The Fedtrade® Podcast recently interviewed Jon Worren, VP Strategy & Enablement at the Toronto Region Board of Trade. As the Chamber of Commerce for Canada’s largest regional economy, the Toronto Region Board of Trade aims to make Toronto one of the most competitive and sought-after business regions in the world.

Learn more about the Toronto Region Board of Trade on their website bot.com or follow them on LinkedIn. Connect with Jon on LinkedIn.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Toronto Region Board of Trade serves a diverse range of companies from startups to multinationals.
  • The Trade Accelerator Program is recommended for companies looking to expand internationally.
  • Legal considerations are essential when entering new markets.

[a copy of the written transcript is here]:

Hello, welcome to the Fedtrade® Podcast. I’m James Hastings of Rothwell Figg. Joining us on the podcast today is Jon Worren, Vice President of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce for Canada’s Largest Regional Economy. In today’s podcast, Jon will share the mission and benefits of being a member of the Board of Trade, as well as programs available for growth companies looking to go to market in the United States. Jon, welcome to Fedtrade®.

Thank you for having me, James.

Jon, can you briefly describe what the Toronto Region Board of Trade is and what is their mission?

For sure. The Toronto Regional Board of Trade, we’re a chamber of commerce for essentially what is Canada’s largest regional economy. And we’re an old and venerable institution. We’ve been around for 179 years. And our job is essentially to convene leaders and champion business for the region and try to drive and help economic growth on behalf of all of our members.

What types of entities does the Board of Trade serve in terms of location or size or sector?

Well, it’s quite diverse, actually. I mean, it’s a reflection of the businesses that are located in the Greater Toronto area. Toronto has grown quite significantly so we changed our brand from the Toronto Board of Trade to the Toronto Region Board of Trade, reflecting the growth of the region. And we have companies that range in size from startups to large multinational corporations. Finance is a big industry in Toronto, Toronto being the third or the fourth biggest financial hub in North America. Technology as well, life sciences, manufacturing, retail, and a lot of other things in between.

In reviewing the Board of Trade’s mission and your website, there are plenty of programs available for Canadian companies looking to do business in the United States.

That is correct. Yes. So I actually lead something called the World Trade Center Toronto. We’re the part of the Toronto Region Board of Trade that deals with non-policy related programs and issues. And so they include things like our Trade Accelerator Program (TAP), which is a comprehensive seven week cohort based experiential go-to-market program with very specialized content contributions from a network of experts and mentoring to help companies craft a strategy for how to enter any market, not just the U.S. But if you’re a Canadian company, the gut reflex is for about 85% of them to think of U.S. first as the natural market to expand into. So it’s natural that that’s our main focus as well. But in addition to TAP, we provide a series of practical one-day courses that build on and kind of augment the content that we deliver through our Trade Accelerator Program. And it’s where participants can get a deep dive in topics like e-commerce, sales and marketing, tax, capital, and these are known as our executive certificate programs. And then we have a series called the Global Growth Program, which is more of an introductory program tackling a single topic either through webinar or panel of experts. So we probably do north of 40 programs a year and help hundreds of companies across mostly I would say Ontario, not just in the Toronto region. We tend to partner with our chamber and chambers across the province to help serve their members as well. We have a bit of reach in terms of what we do.

Sounds like education and training is a large component of your mission.

It is, and it’s a bit ironic, because in Canada, we kind of pride ourselves on being very multicultural. So you think that international expansion would come very naturally, but in reality, it is something that has to be thought of and has to be thought of very carefully. And we kind of see now that the companies that actually go through a program have a much more sophisticated take on how to go about expanding internationally. And many of them actually don’t end up choosing U.S. as their first market, which is sort of an interesting thing now, when at this day and age when we’re considering trade and trade barriers and tariffs and all that’s on the agenda. The education part is a key thing for us to help bring that capability to companies.

The Trade Accelerator Program sounds very interesting. Seven weeks with training. Is that once a week?

Yeah, so it’s sort of a hybrid program. We kick it off with a one-day in-person and then we have a series of webinars for the next four or five weeks before we finish off week seven with an in-person sort of wrap-up session as well.

What type of subject matter is covered in the Trade Accelerator Program?

It’s a variety of things. So the three things that we try to do in the Trade Accelerator Program is first and foremost, sort of to talk about the topics that are relevant for trade, whether it’s making sure that you understand the value proposition you have for the respective market, that you have a business model that makes sense, that you understand what it means to, in terms of regulatory requirements to enter a new market, all the way to how do you deal with shipping stuff across borders, which sometimes can be a difficult and complex thing. And if you haven’t done it before, there’s a big learning curve there. But we also try in addition to get people up to speed on content and crafting, help them craft their own strategy as part of going through the course. We want to make sure that we also build the network between the companies themselves because there’s a lot of learning. Some of them have already done something. When you have a group of entrepreneurs the sharing of experience is so valuable for them. And on top of that, we have a network of experts that we bring in to help tell the story about this. And these are service providers, people whose business it is to help guide and mentor companies on services and products and best practices in the field of international marketing. And so we pull those in and the graduates essentially have a network to draw on at the time when they are finished. Because this is a long process. It’s a strategic decision for a business to set up in a different market. So it’s a lot of work and they’re going to need that network to help facilitate that journey.

