Entrepreneurial Feature: Anna Dewar Gully, Co-Founder & Co-CEO

The TorontoEntrepreneurs.ca Initiative:

We understand that businesses may be impacted by COVID-19 and we want to leverage our online community and support those businesses that have supported our events over the years. We will be featuring companies that offer services to small and medium businesses throughout the pandemic and we hope that you will support them as well!

ABOUT ANNA

Anna is the strategist you call to solve the inequalities limiting your organization's success. She is Founder and Co-CEO of Tidal Equality and prior to founding Tidal Equality, Anna spent 15 years in organizational strategy, strategic change, and public policy roles in large and complex organizations in Canada and the UK where she developed a deep focus on making equitable systemic change. Anna and her Co-Founder Dr. Kristen Liesch are passionate about bringing new solutions to the market that help organizations and individuals solve the problems of inequality that exist in our society and in every business, organization, and institution around the world.

ABOUT TIDAL EQUALITY

We are a tech-enabled strategy firm solving the problem of inequality at scale. We empower people and organizations to build equality in radically new ways. Our innovations include the Equity Sequence™ a game-changing system individuals and organizations around the world can learn to reduce bias, discrimination, and inequality in decision-making and design; and our Wave™ method which is a democratic strategic design methodology we use to build equity, diversity, and inclusion strategies and equitable strategic plans in leading organizations and institutions around the world.

ANNA'S TOP 3 TIPS FOR ENTREPRENEURS

1. There is no substitute for working hard towards building clarity of focus (in terms of your vision, mission, values, and a limited number of strategic priorities) and building discipline in yourself and your business on executing on that focus.

2. If you want to build a uniquely valuable business, you must ensure you spend a large percentage of your time as an entrepreneur focused on discovering, rediscovering, and deeply learning about the people your business serves today and who it could serve tomorrow -- so that you can truly build products and services that are of enduring value in your market. Don't rely on assumptions (they are usually full of bias) when it comes to your market and the people you serve, instead ask open questions of a diverse set of current and potential customers. Do the hard work of uncovering what your current and/or potential clients struggle with, need, want, and hope for.

3. When all seems lost double down on executing on your business values and let your vision guide your path. In entrepreneurship hardships and bumps along the way are inevitable - when you cross a bump in the road go back to basics and remind yourself of what you set out to achieve, reconnect with your values, and test any next steps against those vision and value intentions that you set for your business. If your potential solutions to the challenge align with your vision and values then go forward with confidence, if alignment is less clear or lacking, give yourself permission to pause, regroup, and reconnect --- seek diverse perspectives from within your business, from beyond your business, from books and podcasts, and most importantly from the people you wish to serve -- and wait to move until you can see and be inspired by an aligned solution. Trust me it will be worth the wait. Making rapid decisions from a place of scarcity rarely leads you to a positive outcome in business.

CONNECT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Website | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn