Rick Spence
Financial Post
Toronto, ON, Canada
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Past articles by Rick:
Seven ways to put some oomph under your stagnating small business
During Small Business Week, a whole country rallies round to let entrepreneurs know how important they are. Then, a few days later, public attention shifts to new events, such as National Chemistry Week and Rodent Awareness Week. Fifty-two weeks a year, the health of your business depends mainly on you. In my experience, however, most entrepreneurs are their own worst enemies. Like everybody… → Read More
Ignore customers, hire bad leaders, and seven other counterintuitive ways to grow, fast
‘Blitzscaling’ will test you and your product in one bold, wild push for market share → Read More
Here’s what the title of World Entrepreneur of the Year did for Murad Al-Katib
And it's what you might expect when your business wins the World Cup of entrepreneurship → Read More
How to build your own unfair advantage against your competitors
Identifying and developing that advantage can be a fun, game-changing exercise in strategic thinking, team-building and rebranding → Read More
Finally, a free open-source database for all Canadian startup information
Hockeystick.co offers both a paid and free model in a standardized dataset that will only grow → Read More
Bright ideas don’t always sell, and being headstrong won’t help
Skoll World Forum entrepreneur says he erred by assuming his technology would sell itself. 'That's the Silicon Valley mindset' — but he was in Africa → Read More
Three Quebec teams in Top 10 on rich AI XPrize list of 150
Their early success proves AI can be a powerful force for good, and that Canadian entrepreneurs play a big role in the AI revolution → Read More
How to deal with difficult customers: bend over backward, or fire them?
First, understand why customers are quick to be critical. Then, create clear paths to win them over or write them off → Read More
Seven ‘patterns of opportunity’ as seen in the crystal ball of change
How to find trends and market them to the right generation → Read More
Skoll Foundation gives $1M social entrepreneurship prize to a for-profit organization
Babban Gona's support of small farmers in Nigeria has brought skyrocketing results → Read More
“This is the old-boys’ network we never had,” women entrepreneurs say of their female investors
Women's startups supported by women investors, whose fund allocation is determined by the entrepreneurs themselves → Read More
How making up stories led to this entrepreneur hitting pay-dirt selling rocks
Write-ups in two gift guides put out by Hollywood influencers Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz may have created a gold rush for crystal gift box maker Little Box of Rocks → Read More
How creating a dream event for women became a startup for two Canadians
Putting aside eastern spiritualism, meditation and sister circles, the journey of the Canadian entrepreneurs behind the Bali conference Awakened Women resembles that of any startup → Read More
Canadians hold their own Day of the Dead to share their blunders
Recently, four tech entrepreneurs told failure stories at the first “F*d-Up Friday” event in Prince George, B.C., providing the two dozen or so attendees with some valuable lessons → Read More
Here’s how Silicon Valley shares the collective wisdom learned from failures
The Valley's Day of the Dead or "failure wake" drew 200 techies, from raw startups to Valley veterans, to honour fallen companies and botched business plans → Read More
10 tips to help you succeed in this era of tech-driven creative collaboration
Entrepreneurs gathered in San Jose at QuickBooks Connect, a community-building user conference organized by Intuit, to explore their common future → Read More
How these makers of a device for snorers are building their dream business
The family behind Nora is eshewing capital and retail channels, while they try to go it alone on the internet → Read More
Choosing not to pursue growth can be a business’s death sentence
At a recent summit of Canadian growth companies, entrepreneurs learned they had to expand their businesses and grow as leaders or be left behind → Read More
Tech entrepreneurs wonder if banks current services are relevant to their business model
When the CEO of RBC joined a panel of tech entrepreneurs with no news of progress, this columnist decided to ask the entrepreneurs what banks could be doing differently → Read More
Linamar is heading into the future just as nimble and entrepreneurial as it began
Rick Spence: Linamar CEO Linda Hasenfratz is intent on continuing the remarkable growth begun by her father Frank, who founded Linamar in 1964 in his basement before turning it into a global leader → Read More