Indigenous Tourism Alberta- Financial Planning for your Tourism Business

We are recording now. Perfect. So welcome everybody. Hi, I'm Mackenzie Brown and I am the project manager with Indigenous Tourism Alberta and we're really excited to be facilitating this webinar today. It's going to be on financial planning for your tourism business. And I'm really excited as well because we have one of our awesome partners with us today, and that is Business Link with the Indigenous Services there. So we're really excited to be facilitating this webinar. Thank you so much, Tamar. Just a couple housekeeping things. We will be recording this webinar and it will be on our YouTube as well as our website at indigenoustourismalberta.ca afterwards. And then additionally, if you have any questions, there is a question and answer part of the webinar that feel free to put in any questions at any point in time. And we will have a period at the end of the webinar where we will answer any questions that we have. But with that, I would like to first off. Introduce Holly to everybody. So this is Holly and she's the Director of Indigenous Business Services at Business Links. So welcome, Holly. Awesome. Thanks, Mac. It's wonderful to be here today. Thank you to Indigenous Tourism Alberta for inviting us to be a partner on this wonderful webinar and sharing really great information. And yeah, really excited and we'll we'll Let you know what Business Link does and how we can help you in your journey and when you can come to us. And we work really closely with ITA to help entrepreneurs and specifically with tourism entrepreneurs in this sector. So thanks so much and looking forward to the day. Fantastic. Awesome. So a little bit of a... Quick rundown because we are doing a partnership webinar today we just kind of wanted to chat a little bit about Indigenous tourism and business link. So as most of our members know Indigenous Tourism Alberta is a membership not-for-profit and we work in the Indigenous tourism realm. We work with development, membership, marketing and leadership and advocacy. Those are kind of our of our pillars. We have a variety of different workshops that we provide and then as well as our yearly summit we have some community tourism readiness programs and then a lot of marketing initiatives to try to push out the indigenous tourism authentic indigenous tourism experiences that are available across Alberta and we push that out through different channels to invite international travelers Just once COVID. It lowers a little bit and we have international travel again, but right now we're focusing our efforts on local travel. Oh, and here we go. Indigenous Tourism Alberta, we encourage and promote authentic Indigenous tourism that showcases the unique and immersive experiences offered. Our goal is to enhance the economic viability and support our Indigenous peoples to nurture partnerships throughout the province by sharing our stories, culture and experiences with the global audience. We also really work hard to let people know that Indigenous tourism experiences are very diverse and that if you've experienced one, there are still so many more to experience. Great, thanks Max. So I'm here to talk about Business Link Indigenous Services to start with and what we provide and how we can help you in your journey in partnership with Indigenous Tourism Alberta and our other service providers and partners that are within the entrepreneurial and small business development ecosystem. Fantastic. So Business Link has been around around since 1996. We are our tagline is we are Alberta's entrepreneurial hub. We are funded by the governments of Alberta and Canada. We're a non-profit organization, and we're essentially there to help you in all of those startup steps and also into expansion and growth of your business. So any kind of questions that you have about the structure of your business, how to register your business, a business plan, market research, just one-on-one advisory services, unlimited with a small business. expert. We're here for that. We also do live webinars and workshops like this, partnered workshops, as well as we have quite a few workshops internally at Business Link that we deliver on a regular basis, as well as series workshops. So we're always looking at what is needed for the educational purposes of entrepreneurs and providing that service to them. We do have, And when, when things are. normal. We do have quite a lot of networking events that we host, specifically in Indigenous services. We usually have one really big event per year to bring all of our Indigenous entrepreneurs together. And often we do have many events throughout the province of Alberta, just to ensure that we cover all of the areas that we serve. And as well on that, of course, we always collaborate and partner with all of the small business service providers within the ecosystem, support in any type of event that we can, participate in any type of conference or any career fairs or things like that. We always want to be involved in the community and have you know as the entrepreneur. What we can provide on an everyday basis. That's awesome. Yeah, I just wanted to mention like you guys provide so many, so many services to entrepreneurs. I think it's really phenomenal. Many of the entrepreneurs that we work with at Indigenous Tourism Alberta have gone through Business Link because what you guys provide to the community is just like so important. Awesome. Thanks, Mac. Yeah, it's, we're always trying to ensure that We are looking at the landscape and seeing what is really needed and how can we address those, what can we build. So right now, of course, with COVID, we are seeing that we are limited in how we can deliver any of our programming or any of our services in person. So we have shifted everything online for the time being for safety. But we are seeing a huge uptake in being able to offer those services all the time. And we also do a couple other things So we're working on some really great additional tools and resources that are also available online that will help you through the business planning journey of the startup phase. And then upon completing that business plan, you can also submit it automatically for review from one of our fabulous strategists at BusinessLink. Um, the other things that we provide as well is our market research, uh, secondary market research. So we belong to