Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Neil Stephen, Founder and CEO of This Is Marketing, located in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

We are a brand-centric marketing company that takes client brands from inception to celebration through all the highs and lows. We specialize in small manufacturing companies in the consumer packaged goods space with additional work in the political consulting and hospitality brand-building space. We have a full suite of advertising solutions with partnerships across North America and clients from Alaska to the Grand Caymans.

Tell us about yourself

My wife and I are high school sweethearts who married after University before moving to Yukon, Canada -about as far west and north as Canadians from Nova Scotia can go without needing a work visa! After several years exploring the north and working within a small behaviour change-focused branding agency, we moved home to Nova Scotia to start our family. We began the business because our region needs creative solutions to demographic and resulting economic challenges. We knew that marketing and branding services for small businesses would be important to the area's economic development and began devoting ourselves to helping our clients create quality sustainable jobs.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

We remain emotionally engaged in our clients' work - despite that approach having bitten us too many times. I think it's an accomplishment to get burned and not change the values you bring to work. I'm proud of that for sure as a business owner. As a business, our biggest accomplishment saw our work floating in outer space!

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Maintaining boundaries and routines that protect family and personal time from the onslaught of understandable client needs or last-minute requests.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  • Read the e-myth and then spend some serious time reflecting before making the leap (or not).
  • Realize that if you're doing anything innovative or unique, the vast vast vast majority of people will not understand and may actively try and protect/stop you from moving forward. Relish in doing the work to prove them right or wrong and don't take the ultimate answer personally. You're gonna be wrong a lot!
  • Treat every person you meet with respect and appreciation for their time. Some of my best work has come from directors and executives who I met in the trenches much earlier in their career.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website:  https://www.thisismarketing.ca/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandsbytim
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandsbytim/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisismarketing/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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