Lessons learned from ten small business heroes

<p>Meet the Heroes of Small Business Matters Series One.</p> <p>Each week, during the darkest days of COVID-19, we produced a podcast featuring a small business owner, and three thought leaders who help them get to where they need and deserve to go. All made possible through the incredible support of RBC. We went remotely across Canada to explore many sectors of our economy. We talked to startups, established businesses, first-generation Canadians to family-owned companies that spanned decades. Every one of them inspired me with their resilience, resolve, and ability to reinvent.</p> <p>In this podcast, I revisit each one to pay tribute to these heroes and to share what I learned along the way.</p> <p>Small Business Matters series, presented by RBC.</p> <p><br /> <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Traci Shepheard (01:41)</strong></span><br /> Traci Shepheard's lifelong dream was to be an entrepreneur building a health and wellness business. She invested her savings and purchased an Airstream Trailer, retrofitting it to create a 'rock star' experience. <a href= "https://meditationworks.com">MeditationWorks</a> is launched. As she starts the ignition, her wheels fall off when COVID-19 stops everything in their tracks, especially a studio where people meditate inside a trailer, even one as beautiful as Traci’s.</p> <p><strong>Paul Hemburrow (04:14)</strong><br /> <a href= "https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hemburrow-4aa11932/">Paul</a> and his partner buy a profitable business that rents TV sets to patients in hospitals and then reinvents it to offer a suite of innovative tools that patients can access at their bedside while benefiting the hospital and healthcare. <a href= "https://healthhubsolutions.ca/">Health Hub Solutions</a> finally get the breakthrough they need but COVID-19 arrives and no one is focused on the future, just surviving the day.</p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Lisa Taylor (06:08)</strong></span><br /> A powerful insight leads <a href= "https://www.linkedin.c