some great databases that can comprehensively pull market research for the entrepreneur to include in the business plan, uh, and in the overall viability study of their business. And then, um, we also have an Ask an Expert service and it's the only service that we So that we charge anything for a Business Link. And predominantly, it's a half hour for $25 to speak to an accountant or a lawyer. Sometimes we bring other subject matter experts in like human resources or social media marketing. But accounting and lawyers are definitely the most popular. So if an entrepreneur or business owner has a question about anything to do with the accounting or legal side of their business, they can definitely book that half hour or 50 bucks for a whole hour and get as much information from them as possible. Wow that's really awesome. Yeah it's a great service. So yeah this is all kind of to reiterate maybe just what I said. The startup to expansion phase where really resources are very tailored to the needs of our Indigenous clients. We're not a one-size-fits-all approach. We really want to make sure that we're meeting the needs and understanding the landscape of the particular area. So the one-on-one advice and guidance unlimited. We can talk to you in any way you prefer. We have clients that text us. We have clients that Facebook message us. We do have the Facebook group and a Facebook page for Indigenous services at Business Link specifically that are really great platforms. We also have two business workbooks that we work out of. So one of them is our business planning workbook, and the other one is how to become an independent contractor. Both of those are available on our website in PDF form. And then as far as the funding landscape goes, We understand everything involved in that as the best of our ability and are always on top of what is coming down the pipe. And then, of course, we have our entrepreneur workshops that we deliver on an everyday basis and then also seminars that we can tailor to specific groups. Awesome. Okay, so I guess I'll start off here and just talk a little bit about the structures of business. So this is one of your first steps when starting any type of business, really, is understanding how you're going to structure and ensure that you're registering your business appropriately and all of the things that you need to do that. So it refers to the organization of a whole as a company and specifically to its legal status. It defines how your company will be taxed, what your liabilities really are, and how you will be paid. So there's basically when it comes to a lot of small businesses and small to medium-sized businesses there's usually fit into one of three of the categories of sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation. There are some other types of structures as well indicated in orange at the top left-hand corner there of society, non-profit and cooperatives. Thank Those business structures, we're not going to talk about today, but if you inquire more information around that, definitely reach out to us at BusinessLink. We have a fabulous in-house non-profit expert that knows the ins and outs and everything in between when it comes to how to structure and register these businesses appropriately and what they really mean. you. So. As a sole proprietorship, and we'll get into more of the pros and cons about each of these after and how to go through the registration process, but as a high level, a sole proprietorship is essentially an individual who is operating a business by him or herself. You can always look at a sole proprietorship as the individual and the job are one entity and that it's essentially creating a job for yourself. So that's what a sole proprietorship is, and that's where, quite honestly, a lot of the time that small businesses start out, they usually start out with a sole proprietorship status to begin with. Then next on the docket, there is a partnership. So a partnership is essentially two sole proprietors coming together to create one business. So it's still under kind of the sole proprietorship status, but it's just adding in an extra individual into that. And then I'll go over the pros and cons of those Afterward, of that particular structure afterwards as well. And then a corporation. So a corporation is a completely separate and distinct legal entity and created specifically for the purpose of carrying on business. Thank I always equate a corporation a corporation to almost like giving birth to a baby. you It's starting something brand new, something that never existed before, And it is its own. so entity all on its own. So it is not linked to a specific individual much. and you're not looked at in the eyes of the government as the same type of entity. So as a sole proprietorship, as I said, this is the one that usually a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners will start out with first. It is relatively cheap and easy to set up. And it's easier to do your taxes, in a sense, because your taxes, any revenue that you're accumulating as a sole proprietor is viewed as your income. So when you do your personal income tax, you're also doing the tax of your business at the same time. And keep in mind, this also goes for a partnership as well. So you'll actually have to do taxes with somebody else. And that income will be kind of split amongst the two parties there. It is ideal if you're small. Now, my rule of thumb is very much like if you're making under $30,000 a year, a sole proprietorship is a really... It's a really good. good place to start. If you ever anticipate in your cash flow projections that you're going to be making more than $30,000 within one calendar year, it's very, very much recommended that you become a corporation at that point. And the reason for that is because you're going to be in totally different tax brackets. Once you reach over that $30,000 as a sole proprietor, you're going to be You're gonna be taxed a lot more than if you were a corporation. The other thing that I mentioned is that we always want to ensure success. