Accelerating Growth With Government Support With Mark Patterson | E054

A online concierge for navigating government programs.

In this episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award–winning financial planner, university lecturer, and writer, interviews Mark Patterson, Executive Director of Magnet. Magnet is a social innovation platform out of Ryerson University that helps small businesses navigate talent markets and find support to reach their goals!

Episode Highlights:

  • 0:56 – Mark Patterson introduces Magnet.

  • 2:46 – What observations inspired the creation of Magnet?

  • 6:36 – Jason discusses the reality of government programs.

  • 7:22 – How long has Magnet been helping small businesses?

  • 9:11 – Mark dives into the talent piece of building a business.

  • 11:36 – What are the options available for export businesses?

  • 13:50 – How many programs is Magnet currently compiling?

  • 16:50 – Mark and Jason discuss the removal of barriers to resources that are already available.

  • 20:06 – Are there any large–scale examples of companies that have exploded with Magnet’s help?

  • 21:40 – Mark discusses the importance of finding support programs during the pandemic.

  • 22:27 – What does Magnet’s onboarding process look like for clients?

3 Key Points

  1. Magnet recognizes the difficulties of building a business and helps connect businesses with talent and support to break through the barriers of small–business growth.

  2. While government programs to assist small businesses are available and plentiful, the application process can be very daunting and time–consuming.

  3. Larger and medium–sized businesses have internal departments that are focused on capitalizing on the programs.

 

Tweetable Quotes:

  • “The government has many many many programs...the challenge was actually small businesses navigating those.” – Mark Patterson

  • “At the end of the day, we all win if our small businesses are able to succeed and we can remove some of these barriers that they face to grow.” – Mark Patterson

  • “It’s necessarily putting more money into the system, we need to remove the barriers that make it hard for small business to access what’s already available.” – Mark Patterson

 

Resources Mentioned:

Transcript:

Producer: Welcome to the Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners Podcast. You will hear about industry  insights with award-winning financial planner and entrepreneur, Jason Pereira. Through the interviews  with different experts with their stories and advice, you will learn how you can navigate the challenges  of being an entrepreneur, plan for success, and make the most of your business and life. And now your  host, Jason Pereira. 

Jason Pereira: Hello welcome to the show, I'm Mark Patterson, executive director of Magnet. Magnet is a social  innovation platform out of Ryerson University that works to help small businesses navigate the talent  markets, and find support for their growing initiatives. And with that please meet with Mark. Mark,  thanks for taking the time. 

Mark Patterson: Great to be here, Jason. 

Jason Pereira: So, Mark Patterson of Magnet, tell us about magnet? 

Mark Patterson: Yeah, so Magnet it's a project out of Ryerson University, and what we've been focused on is trying to  help understand how we can support employers to access talent. So, finding the talent to grow the  business is a critical issue for all businesses, how to access new markets and opportunities to learn  about all of the different programs and supports are available to help, for example, businesses expand  into international markets, and increase their exports and also help them access different supports that  are provided by government. 

Mark Patterson: Sometimes it's very difficult landscape to navigate. It's hard to, for example, connect to the right school,  to find the right student that might be on the [inaudible 00:01:40] help you support your business. So,  we work across those areas, helping businesses to navigate what is often a fragmented and complex  environment. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, I think anyone who's ventured off into starting their own business has discovered very quickly that  the job of making widgets or delivering a service of widgets is not as simple as hanging a shingle and  getting started, right? There's any number of compliance issues that you have with governments, any  number of regulatory things, you'd have to concern yourself with insurances and that's just a starting  point. But what often is missed is exactly what you've been talking about is that, Hey, government  announces all these programs from time to time about, Hey, we're going to help businesses grow XYZ or  do whatever it is or whatever it might be. 

Jason Pereira: And people really don't know where to start. They'll often talk to their accounts, but their accounts  typically look at everything from a tax lens. They'll talk to advisors who will typically take a look through a tax lens. And there's a number of these programs, just that fall way outside of our purview. So a  program like this is usually important for not just informing people, but leveraging those platforms. So  tell me about what the impetus was for the creation of magnet. Like where did it come from? 

Mark Patterson: Yeah, so I, my history is I actually worked at Ryerson university in the career services space. So helping  employers connect to students at Ryerson, and we started to realize that the challenges we could make  it easier for them to hire the right student at Ryerson, but they were often looking across many  institutions or across many community-based employment service organizations, and often having a  challenge finding the right place. So we really started thinking about it at a system's level. And  something unique about Ryerson as a university is raid in its charter. A mandate is supporting economic  development for businesses and companies. So we were very interested in trying to figure out the  systemic level issues of how businesses navigate in these key areas. Like any of the literature, our  research on what are the biggest barriers to a small business growth is, was kind of these three kind of  pillars finding the right talent to help them grow their business at the right time, accessing new markets  and opportunities to sell their product or service. 

Mark Patterson: How do they connect to new markets, new places to sell their product or service, and then having the  capital to grow to do that. So the government, that's not for lack of programs, the government has  many, many, many programs. What we noticed in our research was the challenge was actually small  businesses, especially navigating those learning about it. As you mentioned, I mean, small businesses, if  you, I grew up in a family that ran and owned small businesses. So I had that perspective that you're  worried about running your business, right? You're worried about the day-to-day and all the other  things that you mentioned. And oftentimes you hear about a program, but then you go open it up and  find out about it on some website and then you find out you're not all in you go to the next website and  look at the next program. 

Mark Patterson: And you read the fine print and you find out you're not eligible. And then you give up, it's not to say that  there aren't programs out there, but it's navigating that and having the time to do that, because there  are so many other pressures on your time. So what we decided to do was build a platform where an  employer could come in, they could give us a little bit of their context or background when they build  their account on this platform. And we actually curate all of the content for them. So if we know, for  example, somebody is in the agricultural sector and they're of a certain size and their interest in a  certain export market, we can make sure they get the funding programs that are relevant to them,  which is going to be different from maybe somebody in the biotech sector looking for a different type of  funding. 

Mark Patterson: So that was the key underlying motivation. And like I said, the talent piece, so there are many programs,  there's tons of funding for small businesses to hire students or help them hire students. So we have a  program right now called the student work placement program where we can actually refund 75% of  the salary that any small business has paid when hiring a student. So if you hire a co-op student, we're  able to refund 75% of the salary that you pay. But again, the challenge is getting the word out to small  businesses and making it easier for them. I think anybody who's probably filled out a government grant application or gone through a process knows it's not the easiest thing, but it is worthwhile. If you can cut  through their noise and make sure that, you know the program that you're eligible for and a process to  get through that. So that's really what we're trying to do because I think at the end of the day, we all win  a first small businesses are able to succeed and we can remove some of these barriers that they face  today. 

Jason Pereira: Absolutely. I mean, small businesses is the backbone of any economy. And frankly, I mean, when you're  looking at is, is almost to some degree of digital concierge of all the services you have there, whereas  before the concierge was Google, which was highly less than effective, wonderful in many things, but  less than effective at this. And then, yeah, I mean, the reality is that these programs, when they get  listed on government websites, I don't know if government website writers are supposed to be boring or  just supposed to look like they're trying to make it convoluted and very heavily compliant. But the reality  is that no one has fun reading a government website and navigating all the check boxes of, do I qualify  here or not? It gets redundant and it gets, it gets daunting for the average person who's not used to this  sort of thing. So I think what you've done this centralized hub for one identity that is clearly taking a  more tech centric user-friendly, let's onboard you and then serve up what is available to you is  absolutely the way to go. So how long have you guys been at this? 

Mark Patterson: It's been a process. So we started actually, even though we're at Ryerson, it feels like we're a small  business and a startup trying to solve this problem. So, but we've been at it since 2014, we have over  350 partner organizations and communities across Canada. We work with a lot of local chambers of  commerce and other organizations. So our approach is working through those community-based  organizations that also have trusted relationships with the small businesses in their community, but  we've had a lot of success. It's taken a few years to bring this together, but really excited where we are  right now. And it's not to say your comment is right. And I, in building this, I looked at a lot of  government websites and I looked [crosstalk 00:08:09] a lot of money and... 

