer scholarships, so don't rule it out. If you can't afford it, do talk to them. But I went and in through that program I met a brilliant mentor through the forum who introduced me to the entrepreneurship at UBC startup ecosystem that is an incubator and accelerator which became another big community for me. Through that community, I met my cofounder, Dr. Arahan, and that is where she and I got our start. And through that community and the forum we were able, we've been able to access mentorship advisors as advisors, have helped us build our board, identify folks that have a fiduciary obligation in our business and really set us on this incredible path. Community for me looks like surrounding yourself with people that know more than you in different areas.

40:21
I think you have to be so hyper aware of your own weaknesses and I can tell you I am not the best at most things. So hiring people and working with people that are better than you at the things that you're not great at. Understanding your area of genius and leaning into that as much as you can in service and your business. And look, I've also been at stages in my business where I had to be all things in my business. So that is true as well for many of us for a long time and often stick quickly it comes back. But building community with people that you can call on in those. I talked a lot about how business is hard and something that's been critical for me is, you know you heard me talk about a Hype squad earlier and that's literally the name of a group that I have relationships with in my phone. We call our chat the Hype Squad and we talk about everything. We

41:08
talk about investors that we're considering. We ask questions about weird things that are coming up in customer contracts. We ask about how do we do a go to market strategy, who has hired this role, who has referrals for that. I had a really bad day. I recall 3 weeks ago sitting across from them and getting a message from one of my team members at the end of the quarter that we exceeded a target. And sitting at that table and crying and all of them looking at me and saying are you OK? And me saying, yeah, I'm actually totally fine, It's just overwhelming because you hit targets.

41:39
Yeah. Now what? What's next? And in those moments when you are overwhelmed and like crushing overwhelm, it's important to have people you can go to and speak honestly. Where there is no posturing, there is no what might this investor think of me? You can be so raw, so build and find that community, actively work in service of that community. I'm a huge fan of giving more than you take always. And that could be supporting people as they're getting started in their journeys. It could be

42:09
making introductions. It's if you're asked to speak of something and you can't. Putting forward the name of another entrepreneur, another woman entrepreneur in your community, another anything entrepreneur putting forward other people speak people names and rooms they are not in. And that to me is a huge part of how you work in service of community. So I think that brings me finding it through the groups like the forum, finding it through accelerators and incubators, Chambers of Commerce, different groups of women that do meet ups. There's so many places

42:40
that you can leverage to to meet your people. And then when you find them, love them hard because it's pretty magic. Absolutely. And I love the point that you make about give, give more or as much as you as you are getting right, give back to the community. And I have to give you code kudos because you, I mean, you're doing that right now, right in this moment, as we're speaking, that's what you're doing, right? You're giving back to a community of entrepreneurs within the Scotiabank Women Initiative. And we appreciate you for it. But you I, you know, I see you. I follow you. I share you.

43:11
Like you I come and I I'm all over it and I see what you're doing and you're doing it more than just today. But I mean you're obviously giving back and so good for you for paying it forward and and giving back to that community that you still believe in and that's there for you when you need them. So I do think that's important. I love that I see individuals sharing their business links and their business contacts and their LinkedIn profiles and let please keep doing that. I commit that I will also go like and share and comment and and all of the above.

43:41
So please continue to do that because I agree with Brianna. If anybody that follows myself or Brianna on on social media will see that huge supporters of just entrepreneurs and their businesses in general. So I I really do appreciate that. So I am going to start to open it up. I'm going to have one final question, but I'm going to put it out there right now. If anyone has a question they want to ask, you can either you know raise your hand and you can come off me and you could ask yourself. I know sometimes that's difficult for individuals and they're not

44:11
into it and that's OK too. Feel free to put your questions in the chat If you have anything that you think we've missed and you'd like to make sure that Brianna addresses for you that you know absolutely we will do that. And so while people are preparing that and and putting their hands up and writing their comments, I will just ask one quick kind of wrap up Brianna and I say that and watch are going to be like that's not a quick question,

44:39
but is there any one thing 1.1 tip, one you know success statement when it comes to doing that first grant application that first time you're you're going to commit, you're going to dive in your brand new at applying for a grant. I'm not even going to say brand new business because maybe it's not a brand new business, maybe it's just I've never done this grant thing before. What's your 1 tip, your one suggestion for success?