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs would not see a $30,000 mark of revenue per year is extremely successful. So just to ensure that success is set up, that you can definitely look at the bigger picture and set up a corporation sooner rather than later. The cons of being a sole proprietor is that you are liable for anything that would happen within your work with your business. So if there was a lawsuit, if something were to go awry and a client or a partner, sorry, a client or a vendor or something along those lines were to sue you, they would actually be suing you and not the company itself. So, um, And so that you have to keep that in mind with that liability piece. The other piece is that there are no partners involved. It's just you running it on your own. So it may be a little bit more hard to raise capital to do that. With a sole proprietorship, you can go, if you live in the city or in any rural center, rural town, you can definitely go into your nearest registry office and fill out what's called a trade name declaration form and pay around $55 is the medium price there. And then you are registered as a sole proprietor. The thing about a sole proprietorship is you don't have name protection. So you can operate under, you know, whatever name you choose, but you don't own that name. So there could be quite a few others within the province of Alberta or within the country itself that are operating under the same name as you. So if you do go this route, ensure that your name is very unique. And so with a partnership, same type of idea as a sole proprietorship, but these are two entities coming together. Again, relatively cheap and easy to set up, easier to do taxes in comparison to a corporation. And then the cons are that there's twice the liability. So that liability that I talked about before in a sole proprietorship, this is doubled now because now you're also responsible for the partner that you're in this partnership with. It is still hard to raise capital, but you do have another partner in there. So you can definitely pool some funds together to get things going and to continue. And if there is a death or disagreement, it usually will end, will dissolve the partnership. Same idea with a with a partnership of how to register costs a little bit more about $70 medium there. You go to registry office, you fill out a declaration of partnership form. And again, there's also no protection with the partnership. So the next on the docket is the corporation. I'm sorry, I forgot to mention one thing about a partnership and a sole proprietorship. If you're making under $30,000 per year, that's that magic number, but when you're making under that amount, you actually do not have to collect GST. You're not expected to do that, but it is a good habit to get into to ensure that you can reach a corporation. and get into the habit of collecting the GST just so that you can set yourself up for that. So with a corporation that thirty thousand dollars mark if you're if you Anticipate you're going to make that. It's time to set up a corporation. There's limited life. So you and your corporation, two separate things, something awry were to happen. It's actually the corporation that the party would be suing or would be in conflict with. It wouldn't be the person itself. It wouldn't be you as the business owner. And it is quite easier to raise capital and add partners when you have that status as a corporation. The cons are it's more expensive to set up and operate and it can be complicated. So definitely reach out to the experts that know this like the back of their hand. It's going to cost you a little bit of money to do that, but it's going to save you a lot of time and effort in the long run. And as entrepreneurs and business owners, time equals money. So if you are spending a lot of time doing something and you don't know how to do it, you're going to have to go back and fix it. You're actually wasting money to do that. Whereas if you just go to the expert off the bat. It'll be done properly. The steps in setting up a corporation are you go to a registry office and you search something called a NUANS report. And there's a way that you can do this without going to a registry first to ensure that the name that you want to name your company is available. So you can go to some, it's called www.arvic.com. You can register with your email address and it'll give you three free searches to search for if that name is available or not. It costs sometimes $15 per NUANS search. So if you go into a registry to register your business and you have a name in mind and you search that name and it's taken, and then you search another name and it's taken, that Those costs can add up quite quickly. So if you have that name, you know that it's not taken beforehand, you only have to pay the $15 one. You fill out three different forms when incorporating. One of them is your articles of incorporation, a notice of address, and a notice of directors. If your business is very uncomplicated, you can definitely do these on your own. I would definitely recommend just getting the advice of a lawyer. Use our Ask an Expert service so that they can just kind of give you that little bit of advice and help you through that process. And then there's definitely a name protection. So you own that name now and you do have to pay yearly dues on it. So depending on the structure of your business itself, there are two different ways that you can incorporate. One of them is provincially and one of them is federally. When you incorporate provincially, you only own the name within the province of Alberta and you can only have a head office or an operation within the province. Now, if you feel that you can only, you're only going to stay in Alberta, then that might be the way to go. But if you want to Go nationally, maybe even internationally. It's definitely suggested that you incorporate federally and at that point you've now owned the name and the rights across the country. Thank It's about $450 to register as a corporation provincially and about $650 to register for I'm going to take a second to say thank you to all of the speakers. The last speaker is Dr. Greta DeMaria. Thank you for joining us. And this is everything I just said, so hiring a lawyer, We will be starting in about a minute. go through that, they'll do it correctly, Thank you. you. Thank you. they'll figure out the taxes, Thank you. definitely seek the advice of an accountant, it's great for partners Thank you. Thank you. and investors if that's the way that you're looking Thank you. Thank you. to bring in some capital, and then it will Thank you. really save you more money than it costs in the long run Thank you. if you do everything through professional experts So