PROFIT BusinessCast

Chris Hadfield wasn't just being cute when he decided on the title for his book An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. The Canadian astronaut has told thousands of space stories since returning from the International Space Station (ISS) last May. Telling stories about finding a live snake in the cockpit or being blind during a space walk or living at the bottom of the ocean is good, says Hadfield, "but what really matters is how is this relevant, how does this affect life on Earth."

Read: How Hadfield Got More Than 1 Million Twitter Followers

The life of an astronaut is extreme, but Hadfield believes his experiences have taught him worthwhile lessons that people can apply use in their everyday life. "What I tried to do…was to use the space stories in order to teach life lessons," he says.

So, what lessons can Earth-bound entrepreneurs learn from Hadfield's preparations for space missions?

When entering a new market, don't make ANY assumptions about it

"As an astronaut, if you assume something where you didn't have to, then you will die. You'll go down in flames," says Hadfield. "The way that we [astronauts] are successful in doing something that is life threatening and also unprecedented is to excruciatingly sweat the small stuff in advance."

Whether it's a business model or a rocket launch, Hadfield's approach is to sweat the small stuff. A lot. "Spend the time running simulations and visualizing failure over and over again until you've figured out all of the ways your plan can fail and what you would do under those circumstances in order to succeed," he says.

There is one caveat: don't let anyone else see you sweat. Run through your disaster scenarios in privacy, advises Hadfield. "That way, when you go into a meeting, you're calm and confident because you haven't waited until the actual problem arises before you've started sweating the small stuff."

Hire lucky people

Hadfield has done some hiring in is career. The easiest concrete factor to look at is education and proven track record—how they look on paper. And everyone knows you'll need to interview the candidate face-to-face to establish that they are who they seem to be on paper. Culture fit is another important consideration.

Read: Beware the Culture Vulture

But there's a more whimsical factor to consider, says Hadfield. "If they have a proven track record of being lucky, it's probably for a good reason, and it can supersede the other [factors]." Look for someone who has had good turns of fate, he suggests. "Things that have happened to them, seemingly through luck, are almost always an indicator of the right combination of raw talent and tenacity and skill."

What kind of business would Hadfield start and what does he see as the three biggest barriers to any startup? Find out by listening to this week's PROFIT BusinessCast.

"The lab is our kitchen," says John Garrad-Cole.

When he and his wife Leah had their first child, they weren't satisfied with the baby food that was available, so they got to work creating their own. Manufactured in Toronto, Lovechild Organics is one of many food products vying for the organic-lover's dollars. As a young company, there wasn't much of a marketing budget. That's partly why Gerrard-Cole applied for a spot on CBC's The Dragon's Den. In the episode, which aired this November, the co-founders asked for $300,000 in exchange for a 10% stake in their company. Dragons Arlene Dickinson and David Chilton ended up investing more than $300,000 in Lovechild Organics (and taking more than a 10% piece of the business).

Why does John Garrad-Cole think the Dragons bought into his idea?

For one thing, the organic food market is growing so steadily that there's even room for a healthy amount of competition. In the UK, organic baby food has actually overtaken conventional baby food, with more than 50% of the market. In the U.S., organic is still hovering around 20% but Gerrard-Cole says it's trending upward. "It's competitive, but I'd rather compete in a growing market," says Gerrard-Cole.

Gerrard-Cole also believes that his company's careful attention to package design gives it an edge over other organic baby foods.

Staffing the company with moms has been one of the company's smartest moves, says Gerrard-Cole. "There's a huge amount of talent in the pool of women who've had children and are looking to get back to work." And it doesn't hurt to have the influential "mummy blogger" contingent on your side, especially if you're looking to raise your social media profile.

Bitcoin was worth $10 per unit last summer. Since then, there's been extreme buzz around the digital currency, with many remaining uncertain it will ever gain legitimacy. This November, Bitcoin was trading at more than US$1,000 each.

The currency is generated by computers executing a series of algorithms known as "Bitcoin mining." Because of the way the algorithms are set up, the total number of Bitcoins that can ever exist in the world is limited to about 21 million.

The decentralized digital currency removes the need for any type of mediator in a transaction between two people. Anthony Di lorio, executive director of fledgling national association Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, says by eliminating the middleman, Bitcoin can save businesses from significant transaction fees.

Di lorio says freedom from fees is a big part of why Bitcoin will thrive. "Traditionally, [a company such as] PayPal or Visa facilitates transaction—and charges a high amount," says Di lorio. Bitcoin transactions are facilitated by "miners," a network of coders all around the world running open-source software. Instead of taking your your money in return for giving their computer power to the system, they're rewarded with 25 newly-created Bitcoins.