45:10
Yeah, Chris, it's such a great question. And I could tell you my first company was in business for five years before we used any grant funding. We used grant funding and it propelled our growth literally by 500% in one year because it allowed us to take risks and hire people before we financially would have been able to otherwise. So it's powerful folks, even if you are a very established business, grants are still for you depending on where you spend money in your business. So if you are looking at grants and starting to consider how can this be part of how I fund

45:40
and business, how we finance this growth that we want to achieve, I encourage you to invest the time and energy and identifying the right programs for your business. So it's even before you spend the time to apply, save yourself from going down a path with the wrong program. Understand for you, where am I spending money in my business? If I could get a grant right now, where would I spend that money on that would have the biggest impact in my business. So understand for your business where it's actually going to be impactful and then identify the programs that will work

46:11
in service of that. It can be so distracting in the grants world to hire a student because that's all you can get money for even if it's not actually what you needed for your business. So being disciplined of what you need in your business and the working to identify the the grants directly and you know with a little bit of creative messaging that could be a fit for that. That is where you will save yourself a lot of time and get the best outcomes and our staff work can help you do that. Our team can help you do that. Send questions into our inbox. We are super

46:42
accessible to you and want to support. So that would be my best advice is understanding where grants can impact your business in general and that starts by knowing where you'll invest the money and what impact you're trying to achieve it because grants ultimately exist to create a benefit to Canada. So more jobs created, an up skilled workforce that you help by training your team expand GDP because you're now exporting or whatever. It may be that Chris, the only other thing that we didn't talk about that maybe we should,

47:12
you can tell me if you want to wrap with it is I just want to make sure this group understands this incredible partnership that the Scotiabank Woman Initiative has invested in for them.

47:22
Giver, giver. I'm opening in the floor now. Do you want to do this or do you want to answer questions first or what? Answer questions. Let's let's answer questions first perhaps and then we'll wrap with it. Perfect. Perfect. So I'm going to go to Samantha.

47:37
Samantha, do you have a question for Brianna?

47:40
Yeah, I definitely have a question. And sorry, it's going to be pretty broad because I'm I'm coming from a small town. I'm involved in a kind of the trades a little bit. I have a bit of a trade pass. I started a business that I'm in property maintenance, so I started taking care of a building with apartments and then from there was like, OK, I need to be protected. So I need to get some liability insurance. I need to

48:09
you know, get a trade name, you know get the whole contractor kind of package. But now for something that was supposed to, honestly I was looking to make $1000 for the year or for the month. Sorry. So 12 to 15,000 it was. I have 4 kids so like my plate is was already overflowing. I was just trying to supplement income.

48:30
It's it's like gone crazy which which is super great. But now I'm finding I like people like you should be looking into grants. You should be hiring. You got to you know build your team which is fantastic. But I'm super overwhelmed and the simple the thing I don't have right now and I know I'm embarrassed to even say it is a business plan because I'm so overwhelmed and and so like I I want to sign up for pocketed. That sounds amazing but I'm just like

48:59
I don't know what to hit first like to go now I'm I'm going to a limited company this week so I can protect myself further with liability. You know, I want to protect those personal assets, but like just with that is, is that something that's too simple for pocketed? Like I just, I just

49:19
first of all, congratulations on your incredible traction. I think when you go out with a goal of $1000 a month and supplement income and you achieve an order of magnitude above that just because there's such a demand for what you do, you've hit on something really exciting. So congratulations and I understand that feeling of overwhelm. I have a toddler myself and holy smokes when you have 4 bosses at home telling you what's a lot mom, there is always so much time in a day. So I think in terms of where to get started, I would understand

49:49
where where is the biggest bottleneck for you? It sounds like literal capacity is a challenge for you. So that's true. Then sounds like you're already being given the advice, consider hiring. That's an easy thing to say, but a much harder thing to do. How do you find the right person? Who can you subsidize that you're risking that investment and adding an employee. So to answer your question, that is not too simple for us. That's I think exactly where we play and Thrive is helping you understand the how funding can support you in those different initiatives.

