Winner pushes BDC competition
Business contest open until April 3
Joel Pinel remembers the time he and his staff at Moose Jaw’s WOW Factor Media worked flat-out, no sleep, for two days to put together the decorations for the renaming of what’s now the city’s Yara Centre — all in secret and against a deadline.
But they pulled it off, tired but satisfied — one of the unusual rewards of entrepreneurship.
In fact, Pinel and his firm has attacked entrepreneurship so successfully that he was the national winner of last year’s Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
And now, he’s enthusiastically urging people to enter this year’s edition of the competition. “There’s no reason why entrepreneurs from 18 to 35 in Saskatchewan shouldn’t,” he says. “They’ve got nothing to lose.”
Hey, there’s plenty to gain: First prize is $100,000 to make your small business grow. Second prize is $25,000 for the same purpose.
And then, there’s the tremendous local, regional and national exposure that comes with being a finalist, much less winning — good for any growing company.
Applications will be accepted until April 3 at www.bdcyoungentrepreneuraward.
Applicants must have at least two years in business and will be asked to shoot and provide a short video — one shot on a smartphone is OK — talking about a plan to make their firm grow.
“The theme is about businesses looking to take it to ‘the next level’ with a growth project,” said Warren Jackson, BDC’s VP, financing and consulting for Saskatchewan. The provincial winners will be announced May 29, after which there’s a national judging phase. Seventy per cent of this will be based around online voting and the remainder from a national panel of judges.
Coming from Moose Jaw, as opposed to downtown Toronto, didn’t hurt Pinel in last year’s online voting round. Jackson figures the very closeness of Saskatchewan and Moose Jaw, in particular, might just have created an online surge that got him last year’s prize.
Last year, about 20 Saskatchewan entrepreneurs took part in the competition.
Pinel, 29, makes for an interesting business case study.
He came from an entrepreneurial family in Moose Jaw that ran Fifth Avenue Collection, an upmarket jewelry retailer, so he was familiar with the demands made on anybody running their own businesses.
He dabbled in several areas, like producing a line of clothing, then reusable shopping bags promoting businesses or causes (“we were a little ahead of our time”) and promoting concerts before starting WOW Factor Media. It started in regional third-party advertising that leased space and even put clients’ messages onto bar tabletops. (His story about buying the cheapest brand of plastic backing, then finding it was almost impossible to remove it from bar tables without using a solvent that gagged everybody, is a comedy classic.)
It was tough going in the face of industry giants like Pattison, CBS and Captive Media. So after getting an order for a printed banner, he refocused the firm — initially toward the design and production of banners, then added equipment and capabilities.
WOW Factor now works, he says, in digital media production and social media management. It employs 21 people and has offices in Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon, plus clients in Calgary and Edmonton — though its head office remains in Moose Jaw.
Of the practical lessons he’s learned, “the biggest thing is that you need thick skin. You need to be able to hear ‘No!’ a lot.”
Prepare for sleepless nights spent worrying or working — and for living in your parents’ basement.
But take heart in Pinel’s advice: “The more sacrifices, the more comfortable you feel because you know that other people won’t make them.”