"Instill hope where there is none, inspire dreams where they are absent, and develop opportunities where talent exists.” This is a vision Catherine Priestman developed years ago and she continues to follow it every day. When the pandemic hit, Catherine re-focused time, energy and resources to helping other businesses survive. Because she is in the [...]
Margo Crawford President and CEO, Business Sherpa Group I was honoured to speak at Algonquin College on International Women’s Day late last year. The title of my talk was Career Reflections & Life Lessons: A leadership journey from the inside out. In my talk, I revealed myself as an ‘accidental leader’ who had no real [...]
I can't think of another period in my lifetime that there's been so much attention given to leadership - both the good and bad traits that stand out in the actions taken by people who've been given a leadership role. Comparisons abound in the news on a daily basis and it's causing a lot of [...]
I am not skilled at negotiation. It's something I'm working on and I'm getting better. I was recently caught up in negotiation for work to be done on my house. It was a small job, but it tested me in several ways: My patience, my boundaries and whether I would stand up for myself when [...]
If you have a growth mindset, you're probably already aware of the advantages you have when you embrace change. You have to be if you're strategic about growth because you need to be agile when you see shifts in your industry that require you to shift your business. But change isn't easy. It's downright uncomfortable. You'd [...]
Are you a cook or are you a baker? In my unscientific research (i.e., asking my friends) people are usually one or the other. Cooks tend to feel constrained by the rigidness of following a recipe for baking up some kind of succulent treat. And bakers like the clarity of a list of ingredients that [...]
Being a woman, I feel a bit biased when I talk about the advantages of being a woman in business. Of course, I'm going to think it's a good thing, right? It's a brilliant thing. Women make the world go round. As businesswomen, we rock. As you can see, I'm a big cheerleader for women, [...]
When I think about mentoring, there are a number of women whose faces pop into my mind - both in my present life and in the distant past. The first mentor I ever had was my mother. Sure, she was my mother, but she also helped me get my first real job with paid vacation [...]
For a business to grow, you need to turn up the volume. Get the word out. Market yourself! That can mean using a lot of different tactics, but it starts with knowing who you are, why you’re doing what you do, what you have to offer and how you benefit those you serve. This part [...]
When you look back at the history of women in the workforce, it's full of inequalities and hard to see any feminine advantage. On of the most talked about inequalities is the wage gap, which hasn't come nearly as far as it should have in the last 100 years. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Women [...]