lastly here, there are just three different things to think about when we're naming your corporation. One of them is descriptive, one of them is distinctive, and one of them is legal. So your descriptive and distinctive are going to be, and oftentimes within Indigenous entrepreneurs, they'll use Indigenous words to be their distinctive piece. And that's great because a lot of the time that means when you do the NUANS report, there isn't going to be another business with that name. And then you're descriptive. So what you're actually doing in your business. So if you're trail riding or if you're a hotel or anything. You have to have that piece in the descriptive. And then your legal is your ending. So there's usually you see one of three. You see INC, Inc., CORP, or LTD for limited. And there's no difference in three of those. It's just whatever works best with the flow of your company, the name of your company. So just ensure that you hit all of those pieces. You do a NUANS search and that you're ready to rock and roll with your business. Awesome. Thanks so much, Holly. Thank you for giving that overview because all of the all of the different ways that you set up your business, whether it's sole proprietorship and corporation, those filter into how you're going to financially plan your tourism business later down the road. So thank you so much for that for that recap of everything. So I'm going to take over a little bit for tourism. Tourism's in this in this climate that we're experiencing right now there's a lot of financial uncertainty and tourism itself comes with a bit of financial uncertainty and we're going to chat a little bit about that and then later down the road Holly's going to give us some awesome resources on some different cash flow sheets so that we can learn to really manage our finances and properly plan for them so tourism Tourism has a lot of unforeseen events. For example, there could be change in visitor preferences. Maybe we see right now really hot spot travel happening, right? So, maybe if you are a smaller, more intimate experience, those visitor preferences could be an unforeseen event that could affect your finances downturn in the economy. You know, we're in a recession right now. And so we see less travel, even if COVID weren't happening, we would see less travel just because of the economic state that the world is kind of in right now. We see changes in government policy, currency fluctuations, you know, there was a period of time where there was less travel going to the States from Canada, just because our dollar amount was a little bit different. And we saw a lot more travel from Canada to Australia because our dollar amount was the same. So those can, all of those different things can affect how your business does financially Actually, and in turn, our. unforeseen things so we have to like be able to plan for that just because we never know what will happen in the future. We see successful entrepreneurs they minimize and manage the risk and they do this through proper business planning and assessing their ventures prospects for success. So we recommend that you consider issues and problems that might arise in your business, such as even poor weather, equipment malfunction, etc. So the first kind of unforeseen events that I'm going to chat about or things that you should plan for is seasonality. In Alberta, in particular, we do have different seasons. You know, we're not like Thailand. We're not like these hot tropical places where they can welcome visitors year-round because they know what they'll expect. We do see a big change in how many visitors we welcome into Alberta due to the seasons. This is taken from Travel Alberta. Thank you. And from a government developer at Tourism Entrepreneur Startup Session Workbook. So we see that in the summertime, we have 36.4% of our visitors are visiting during that time. Whereas in winter, that decreases to 17.6%. And then we have a couple of... of the shoulder seasons. We have more people joining Alberta and coming to Alberta in the spring, but definitely summer is our biggest season. So when you're planning for finances, most people do rely heavily on getting majority of their business during the summer season. And then how are you going to plan so that you can carry yourself through the winter and through those shoulder seasons? So we see a lot of people incorporating Shoulder season experiences or winter experiences, but remembering that for a lot of tourism businesses, majority of your finances will be made during the summer. But the thing about tourism as well is that we are weather dependent. So I posted this photo, this photo was taken three years ago in Jasper when we had all of the fires happening and usually behind this this photo you see Pyramid Mountain which is this gorgeous beautiful mountain but This was an unforeseen circumstance and I know I was living in Jasper at this time and we had a lot of cancellations because of people, because it wasn't healthy to be outside, it wasn't safe, a lot of overseas travelers actually ended up canceling their trips, a lot of local travelers weren't traveling, they were staying inside. So this is something that even though you plan to make majority of your money during the summer, this can really throw you in. Kind of like a bit of a bind. And then this was taken from last year when we had rain all the time, all the way through the province of Alberta. And so this is, so again, you see how weather can really throw some, dampen your plans, pun not intended. So how are you going to prepare for these kind of unforeseen circumstances? And then, of course, we get to COVID-19, which we are experiencing right now. So this has this came for Alberta at. probably the worst time for the tourism industry and we see the tourism industry struggling the most um out of all industries and particularly indigenous tourism just due to the infancy of our of our industry uh most businesses you know we had a lot of businesses that were going to be open this year we had a lot of businesses that were expecting double the amount of visitors as they had last year and then with covid happening um that That has totally shattered the tourism industry and we're slowly rebuilding it. We see some businesses able to open, but at half capacity. I'm going to turn it over to We've seen, you know, I took this picture from Statista and it just really shows Revenue from 2019 to where it is now, and this is in the billions of dollars, right? And we're seeing, yeah, just like just just a plummet that's happening. So when we see unforeseen circumstances occurring, there ends up being cuts, cuts to staff costing. Cuts to marketing budget, cuts to just operating budgets, right? All right. And so that's when we're going to have Holly do a bit of a cash flow, a cash flow so that we can see what you can cut, what you shouldn't cut, those kind of things. I'm going to chat a little bit about some costs that are associated with tourism that when you're first starting out and when you're continuing that you really need to budget for. So some of those costs are startup costs. So this is an awesome photo from Hideaway Adventure Campgrounds, and this summer, actually, in light of COVID happening, John Ritchie, he was able to really focus on, okay, I want bathrooms, I want them to be really nice, these kind of infrastructure development things. But these are costs that he's had to... set aside for the past couple years, right? And these startup costs and infrastructure costs, they are important, because when you have proper infrastructure in place, then eventually you'll have more visitors, right? But they are something that you do have to budget right out right off of the bat. So when you're doing your financial planning, make sure to budget for different startup costs and different infrastructure costs. Same with staffing costs. You know, we, if you have staff, you have to pay the staff. We see a lot of layoffs happening right now, which is like very, very unfortunate. But that is one of the costs that has been cut a lot with COVID happening. But when you are, again, planning your finances, make sure that you are putting that money away to pay your staff at the end of each month. And then we also have marketing costs. We find that marketing is one of the first things to go when you're budgeting for cutbacks, which is a little bit difficult because marketing brings more Tourism, but then it's the first thing to go. So it's kind of a bit of a catch-22. So again, when you're planning for your finances in the next upcoming year, really try to budget for marketing costs. You know, if you're going to have advertising, if you're going to have social media posts, those ad buys, all of these different things, make sure that you're putting that into your budget for the next year. So that if cutbacks were to happen, you still have a little bit of marketing budget to push out so that you can get more travelers coming to your tourism destination. Just last week, I did a webinar on... Marketing your business in a cost-effective way. So you can find that on our Indigenous Tourism Alberta YouTube channel. And in that video, I give you 10 top tips of marketing your business in a cost-effective way so that if you've had to cut back on your marketing budget during the time of COVID right now, there are a bunch of different ways that you can still market effectively that aren't going to break your bank. And then another tip that we give people is having a variety of revenue streams. You know, if we Tourism businesses, mainly your revenue stream is the sale of your experience. However, it is the best if you have multiple streams of revenue, because those multiple streams of revenue, they can increase your total revenues, they can insulate your business for seasonality, economic shocks, and then other unforeseen events. Awesome. Great. Thanks, Matt. Um, so we're going to talk a little bit about kind of the financial piece of that. I'll just, um, Caveat this by saying that the finances in business and in a business plan and keeping up to date with them as they're occurring or as you're forecasting for projected years to come in years one, two, and three, et cetera, it can be daunting and it can be a lot of work. But if you have the right tools and resources and the right support, it can very well be Cut the edge a little bit and be a lot easier. And once you get the hang of it, it becomes kind of natural to understand how to ensure that you're forecasting correctly and that you're not running out of money before the end of the year and all of those great things that Matt has just mentioned, ensuring you're paying your staff accordingly, ensuring that you're putting your money where the The most reward comes out of it and the most benefits are seen with the business. So one really good thing to note right off the bat is for fixed and variable expenses. Thank And a lot of the time, and I've reviewed many, many business plans in my time, and not one month is anything like the next. One season of the business is not anything like the next. So ensuring that you really understand that not all... you. Not all expenses are going to be fixed. In fact, there are very few that really will be a fixed amount. And even thinking of things like your utilities or cell phone bills or Marketing marketing techniques, oftentimes we'll see across the board that every single month has the same amount allocated to those costs and and it really never is that way. So just ensuring that you see that there's that that ebb and flow throughout your your your variable expenses. So it brass tacks of it. A fixed expense never changes. A variable expense changes quite often. Account for both of them, and really, really account for off-seasons and for the seasonality approach. Plan ahead to ensure that those expenses are forecasted and recorded in income and expense statements, and ensuring that you understand that there are definitely times during the year when you do not have to pay a certain expense because you're not operating that specific resource or Or that you're not... Developing that tool, or maybe you don't have staff during that time, so you're not forecasting for staffing expenses at that time either. When forecasting your cash flow and projected income expenses, I just have a couple of explanations and definitions, I guess, of what each of these things really are. So the difference between the two is with your cash flow, the monthly cash flow forecast is going to show all of your cash and the business that it expects to receive. From every source, as well as all the cash payments the business expects to make. So, this is your forecast. Your income and expense statements are reports detailing the source and the amount of all the income and all the total cost to the business. It's