Does the Trade Accelerator Program utilize legal experts in helping to navigate the issues of going to market in the United States and internationally?

Yeah, legal is a big part of the equation here. You’re getting into so many different legal questions once you enter a new market, whether it’s a different sort of corporate legal framework that you have to think about, whether it’s hiring people that are abroad and being subject to different labor regulations. Whether it’s protecting intellectual property, whether it’s compliance with regulations in local markets. So there’s so many different areas where you touch on legal questions. Absolutely it’s essential for us to bring in legal experts to connect our companies with.

You had mentioned intellectual property as being important as part of the process of entering into international markets. What is your experience in terms of your company clients or members with some of the challenges they face doing that?

Well, it really depends on what industry that they come from. So I find that if you’re in the tech industry, you have some sense of the importance of intellectual property, but you still have to sort of make them aware of the importance of doing things like freedom to operate, to make sure that you’re not at risk of being litigated the minute you set foot in a different jurisdiction. So it’s not necessarily only about protecting yourself in terms of your own intellectual property, but it’s also making sure you’re not infringing on other people’s rights in that sense. But if you’re from what I would call more mainstream industries, and recently actually it’s been a massive growth for us in terms of people that are in the services business expanding internationally, I suppose it has something to do with the pandemic essentially making virtual business or hybrid business delivery much more acceptable to people that suddenly they see the world as their market. And for those industries, intellectual property has never been discussed. So there’s much less awareness in those industries about the need to look at things like trademarks and other ways of protecting what they do. And even if they don’t have products, they may have a way of doing something that they consider unique, then they need to think about how they are protecting that one way the other.

It’s interesting you mentioned freedom to operate in intellectual property context, which is really a defensive clearance mechanism to ensure that you are allowed to operate in that particular market or at least mitigate your risks.

Absolutely.  It’s a form of insurance. So you don’t want to risk being litigated by people that already are ahead of you in terms of protecting their intellectual property. So you want to make sure that you’re on a safe ground there.

With regard to your global growth program which are the deep dives, are there particular subjects of interest that seem to have more popularity than others?

Recently, we have actually had a lot of focus on opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region. Partly because the region is growing quickly, but partly also because trade with China is getting a bit more complicated. So you have to think about, where else can we operate, where else are the opportunities, and how can we educate ourselves in that region? There’s been a lot of focus on that, but we just also this past year did a session on life sciences and bringing life sciences technology to the U.S. market. So we tend to cover specific questions. We’re a little bit sort of less curriculum or program driven when it comes to global growth and more sort of thinking about what are our participants really want to talk about. And we can really spin up a panel or a discussion on that quite quickly. So we tend to be a bit more responsive when it comes to a global course program.

What type of networking opportunities are available to your members?

The Board of Trade is and has been always a place to meet. It’s a place that I would say specializes in convening and bringing different type of business stakeholders together. We do have a beautiful event space, both with gala space and we have conference rooms and stuff like that. All state of the art. We just moved in in 2022. So it’s brand new. And we’re finding that the space is being utilized quite a lot for people to come and meet and to get access to people and stakeholders that are important for their business, whether it’s potential customers. It could be government relations. It could be peers that they want to hobnob with and share experiences.  So it’s something that we really try to facilitate and quite actively. So we’re a very active events organization.

We had the pleasure of meeting a couple of your colleagues at the SelectUSA Canada Summit that was held in Toronto recently. Can you tell us a little about that experience?

SelectUSA is a great event for the companies that we work with that are small medium sized businesses and sort of either have just started to export and grow in the States or they’re thinking about it. So we’re really encouraging all of our alumni to attend and really engage with a network of presenters and service providers that are there. And look, if they’re serious about the U.S. market, it is definitely the most efficient way of building some key relationships that can help smooth the process for them. It’s one of the first events that go on my calendar as, we gotta know when this is so we can make sure that we can keep our network organized and that we can be a part of it ourselves as well.

How can a company get started in joining the Board of Trade?

It’s actually quite easy.  As a chamber of commerce, we’re fairly accessible. We’re easy to engage with. You just go to our website and check out our offerings. There’s so many different events. You can come and try them out and see if this is your flavor. So you don’t even have to be a member to do that. If you want deeper involvement, membership is an option.  For instance, all of the trade related programs that we have do not require any kind of formal membership at all. And also what I would say is that, you know, the board at the moment is a highly innovative and entrepreneurial organization. We’re about to launch our own podcast soon. As well as a number of exciting new initiatives that we will roll out over the year. So the best advice I have is for anyone interested to sign up for one or two of our newsletters to stay in the know and just see if there’s something that comes up that is of interest.

That sounds great. Can you share with us the website of the Toronto Board of Trade?

Yes, we have a very interesting URL, actually. It’s www.bot.com.

Well done.

Thank you.

Jon Worren, Vice President of the Toronto Region Board of Trade. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thanks for joining the program.

Thanks for hosting, James. It’s been a pleasure.

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