Jason Pereira: Fell asleep over time. 

Mark Patterson: Yeah. I thought we could make it easier. The government has in recent years, the federal government in  particular has been looking at developing concierge services and so on, but it is a complicated  landscape.And the thing to think about is if you're somebody who has a problem, like a small business  that has a problem, and you go out looking for the funding, it can be a very daunting exercise to weed  through all the programs that are available. And like I said, find out you're not eligible for 95% of them.  What we did is allow a company to give us their context. So what size are you, what sector are you in?  Where is your interests lie as far as export, et cetera, et cetera. And we've reversed the process so that  we can send you all the programs that you actually apply for. So instead of having two or 300 programs  to look through, you'll get 12 to 20 programs to look through on average. And that's, that's a big  difference because they're all going to be focused and, and you'll know that they're very high likelihood  you're going to be eligible. 

Mark Patterson: The other piece, the talent piece is huge for business. It's a challenge. Cause we, on one side we hear a  lot from businesses saying we can't find the talent to grow the business. We just got a big contract. We  can't find the right people to manage this. But on the other hand, we also hear from individuals that  they're having a hard time finding meaningful, stable work as well, right? So there's something going on  there where there's also a disconnect. And part of it is, is another example if you're a small business and  you want to hire a specific type of student from say a post-secondary institution, until we built this  network, you had to go to every single institution separately to get your job on their job board. We've  actually created a facility where with one posting through our platform, we can actually distribute it and  have it go into the internal job board of the institution. 

Mark Patterson: So just another example, when I say we're trying to look at system solutions to make it easier for small  business to navigate. That's just another example, but it is very daunting and it's not, like I said, for lack  of funding or programs, there are hundreds of programs and funding opportunities for small business  right now across the country, whether you're hiring talent or building a new technology and need  research support, or many other types of funding and doing an international market entry to look at a  new market, there's funding many, many programs, but navigating it is very challenging. And we find  most people, most companies give up on that path. 

Jason Pereira: Oh, I get that. I mean, just the simple act of even like you said, hiring a student, right? You're probably  going to default to your local closest colleges or universities simply because of convenience, as opposed  to spreading that net wider. And God knows who you're missing out on because of that. And for the  record, I mean the talent issue is absolutely an issue of everyone I talked to on my other podcast,  FinTech impact. When I ask about what the biggest challenge has been to get the company to where it is  today, almost universally, the response is the talent, the talent, finding the people, find the people.  Now, some areas of technology tend to have less supply and that's part of the problem, but just  acquisition where you find these people even coming out of school is difficult. 

Jason Pereira: So it's and as a business owner, who's had his ups and downs of HR issues. Cause every business owner  is going to have an up and down of HR issues fully understand that struggle. So let's talk about that's the  employment side. Let's talk about the programs you mentioned for export businesses. Tell me about the  types of things that are available and the support people can look for through your channels. 

Mark Patterson: Yeah. So just to give you an example, if you're a small business thinking about export, you're going to  hear about, for example, EDC Export Development Canada, or VDC or Global Affairs Canada, or there  could be programs run by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business or the Chambers of  Commerce or your provincial ministry of International Trade. And oftentimes again, each of those will  have different programs for different segments, sectors, et cetera. So what we do is we have  partnerships where we learn about these programs often in advance of them being launched, we'd load  them into our platform and they automatically curate to the companies that they're relevant for. So  what we did is we did an assessment of all of the typical funding criteria that government programs use  to determine eligibility. And then we built a profile on our platform. So you can give us when you, you build a program as a small business, you can give an indication of who your business is, kind of what  markets are in the sectors they're in, et cetera. 