organized in subheadings. It can be compared month to month, season to season, or year to year. So, your forecast is essentially, if you have an expense, you can definitely put it in the forecast for the month that you think that expense is going to happen, but then your income and expense statements are actually projecting when that money left your account to make that expense or when that money came into your account when that revenue was expected. So even though, say, you had a great month in March or April with your business, and you've brought in $1,500 in as one specific revenue stream of one of your products or services, and you've made those sales, Maybe you made them on a contract basis, so actually the money doesn't hit your account and that payment isn't actually made until April. So even though technically this transaction happened in March, it wouldn't be recorded then in your income and expenses until April. One thing about tourism businesses and seasonality-based businesses is that there are quite a few financial institutions that will really work with the business and understand the pieces of the business. So maybe you have a debt to repay and usually that's one of your fixed costs, that's one of your fixed expenses is that your debt repayment plan. You're paying x amount every two weeks or x amount a month to pay down your debt. Sometimes there may be the opportunity to talk with your financial institution if that's the route that you went for, for some startup costs or seed funding, and see if there's the possibility of changing and fluctuating that repayment plan to suit the needs of your business, so that when you are bringing in a lot of revenue in four or five months out of the year, you can pay higher on your debt. And then in the months that you're not bringing in a lot of revenue or maybe none at all, you're going to be. to be paying significantly less so that it evens out throughout the year and it's in line with how you are actually generating that revenue. And then as far as I think, yeah, I mentioned this as well. So that payment for the actual payment are going to be recorded in your income and expense statements and then the cash flow forecast is just going to be building that out into the actual cash flow and projecting how your coming months are going to look and how your coming years will look as well So with sales forecasting, this is very much your, and tying into what Mac has said about revenue streams and things like that, is that it's the process of organizing and analyzing the information in a way that makes it possible to predict what will happen in the future. Tourism industry, very much reliant on the sales forecasting to ensure viability and to ensure success. So just the best way that I can really put this. We work with a lot of seasonality businesses as well at BusinessLink in various capacities and areas, is to plan for your best case and worst case scenario. And I think if any, one of the things that COVID-19 has taught us is that there are sometimes or once in a lifetime things that happen that you would have never expected or never been able to plan for or anticipate, and this is one of them. But now, maybe in the silver lining of this, we can see that there is. The opportunity to ensure that there's an emergency response plan attached to your business. There's answers to how to get out of a certain type of crisis for your business specifically. But with sales particularly, what this is doing is going to organize and analyze the information in a way that really makes it possible to predict what your future Future is going to look like for your business. It's also in line with what we do at BusinessLink with market research, determine the market size itself, determine your reach, determine your target audience, and then determine what your sales would possibly look like in the forecast side of things. You search the statistical databases and financial information for what those revenue streams look like. And then always use your break sales figure, break even figure as an annual minimum of what you want to bring into your business for revenue. We just have included here a sample cash flow forecast and this is actually taken from one of our business planning workbooks or we only have one business planning workbook. So our one business planning workbook, this is what is taken from there, it's a sample of the cash flow forecast. I know there's a lot of great resources as well, I think Travel Alberta has a really great workbook as well for business planning that is specific to the tourism industry. This actually might be in there as well. This is again just going to look at what you're forecasting out for both money coming in and money going out of your business for the month. It's always good to and it really depends what you're using that business plan for but also I'm always a very big firm believer that your business plan should be for you. It should just be like a foundation for your business, a roadmap for your business. So this is a really great way for you as the business owner and your partners to really look and see. How is this gonna play out over the next 12 months? And also when we think about those unforeseen circumstances that Matt has gone over and you can't really plan for those things. But again, if you take the best case and worst case scenarios, usually you're gonna fall somewhere in the middle of there and hopefully you fall more on the side of the best case. But this is just going over that cash that's coming in from your sales, from the accounts receivable that you may be collecting. Your cash equity all the way down to those fixed and variable expenses that you're paying on a month-to-month basis. So with your monthly forecast as well, it's really important to see, again, how those accounts payable look from more of a zoomed-in point of view. So a lot of businesses are going to have debt and it's just inevitable to get started. So looking at who the name of your debtors are, who they all are, list them out, figure out how much you owe and figure out how much, what the total amount of the debt was, what the current amount is currently sitting at, and then what that repayment plan really looks like. So maybe this isn't, you know, very much the 31 to 60 days or 61 to 90 or over 90 days. Looking at a longer term, maybe if you have a long-term debt and you're paying over a course of seven