Kendra’s Story

My love of entrepreneurship starts early in my life. My entire childhood I was surrounded by entrepreneurs and out-of-box, future-forward thinkers. It’s also where I learnt a love of quality and customer service.
I had not one, not two, but three role-models in my life when it came to owning a business. My parents and my Gramps each owned their own business during my childhood and each were different (an insurance brokerage, an accounting firm, a Christmas store, and a carpentry business) and each faced similar issues. Eventually my Mom had to make a decision between her full-time job and her store, and educating our future (she was a teacher and principal) won out.
But even then, I saw my Mom expand how the students in her school saw themselves. She offered girls the chance to learn more about math and sciences and how they could pursue careers in any field they wanted. (This was decades ago, so while girls could become anything they wanted, math and sciences were still considered more of “boys subjects”.) She set up computer labs even before it was really a thing. She encouraged everyone to peruse what they loved and enjoyed, even if it was outside of what others thought they should do.
I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Her father, my Gramps, struck out on his own when he was young and became a successful carpenter working from the garage in their backyard, and my Granny (her Mom) was one of the first streetcar drivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
So listening to discussions about business, even before I really knew what some of it meant, helped shape my views on business and entrepreneurship. Going to university and loving my business course (I thought I’d go into biotechnology, but quickly found I do not like lab work), plus having worked for my Dad in his accounting practice as a part-time bookkeeper and later a part-time Office Manager for one of his clients working on not just accounting but also streamlining their processes, I decided to get my CMA designation. This continued to shape how I viewed business; it wasn’t just looking at each area of a business in isolation, you had to look at a business as a whole, looking at marketing, sales, human resources, information technology, accounting, and systems.

After guaduation I continued my career as a staff accountant, accounting software consultant, business loan adjudicator and teaching how to create business plans, and an accounting and finance recruiter. I also dipped my hand into entrepreneurship with some MLMs but none were anything that I really wanted to sell long term (but I loved the “free” stuff that I got for signing up!). I also did some accounting work on the side while working full time, but I didn’t really jump into entrepreneurship myself until the end of 2012. I was being laid off and had been really thinking about the next steps in my career, and I found a self-employment program that I applied to, and was accepted into. It allowed me (a single parent at the time) to be able to grow my business while being on EI due to the layoff, which was exactly what I needed at that time.
After being an employee in some form for over fifteen years, on January 1, 2013, and developing a business plan through the self-employment program, I opened the doors to my business. It’s gone through some name changes but no matter what, at the heart of it it’s always been about helping other business owners understand their business better.
Now, after ten and half years, I have gone from an accounting and tax firm to a business strategy advisor with a financial focus. At the heart of it, still helping other entrepreneurs to understand their business, but with less focus on the day to day accounting and more focus on pulling everything together. But no matter what, the numbers matter and are key to really understanding what is happening in your business.
There are five key questions I ask my clients:
WHY do you do WHAT you do? WHO do you help and HOW do you help them?
WHAT is the financial health of your business?
Where you stumble and can’t answer these questions clearly, we know there’s work to do. I have courses that I put on live, an online membership, a group program, and of course, I work with clients one-to-one. I help with not only crafting and using a business strategy to help you stop spinning your wheels and gain traction in your business, I give you a roadmap that defines your direction and the steps you need to take on your journey.
If you want more information on any of my services, check them out here.
If you’d like to book a call with me to see how we can work together, book a call here.