Canada is revving up its economy by focusing on women entrepreneurs. Its Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) comes with a $2 billion investment. “We have the potential of adding up to $150 billion dollars in incremental GDP to the Canadian economy,” said Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion. "Our government believes that women's economic empowerment is not just the right thing to do; it's good for the bottom line. The strategy seeks to double the number of women-owned businesses."  Currently, only 16% of all small-to-medium-sized businesses in Canada are majority women-owned.

These programs take advantage of a growing appetite among Canadian women to become entrepreneurs. Canadian women are starting businesses at a higher rate than their counterparts in all other G20 countries. The G20 is an informal group of 19 countries and the European Union, with representatives of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. “Canada has seen a surge of entrepreneurship in our economy over the last 20 years, and women have been at the forefront, launching businesses at rates that often outpace men,” said Karen Hughes, a professor at the University of Alberta’s Alberta School of Business and Department of Sociology, and author of the 2015/16 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Canada Report on Women’s Entrepreneurship.

During the next five years, the WES Ecosystem Fund will spend up to $85 million on training, networking events, mentorship opportunities, accelerators, and incubators as well as supplier-diversity programs that provide business development opportunities to work with government agencies and large corporations. The program will allocate an additional $8.62 million for a Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, a one-stop source for knowledge, data and best practices. 

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https://youtu.be/c42e4J-v8mA

The video above is less than 1 minute. Check it out!

This experience was also written about in our CEO's book "From Failure to Fearless" (available on Amazon) and published in March 2014. Time to revisit again as it is amazing when people will take what is written (even if someone writes under a fake name or anonymous) as truth.


Repost:
A personal negative business experience for Just Fearless LLC to help other small businesses:

There is something so truly mind-boggling about the ability to write something about a business and/or person based on slander and lies online and on social media and people take it as fact. They don't consider the website it was written on, they don't look at the response below the complaint on sites such as Rip Off Report (which deliberately creates a huge separation from the complaint up top, then tons of ads, then any rebuttal response)and others like Complaint Board.

They don't look at the fact that someone used a fake name to write the same complaint (on multiple sites) and/or social media, they don't look at the date of the complaint (9 years ago) and even one last year for a company that we declined to fund via the angel fund (this women pretended to be a man from Boston even though men are not eligible for our fund - how petty can one get).

People complain all the time, these same sites (RipOff Report & Complaints Board) have complaints against Amazon, Whole Foods, Hay House Inc, Barnes & Noble, Wells Fargo, Pepsi, Sallie Mae, Taco Bell, Apple, T-Mobile, Avis Car Rental etc., and yet they are ALL still in business despite having hundreds and sometimes thousands of complaints on these websites and more. Yet people do business with them.

But if someone finds one or 2 complaints over a 10 year period for a small business and it is automatically thought to be true without any verification or even questioning it or reading the rebuttal at the bottom. This happened to us. Two complaints over 8 years apart, written by people under fake names and making up stories to get return fire for being fired (intern fired years ago and wrote the same exact false complaint over multiple sites) and a female founder (who was not chosen to be funded in our first round last year) who decided to be pretend to be a man (men cannot apply for the fund) and wrote a false report about it. We answered both in rebuttals and it still shows up until this day.

Anyone can write anything about anyone and there are no consequences unless you want to take the time to go after them legally but you know they don't have anything of value so why spend the money? However, at some point if it continues to affect your business, then you have to fight back and stand your ground and we will do that in the future going forward. 

This is how we got to where we are as a society and country. This is how the US got Trump because people are taking anything that is written online as truth without due diligence, asking questions directly, and common sense before taking any action.

For any company that has every had to deal with this, especially small businesses, this video gives you tips on how to deal with that. Keep going and don't let anyone or anything stop you. Just Do It!

If people are not smart enough or willing to use common sense when it comes to discerning and questioning what's truth and what's really "Fake News", then they are not someone you want to do business with. Remember this the next time you do a Google search on someone or a company and something like RipOff Report or something similar comes up. Read it thoroughly including any rebuttals, Ask the company or contact about it directly, and consider the source of the complaint rather than making assumptions.  Common Sense is not so common these days.

For someone to go by the logic of it is on "Ripoff Report" so it must be true, then that means you should not want to do business with them.  In this day in age where fake news is really a thing, you will not be able to please everyone as you build your brand and business and there will always be haters who want to see you fail.

So don't be deterred by that, keep going. If you are a small business it is in your best interest to provide a rebuttal to a complaint no matter how ridiculous it is. It is also in your best interest to address it head on and be open about it. There is nothing to hide as no one is perfect and you cannot please everyone.

Keep going! Don't let the words of someone else stop you. If others can't see it. Your business serves a purpose and the worlds needs to know about it! Rise above it all! We are Just Fearless LLC!

Women in the cannabis industry.

The number of female executives in cannabis stands at 27 percent, higher than the 23 percent average number of executive positions held by women across all industries nationwide, according to Marijuana Business Daily. That’s good, but the number of female marijuana executives made up 36 percent of the industry in 2015.

Women seem galvanized. Celebrity women in cannabis are well known, such as Whoopi Goldberg and Melissa Etheridge. But below the cultural radar, more women are getting into the industry, especially on designing new products.

Female stars in cannabis.

According to the Robb Report, one of  the biggest female names in cannabis is Patricia Rosi, CEO of Wellness Connection of Maine. The company runs four dispensaries. The site describes the four dispensaries as “safe” and “inviting” and say they combine “the best features of a pharmacy, community center and wellness practice.”

Nancy Whiteman of Wana Brands is another big name among female cannabis entrepreneurs. Her Colorado-based company sells cannabis edibles, including a very popular line of gummy bears. The company has expanded into Oregon, Nevada and Arizona and plans to move into Florida, Illinois and Michigan this year.

Many women are leading the way with specific wellness-focused products. For example, Kush Queen, run by Olivia Alexander, offers cannabis-infused bath bombs, tinctures and lotions. Alexander told the Robb Report that women moving into the cannabis industry “fits into the current women’s wave: running for office, running companies. Cannabis is a part of that new liberation.”

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