years, if you bought a vehicle or something along those lines, then you can really calculate out and see in a better picture how much you really have to pay down that debt, how much money is going to your interest expenses, your interest percentage, how much is actually going toward the repayment of the debt itself. And just calculating those out because when you have those, you can then understand how What the total equity of your business is worth, and when you have that, it's really great if you have to go for more funding or more investment or more, if you have to raise capital in any way through financing, you have those figures very solidified. So, the accounts payable, again, money owed to suppliers for purchases or money owed to other expenses like utilities, taxes, credit, and any other debt that you may have from your business. And then lastly here, keeping a monthly forecast as well on your accounts receivable. So we talked about your cash flow forecast in your income and expense statements and knowing that maybe you booked a tour for somebody to come in in August and they paid 50% of the deposit in April and they'll pay the remaining 50% after they had Finish their tour at the beginning when they first arrive for their tour, but ensuring that you know who those who those. Accounts receivable pieces are from, who are the clients that owe you money, who are the customers that will be buying on layaway or credit subscription or deposits, et cetera. Thank you. Understanding how much they have paid, how much the total amount of that was, how much they have paid on it, and then when that will be anticipated to be paid off. And this way, it's going to be a lot easier for you, again, to look at the snapshot of your business at that month and say, this is how much my business is worth right now and who owes and who I owe. So those are just some really key tools to have included in whatever means that you're using right now for a business plan and ensuring that you're just keeping up to date with them. And please update your financials on a monthly basis. And just so you know exactly what's on top of it. And also update your business plan on a quarterly basis. I've seen so many times that businesses have started and they've been wonderful for three, four years and they wrote a great business plan. And then now it's time to get some expansion costs and they open their business plan. And it's not anything like the same business that they started with because things have changed so much in, in the five years that they were operating. So they, Technically, you have to start right from scratch and build a brand new business plan. Your business is never concrete. It's never solid. It's always changing and fluctuating. And you have to just ensure that that's captured in your business, especially if you're in the tourism industry or any of those seasonality industries where you're seeing those changes year to year, season to season. And you're also changing and innovating the ways in which you're bringing in those revenue streams. And if you're introducing a new revenue stream and it's not captured in your business plan, that's hard. So just include those and make sure you're up to date on them. Awesome. Thank you so much, Holly. That was really fantastic. Before we end off here, we're just going to go through a couple of different resources. But before I do that, I just wanted to mention as well that doing things like your cash flow and really writing out your finances will really help you in the long run. As somebody who owns a business and who is actually very anxious when it comes to financial advising and Financial planning, I find it very helpful when I know what is happening in my business. And as it can be very daunting, but we do have business links. You do have Indigenous tourism in Alberta. You have a lot of different people who can sit down with you and who can really help you go through the finances. And in the long run, you will find that that is very helpful. It's a good thing. Yeah, definitely. So in terms of resources from Indigenous Tourism Alberta to help you guys out with aspects of your business, financial planning, et cetera, et cetera, we do have the Indigenous Tourism Entrepreneur Workshop. So this is for people who are starting off in tourism or who want to learn how to expand their tourism business. We will be operating One of these come October, both in a virtual sense as well as a safe in distance sense as well and so we'll have some more information about that too but within that we do have a entrepreneur tourism workbook for indigenous entrepreneurs and we do go through a little bit of financial planning cash flow and all of those startup costs that we had talked about Additionally, we have the Community Readiness Program, and so this is taking communities and nations through what it means to be tourism ready, different infrastructure, and creating out tourism plans. We have our online tourism webinars such as this one and you'll be able to find all of the other webinars on our YouTube channel as well as our website. Then additional we have different marketing initiatives, we have our annual summit, we have different membership benefits, different networking initiatives as well through Indigenous Tourism Alberta. And all of our resources are available on our website on this current link here. I mentioned earlier, and if you navigate to the website there, you'll be able to see our Facebook page, our Facebook group. Please join. We love to share everything that... The entrepreneurs are doing, supporting each other. Maybe you can find some vendors for your business or some service providers that can come in and help out or materials, etc. So definitely highly encourage everybody to join those. I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if you can hear me. Everything else that we offer is all on our website. I don't know if you can hear me. Please navigate around. We have a newsletter. Thank updates you on a weekly basis of what we're doing. We're doing something every week. So we're doing, whether it's an Ask an Expert session, a webinar, a Facebook Q&A, an Instagram Q&A. There are always so many topics when it comes to entrepreneurship. So we're always on top of that and posting as much material you. as possible. Of course, I mentioned the business plan reviews and the market research that we currently provide, as well as