Mark Patterson: And then we just reverse the process where the right funding programs will come to you versus you  trying to figure out across all of them. And that's what I was saying before, when there could be 250  different programs that you might be eligible for, but you'll typically get about 10 to 12 that you are sure  you're going to be in the ballpark for where I often say, we're getting you into the court, like getting the  ball in the court. It might not be in the net, but it's a lot better than not being in the court at all. So it  certainly reduces the amount of time and effort to find the right support. So there are a lot of these  organizations do amazing work and they have support organizations and we're not replacing the work  that EDC BDC, Global Affairs, et cetera, and other organizations do, or we're just helping the employer  navigate and get the right supports available for them at the point in time. And in the context that they  find themselves when they're using the platform. 

Jason Pereira: Excellent. So in terms of the mandate, I mean, how many programs are you currently compiling? It  sounds like I know just the ones you've mentioned, I've already lost count do you actually have a head  count on this or is it just getting too big? 

Mark Patterson: Yeah, I know the ebbs and flows. And I think one of the interesting things that's there, it's certainly been  a surge in efforts to fund and support business, especially given the current context with the pandemic  and with COVID and the impact on businesses and certain sectors, and there's likely to be more support.  So I think a lot of the funding today it's been around supporting workers in transition or what we would  classify as workforce development. But I think as we start to become more focused on economic  recovery, especially in hard hit sectors, there's going to be more programs. So there are literally  hundreds of programs depending on where you are and what your focus is. So like I said, there are a  bunch of different categories of if you were to say, well, is there any subsidy to help me hire a student? 

Mark Patterson: Yes, there are many substitutes. There's about $1.5 billion in funding going into helping small business  hire students. If you're asking me, is there a way I can partner with an institution to do some research or  help me do some AI algorithm for my new tech platform? And I want to partner with a professor at an  institution. Yes, there are many funding programs for that through and search. Sure. 

Jason Pereira: Not the first thing that comes to most people's minds, [crosstalk 00:15:06]. 

Mark Patterson: Exactly. If I want to grow my experts, how do I do that? There are lots of government supports and  funding through agencies. Like we've already mentioned if I want it to do other things like ensure my  export business other than the, so there are many, many, many programs. And like I said, it's often the  government will launch a new program, trying to get attention on it, tweak it a little bit, but still have  the other programs. And you just get this fragmentation of programs across different industries. You'll have provincial programs that are fairly analogous to federal programs. If you have a successful  program, every level of governments want to, we're going to want to create a similar program. So you  ended up getting this massive proliferation of program. What funding pots have money at? What time?  What can I navigate? What are they focused on? 

Jason Pereira: Application deadline I know have been a challenge problem before. 

Mark Patterson: Exactly. And like I said, larger or medium size businesses. Once you get into larger scale, they have  departments where people that are responsible for maximizing these benefits, just like you would, I'm  sure counsel your small businesses on maximizing their tax structure and other things there are when  you get to a certain size, a larger businesses, know all the programs and they have a department that  makes sure they, they take advantage of the ones that they're eligible for. But oftentimes small  businesses are just overwhelmed. So we're trying to do what we can to make it easier. There's still work  to do. But I think like you said, we all know that small businesses are the backbone of the Canadian  economy. They are the employers of our workforce and we need to do, it's not necessarily putting more  money into the system. We need to remove the barriers that make it harder for our first small business  to access what's already available. 

Jason Pereira: Agreed. It's unfortunate. I mean, a lot of these things just go by the wayside because people just don't  know they're there and the number of tours. 

Mark Patterson: Yeah. Frankly, companies that have done it once and are used to it and have navigated it will take  advantage of it over and over. But others that haven't gone through that process are unaware, are not  taking advantage of these things that could really be helpful. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. I liken it to a little bit to a scholarship situation. A number of times I basically had this conversation  in the past with people who either run these organizations that have to grant scholarships or whatever it  might be. And oftentimes they just give it to someone that they're well, normally the criteria, we  would expect something of someone with a higher academic background or whatever it is, but we only, we have to choose between the applicants. And if we don't get the people we're looking for from the  applicants, we're going to settle and unfortunately, to use for the person who gets the best of the group.  Right. So all too often, some of these things, you just got to take a crack at them. 

