Small Business Owners in Canada - Growing 5 to 50+ Employees

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀? I've been looking more closely at the structure of Canadian business and one thing keeps bothering me. We use the term "small business" to describe an enormous range of companies. In Canada, a business with one paid employee and a business with 99 are both officially classified as small businesses. There were just under 1.1 million employer businesses in Canada at the end of 2024, and 98.2% were classified as small. Look a little deeper and the picture becomes more interesting. Some 59.1% had just 1 to 4 employees, while 77.3% had fewer than 10 and 88.4% had fewer than 20. Only 1.5% of Canadian employer businesses were medium-sized, with 100 to 499 employees. I've operated businesses at very different points along that scale, from the owner being involved in almost everything to running a company with more than 60 staff. They are very different businesses. What works with five people often doesn't work with 20, and what works with 20 can start breaking as you move towards 50. Communication changes, systems become more important, cash requirements increase and the role of the owner has to change. Problems that were once solved with a quick conversation can suddenly require a process and someone responsible for managing it. That has left me interested not just in the numbers themselves, but in what happens between them and whether that picture is changing over time. What does the journey actually look like for a Canadian business that moves from 5 people to 20, then 50 and perhaps eventually beyond 100? More importantly, what determines whether a business makes that journey at all? There is an important qualification to that question. Not every small business wants or needs to grow. A four-person company can be successful, productive and exactly the business its owner wants it to be. I'm interested in the businesses that do have the ambition and opportunity to grow, and what happens when they try. Over the coming months I'm going to explore that question from the perspective I know best, as someone who has spent more than 30 years building and operating businesses. I'll look at the data, but I also want to hear from business owners, manufacturers, advisers, lenders and others who see different parts of the picture. I don't have a predetermined answer, and I suspect there isn't a single one. I want to understand what helps a small Canadian business take that next step, what gets in the way, and whether there are things we could be doing differently. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘄? 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿? #EverythingIsConnected #CanadianBusiness #SmallBusiness