our workbooks. I'm going to turn it over to And then the events that we love to do our events and we're really hopeful that we can get to doing that very quickly again, but for the foreseeable future, we'll be doing things online. So we are currently planning a good event for a good conference type event for September or October and then one again in early 2021. Thank And having some really great content and information for all entrepreneurs within the province of Alberta that are Indigenous. And just reach out to us. We might not have the questions or might not have the answers to your questions, but we'll find the answer. I think 80% of the time we know the answer. you. And if we don't know specifically, we have a huge group. Well, it's not huge. I think we have 26 employees right now for all of Alberta. But there's always somebody who's a subject matter expert on our team and we reach out to them. It's very rare that they don't know the answer. So. Ask us those questions. Advisory services. We can meet your needs, however that is. If you want to Skype, Zoom, Teams meeting, Facebook chat, whatever it is, we're there to help you through your journey and give you advice at any time. So please reach out and all of our information is on the website. So we will give a minute or two for some questions. I'm not too sure if we will have any questions. I don't know if you have any more questions, but. But was it for so far in the meantime, Holly, was there anything else that you had wanted to mention? I would say entrepreneurship is and is extremely. I'm Something that's been within Indigenous people's world view starting for forever, our ancestors were very entrepreneurial in everything that they did. So it's very common to come across serial entrepreneurs to that are Indigenous and that just want to do so many things speak and that's wonderful. So in line with kind of diversifying and innovating now. and finding new revenue streams and new ways to bring in customers but also My major big piece of advice is just start with one thing and make that really successful or not. That's OK. Entrepreneurship is about trial and error and you're not always going to get it right. And it's OK to fail and then move on to the next thing. And we see that as a win as well. If somebody comes in and says, I want to be an entrepreneur and then goes through all the information about being an entrepreneur and realizes, oh, it's a lot of work. And this isn't something that I think I can be successful in. That's also a success for us because we don't want it to lead anybody down the wrong path. So we always say like, what, what we want, what our payment is for all of this is just the entrepreneur's success. And, and we'll do whatever we can to, to ensure that that happens and make those connections. So just start with one really great idea and then build it out from there and and see what happens because It eventually probably will expand into something else. I totally, I really echo that sentiment as well. Starting small and then growing. I was always taught, my mom always told me, she said, do one thing really well, rather than several things not as well. And yeah, that is something that we run into with our entrepreneurs as well, because they are so... Talented in a variety of different ways, but how can you start small and build that foundation so that then you can stack those building blocks over top afterwards? Absolutely. Yeah. One tool I'll recommend as well is the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Design by Strategizer. If you Google them and just Google about a Business Model Canvas, you'll be able to find some really great resources. And we offer a really great workshop on the Business Model Canvas as well. But that's a really, really amazing tool to start. Validating your business and ideating and seeing and you don't have to use it just for your whole business. You can use it for the different streams of your business. And and it's just a really great way to have like a one pager business plan in front of you to see, like, how does all of this really work together? And then how can I then implement this to. To an actual business plan or to an actual business, how can I make the next steps? So to utilize those resources that are out there for for things like that. And then one more thing I'll mention just to your point about marketing and that that's kind of the first thing to go when it comes to seasonality businesses, tourism based businesses. And ultimately, you know, marketing is is kind of the foundation of a lot of these businesses, too. Because without a great marketing plan, a great brand, a great image, tagline, logo, all those things, your marketing is essentially how what sets you apart a lot of the time from other businesses. This is and. And marketing and branding has just a wide array of stuff around it that when you really understand all of those pieces, it's hard that you can let those things go. Focusing on what works for you, because a lot of businesses will say, try to do everything and try to be on every social media platform and try to have a website and try to do all the things. And that's spending a lot of time and a lot of money doing a lot of things that maybe are not a good ROI. So ensure that there are things that are actually working through market research, understanding who your target market is. Definitely. That's all really, really good advice. And so here is our contact information. Again, as we've mentioned a couple different times, we are here to help you guys on your journey to being successful, whatever success looks like for you in your tourism business and in your just regular business as well. So these are our different contact information. And please, yeah, follow us on Social media, Facebook, we have both business links, Facebook's Indigenous Tourism Alberta, and then the Facebook group that Holly was mentioning, which I highly recommend. I'm a part of that group as well. And there's just so much good information sharing in that group. It's really fantastic. It's wonderful. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Mackenzie. It's been a pleasure. And I hope we gave a lot of great information to those tourism businesses and that they can reach out to us for support. Absolutely. Thank you again so much for joining us today. And I look forward to doing some more webinars with you as well. You as well, yes.