Jason Pereira: And if you don't know that they're out there and why we always encourage students, look up every  scholarship you possibly can. And as long as you're not eliminated by the process of gender race or  whatever, it might apply because even if your marks aren't what they should be, there's still a  chance. And I'm sure that some of that has to apply to government programs where they ha they're mandated to spend X amount of money on the companies they support. And maybe there's better  candidates out there, but those candidates just aren't applied.

Mark Patterson: Absolutely. And so I could talk a lot about that issue. So we also, interestingly enough to similar things  for students as well on our platform on the kind of student accounts side, but there's a lot of work to do.  I always use the example we used to, again, when I was in career services, knew a lot more about the  scholarships and so on there could be a cultural scholarship for people of Italian descent as just a  random example. And people just don't know about it. And it could be $5,000 for a one page, one page  application. And it is what you say so we're all overwhelmed by the amount of content and information  and all of the different channels coming on us. And like you said, Google used to be really effective, but I  challenge anybody right now to go on Google and even restricted to Canadian search or Ontario search  and search for programs to help me do more export business. 

Mark Patterson: And you'll see how many results come up and then you'll know what I'm talking about. And you're not  going to sit there. You're not going to probably look past the first couple of search results and it's  probably not going to have the program that's right for you. So we need a better way to make sure  we're cutting through the noise, especially for small businesses. And especially at this time when success  and growth in a small business is going to have a huge impact on society wide on the future standard of  living for all Canadians. So that's why we're passionate about it. We don't have all the answers, but  we're certainly going to do what we can to help make sure small businesses know about these  programs. 

Jason Pereira: Good. Curious, any large scale success stories that you can share people came to you at an early stage  early on in a sense, just shot the lights out and become household names at this point. Or is it just a little  too early in the evolution? 

Mark Patterson: Yeah. We have a lot of examples of, so we often, I mean, one of the things is we're referring people and  we, once we refer or let them know that, this program at EDC is perfect for you. We can lose track of it,  but oftentimes small businesses have come back and with thank you notes for us. They took the time to  say, Hey, you, you helped us navigate and get through those. So we've had a lot of that success, one program in particular that I would like to highlight right now. And again, for any businesses listening that  have hired post-secondary students from a co-op or an internship or program that we would call work,  integrated learning. So an learning program where the student is getting, they're doing a four month or  eight month placement with you. 

Mark Patterson: We have funding right now, like I said, to refund 75% of the salary, and we could still look at fall and  winter. So if you have already hired and you're employing a student right now, we would potentially be  able to support you through the application and refund 75% of the salary as reimbursement. So... 

Jason Pereira: Something we have finished looking into right now. 

Mark Patterson: We have thousands of companies that we've supported through that, and we have the capacity to  support thousands more right now. So that's been a great program. And particularly in this year, when  there was a lot of uncertainty, especially with smaller businesses about while I was going to hire, or I  traditionally hire a co-op student, but I'm in shutdown or we're locked on, or we're all working remotely,  how would that work? I just don't know how to wrap my head around that. So this funding has been  really impactful, not only to help small businesses get the capacity they need by hiring students, but also  to give students opportunities to develop skills that employers are going to need when they graduate.  So it's been really great for both small business and for students. And it's a supportive by the  government of Canada, through USDC, Economic Social Development Canada, and it's available to all  small businesses. It's actually even available hospitals and long-term care facilities in the current  context. And like I said, it's great for both the small business and also for the students. 

Jason Pereira: So if people want to get started, it sounds pretty straightforward experience. But talk to me about the  onboarding experience and how long it takes for business to get set up on your platform. 

Mark Patterson: Yeah. Absolutely. One that I'm going to suggest, so again, we have one place where you can get all of the  services or supports that we've talked about as if you go to a website export.magnet.today/URL. So,  www.export.magnet.today you'll be able to do it's set up really around the export and funding  opportunities, but you'll also be able to access talent and all of the other programs within the platform.  If you're to set up a full platform and give us your contact as sort of an account on the platform, it would  take less than five minutes. And then you'll start receiving targeted opportunities within 12 hours of  signing up and you can use it to hire. 

Mark Patterson: So if you find yourself having to go to multiple job boards to post to different post-secondary  institutions, or you're having a problem, finding that student for the program that fits at your local  institution, you can with one posting, send your posting out to over a hundred post-secondary  institutions across Canada, through that same platform. So five minutes to set up, you'll start getting  notifications. You can set your preferences. As far as email notifications. We don't expect you to have to  come back in and you can set the frequency of how often you receive those. I think you'll find that a lot  of the opportunities that you'll receive will be very customized to what you need and your contact of the  current time. 

Jason Pereira: So Mark, I thank you for this. I also thank you for a SIETAR organization for this effort, my goodness,  someone who's personally navigated some of this and been frustrated by it. This was something that  was solely needed. In fact, I'm ashamed to say, I have not fully set up my profile yet. That is something  I'll be working on probably next weekend. And I encourage everyone who's listening. If you're a small  business owner to basically take the time, there's literally nothing to lose, right? This is a free service. So  end of the day, someone taps you on the shoulder digitally and saying, by the way, did you know that  there's this pot of money here to help you grow your business or help you protect your business or hire  people, my goodness? Where are you been all my life seriously? 

Mark Patterson: And I appreciate that. And we're always open to feedback because I think this is, like I said, it's  something where we're going to be continuing to try and improve and make this more and more  relevant and meaningful to small business. We're looking at adding additional functionality and supports  to help small businesses train and support their employees as well. So there's a lot of additional things  coming in, exciting things that we'll be announcing over the next year as well. So let us know, give us  feedback, tell us what we could do to help you navigate. And we're certainly trying to be there for it,  despite everything we said about the government. I think there are a lot of great people in government  that are also trying to do what they can to support small business it's in all of our interest, but we need  to find ways to make it easier for you to access it. So hopefully this helps. 

Jason Pereira: A hundred percent. Yeah. I'm not trying to demonize the powers that be, but sometimes when you're in  that environment some of the simplicity of how things work on the outside world is lost apart and it  gets, and it's complex and convoluted, right? As you said, a program will come out that has a lot of  overlap with another program and that other programs still there, but it falls by the wayside. Things are  not as efficient as they could be, but nevertheless, Hey, they're there for us to take advantage of and  they should be taken advantage of. 

Mark Patterson: Absolutely. 

Jason Pereira: Excellent. So Mark, one last thing, just to confirm website, where can people find you? 

Mark Patterson: Yeah. So our main page is that the URL is magnet.today. So not.com, not thoughts, CA it's magnet taught  today. You can sign up there. But so the one I'm recommending to most of your demographic of  listeners, where you'll also get all the services and support is that, export.magnet.today. And that's  where you can find us. And there's you can submit any contact information or follow up directly with us  through the website, the phone, if you're looking to contact us as well. 

Jason Pereira: Well, Mark, thank you yet again, sincerely appreciate it. 

Mark Patterson: Right. Thanks so much, Jason. 

Jason Pereira: And that was my interview with Mark Patterson of magnet. Clearly, as you can see, this is a wonderful  resource for anyone in business, given the abundance of that exist and the difficulty in navigating them.  So I'm not just being overly boastful. When I say this, please make sure that if you're a business owner,  sign up for this, you have nothing to lose. If you were an advisor, listening to this mass email, all your  business owner clients, and getting to sign up for this, there is no downside as always, if you enjoy this  podcast because a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever is your podcast until next time take care.

Producer: This podcast was brought to you by Woodgate financial, an award-winning financial planning firm,  catering to high net worth individuals, business owners, and their families to learn more, go to  woodgate.com. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Google play, and Spotify,  or find more episodes @jasonferrera.ca. You can even ask Surrey, Alexa or Google home to subscribe for  you.

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