50:20
We can also connect with partners that can support with things like business plans and I'm sure the Scotiabank Women Initiative has resources they can recommend as well. I see Chris face. So leverage what's available to you. This is an example where community is powerful. You're part of this Scotiabank Woman Initiative community and there is so much glory to uncover here. So talk to your advisor if you are within the Scotia Bank as well and I'm sure that they can direct you to how to access more of the Scotiabank Women Initiative programs. But pocketed? Absolutely.

50:51
I just see that it's been shared in the chat. So that'll help you understand how to access pocketed through the partnership that we have with the Scotia Bank Women Initiative. But come to us, Absolutely. We can support you and find ways to be a fine time to be excited and celebrate. Because I understand it's overwhelming and there is chaos. But you should be incredibly proud.

51:10
Absolutely. I I can't echo that enough. Brianna, great response. Thank you for that. Definitely congratulations, Samantha. I agree. Fine time to be proud of. You know, you you wanted to do a little and you've done a lot and it's growing and it is overwhelming. But there is support. You have this community. So the Scotiabank Women Initiative is definitely here to help. Pocket. It is here to help. And speaking with your small business advisor that that individual should be your best friend right now. Let them help support you. Let them show you the tools and resources

51:41
we have to offer. We happen to have a business plan writer that can get you started as far as an online tool and resource. So definitely use the resources around you and let us know how we can help further. But thank you, Brianna. I appreciate that. Laura, you had a question.

51:58
Yeah. So it may be 8 branches right off of Sam's question there. It just seems like. So you are a person who has an interest and a skill set and you're like, OK, well, I would like to proliferate that skill set for myself, become the entrepreneur. But there always seems to be this point where ideas either grow or stop and it ends up with your

52:26
the end of your skill set. So when you either like you need to grow in that you need to build a team, you need to grow because you need more resources, you need to grow and

52:37
I guess in pocketed how did you

52:40
how was that transition, what did you use to help with that transition and um because like it gets like like see for example you had an idea and wanted to build something and you built the idea but you can't build 100 of them and so you get stuck at that moment, right. Either you have to evolve your team, get your resources or by the the warehouse, right? Or you let the idea die with your one prototype because you can't.

53:11
How do you bridge that gap? Or how do you help

53:15
someone who really wants to push forward but doesn't know has never been trained to get to the next level? Yeah.

53:24
So I I feel that in my soul, Laura, I've been there, Um, I think most of us have probably been there. And I think the first question I typically ask entrepreneurs when I'm when I'm asked a question like that is, what kind of business are you trying to build? Are you trying to build a business that has a team and has employees and is going to be of a certain size? Or are you looking to build a business that you get to run on your own terms, do it directly, do the work that you love? What kind of business are you trying to build? And I asked that question because a lot of the time

53:55
the the headlines and and news and all the rhetoric is that we need to build big, huge, gigantic venture funded businesses that grow at all costs and whatever. And the reality is that most businesses aren't going to be that and like frankly probably shouldn't be that. Not every idea is venture back table and not that you're asking about investors, but I think it starts by asking the question of what kind of business do you want to build, what kind of business do you want to run. And that does inform your next steps around it. Because if you want to build a business that is

54:25
team and is bigger and generates a certain degree of revenue and is you know growing at a certain pace, then it does inform the path that you are going to use the word knee but loosely that you need to take to get there to achieve that outcome. And it should frame all of your decision making accordingly if you are and and I'll give you an example. So actually flush that out. That's what we decided for pocketed. We knew with pocketed that we wanted to build a business that was bigger than us and that was going to grow and scale and do so at a fairly rapid clip. So we knew that that meant

54:56
that we had to develop at a certain pace. We need to deploy, get feedback, iterate and continue evolving at a certain rate. We needed to achieve certain revenue numbers. We needed to get investors that would help us get off the ground. So we didn't have to worry about not having the capital that we needed to invest in growth. So it does inform your strategy. Of course Grant then exists to fund those same activities and it informed our funding strategy and we raised $1,000,000 in in equity funding. But we've used almost double that in government funding.

