Yes, I can, and I'd like to tell a story.
I don't know how many of you watch CBC. It's Black History Month, and there is a docuseries on a lady named Beverly Mascoll. I don't know if anybody has seen that.
She was an entrepreneur in the 1970s who came to Toronto from Nova Scotia and in 1973 opened the first Black-owned beauty supply store out of Toronto. She was named to the Order of Canada in the early 1990s and died abruptly at 59 years of age of breast cancer. It was sudden and quick. There was no succession plan and there was no legacy—I mean, there was a legacy, but it was one of triumph and tragedy.
In 1973, 51 years ago, she couldn't get loans at the bank, so she started selling out of her car. She couldn't get staff to work with her because, of course, of racism and discrimination, so she started with family. You know what happens sometimes when you bring family into the room and into a business: Sometimes it's great and sometimes it's not. Scaling up the business, she didn't have support to do so.
It becomes very difficult at different junctures. If you don't get funding, or maybe you do get funding, you lack knowledge, and if you lack knowledge, you lack the application of knowledge. When you do have that knowledge and you want to apply the knowledge, sometimes the wisdom is not there. Sometimes the support is not there. We were talking about sharing, but sometimes those stories are not there, so you cannot leverage best practices from other people.
In my case, I'm thankful for backups. I'm thankful to have a community of people who support me, but not everyone is as outgoing and as outspoken as I am.
How do we reach those people who can't come out and ask for help? It's not by posting things on a website. You have to think about that.