55:27
So you know, understanding where the money is going to come from to achieve your goals is a big part of that. So I would say it starts with that question of what kind of business are you trying to build. If it's a business that's, you know, bigger than something you want to do on your own, then find brilliant people you can lean on, ask questions, ask people that have built businesses that look like that. You will be amazed by people's willingness to support and to help. I think we often get in our heads about asking for help. I know it was true for myself for a long time

55:57
and or we think mentorship has to look like one fairly rigid structured thing. And in my experience the most valuable advisors and mentors are completely unstructured and informal. They support you because they believe in you. I have people like call at 7:00 AM on a Sunday while I'm watering my garden and they're on their bike with questions about something that I don't understand because I'm overwhelmed and they take my call. So find those people, which again is easier said than done, but it starts by asking folks that have built businesses that you admire that have built something like it. Not just asking to talk to them, but

56:27
asking at the end of that call, who is one or two other people I should talk to for this need and this need? Or based on what we talked about today, is there something else I should be asking that I don't even know to ask yet? Who should I be asking that question to? Those really tangible things are critical because in those stack points for me, getting unstuck involves leaning beyond me because my existing knowledge is like, frankly, it's small. I'm one person. I need to be able to ask people that have seen more, done more, been there that can help me through those

56:58
points. So that's been my strategy is, is being clear on what I want, setting my business up in service of that goal, and then surrounding myself with people that I can call. And you never stop, you never stop. I'm always looking for more people than I can talk to you. I'm always being mentored in different ways and learning. So that would be my suggestion to you is get clear on your goal, set your company up to structure an instructor and service at that goal and then start identifying people that you can call on that you admire. And you'll be surprised by how many people tell you, Yes,

57:31
fantastic. That's amazing. Thank you, Brianna, for that. That was great. So we're running short on time. We're coming to a close. And so before we wrap up, Brianna, do you want to do the honors of of, you know, sharing our, our wonderful offer for attending today and maybe a little bit about how we're partnering together, the Scotiabank Women Initiative and pocketed. Yeah, it's a. Correct. You talked about the value alignment already in this conversation and it's been true for us and the very first conversation that we had with you and Mila and your

58:02
we're so proud to partner with the Scotiabank Woman initiative and the fit in support of access to capital is so clear, but it's so much bigger. It is this community piece and the Scotiabank Woman initiative does a brilliant job of it. So we're proud to be able to share with all of you that through the Scotiabank Woman initiative, you have access to a discount code that will get you 50% off of your first subscription to Pocket of Plus or Pocket of Basic. If you choose to subscribe. The referral codes been shared, it's Scotiabank

58:31
one and 50 for anyone that might be wondering. And I'm sure that the Scotiabank folks can share it again in the chat. Abby can share it again for us. So it's there, but it's it will get you access to our software so you can start understanding, funding, exploring programs that could be a good fit for your business. If you do need a little bit more support through a human, then you may want to consider accessing A consultation that's a little bit beyond the scope of our partnership with the Scotia Bank Woman Initiative. But if you're interested in that level of support, I recommend joining our office hours

59:02
for free first. Once or twice you may get everything you need from this conversations and our team is so available to help. Again, we very much are are are doing this work to achieve a bigger goal. Yes, we are a business, but we also want to create an impact in the work that we do and are proud that 50% of our customers to date are women. And we want to continue to make sure we're growing in support of this community and all entrepreneurs across Canada and eventually across the world.

59:29
I love it. I love it. And I can't thank all of you enough, all of you that have taken the time out of your day to attend. Thank you so much for that. All of you that are going to listen to this later, thank you for that time you're going to give. And Brianna, especially to you, Thank you so much on behalf of the Scotiabank Women Initiative. We're proud to be partnered with Pocketed. We're proud to be partnered with you. And thank you so much for your time today and all the knowledge that you shared with such transparency. So thank you very much, everyone. I've really enjoyed this time,

59:59
right? Thanks for having me. And folks please connect on LinkedIn reach out. I'm happy to be part of that commitment to building community. So look forward to to staying in touch with many of you. Thanks Chris. Thanks everyone. Have an excellent day.