Bricks and mortar shops can even install a Bitcoin ATM, allowing customers to trade in traditional currency for Bitcoin. Di lorio suggests that the lower or non-existant transaction fee allows business owners to offer a discount to customers who pay with Bitcoin.

It's not exactly a mainstream approach. The world's first Bitcoin ATM just opened this October in Vancouver. But Di lorio is convinced that this is "the most important invention since the Internet." It's why he started the Bitcoin Alliance this April. The association is lobbying governments and regulatory bodies to start accepting Bitcoin. This week, it will begin offering free and paid memberships. It's also planning an expo next April in Toronto.

If you're wondering how exactly Bitcoin works and how business might use it in the future, listen to this week's episode of the PROFIT BusinessCast, in which De lorio explains in detail why he thinks this is the currency of the future, how take advantage of the opportunities Bitcoin has created for businesses, and how avoid the risks.

While some businesses are beginning to use 3D printers to customize and diversify their services, the technology is still a novelty. Think: the iPad or iPhone before (seemingly) everyone had one. But Makelab founder Jonathan Moneta is pinning his venture's success on the technology's potential. Makelab is a 3D printing events company, which means Moneta brings his fleet of printers to events and lets attendees design their own gizmos, then watch as their designs take on three dimensions.

People are fascinated by the process, says Moneta, and love watching the printers in action.

While 3D printing is by no means a new technology, it only recently became an affordable tool for the individual or small business. Since Makebot started manufacturing 3D printers a few years ago, this technology has become available to anyone for around $2,000 (even less if you opt to build your own from a kit).

And why would anyone want a $2,000 printer? "It's been used in commercial applications for decades for one reason: it makes it very cheap to produce one of anything," explains Moneta. That makes it a very appealing option for entrepreneurs and innovators looking to print prototypes of their latest product. "It's expensive to produce anything, especially out of plastic," says Moneta. "You have to invest in special moulds, set up the machinery." Building a prototype can run an entrepreneur from $10,000 to $20,000 using traditional means. So, you can see why access to a 3D printer is an appealing proposition for an invention-minded entrepreneur.

That's why Moneta is considering setting up in a permanent makerspace.

Read: Makerspaces: The Future of Innovation

In a makerspace, Moneta would cater more to entrepreneurs and innovators than to everyday people looking to bring their designs to life for kicks. While the average consumer may soon come to dismiss 3D printing as a novelty, Moneta believes this technology will play an increasingly important role in how businesses develop and bring a product to bring to market.

Barnard Crespi has more jobs than most. His day job as president and CEO of Datatel Communications Inc. is just the tip of the iceberg. Crespi is also chair of marketing at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, advisor to multiple startups and manager of a growing online community for marketing execs. The Marketing Executives Group started as one of countless groups of its kind on LinkedIn. Crespi has grown it into a community of more than 50,000 marketing executives around the globe.

A friend of Crespi's from Venezuela (he emigrated to Toronto from Venezuela 25 years ago) started the LinkedIn group in 2007. When Crespi found himself running an R&D project related to marketing automation, he asked his friend if he could use the group to test his marketing automation engine. "He said, ‘Bernard, you can have the group; I have no time to take care of it,'" recalls Crespi.

"Initially, it was a pure research experiment," says Crespi. "But once I started collecting and observing the interactions between members, my mission became clear: develop a community [for marketing executives] with resources and engagement opportunities."

Crespi built up the Marketing Executives Group from 400 to over 50,000 members, the majority of whom participate in idea generation to help each other drive results.

How did he create such an engaged, growing community? Crespi identifies three actions that had greatest impact on the group's growth:

1. Understanding the evolving needs of its members. "I needed to understand what specifically would keep them engaged and what would get others to participate," explains Crespi.

2. Establishing a structure for the group, including guidelines which maintain the integrity of the community. "That has been one of the top reasons for the success and the growth," says Crespi.

3. Giving members a sense of ownership over the content. Crespi says establishing guidelines and order, then allowing members to post content within those parameters, has helped create that sense of ownership. Today, hundreds of participants are contributing content. Once group members felt that sense of ownership, they were much more engaged and sent out more invitations soliciting peers to join the community. And the numbers grew exponentially.

The group became so popular that it evolved into an independent website where members can publish content, provided they stick to the site's editorial guidelines.

Paul Chato, CEO at Your Web Department, thinks he may have the next generation of John Cleese business training videos on his hands. Cleese, best known for his role in Monty Python, produced a series of educational videos in 2012 (among them, Meetings Bloody Meetings). Now, Chato is producing a comedic web series for entrepreneurs he says is the first of its kind. The GUNI Show (Global Universal Netwrokers International) is a show for the LinkedIn generation, says Chato. "It's for the people who have lost their jobs and are trying to create a new experience. It's for the small business owner who knows how difficult it is to make payroll and manage the business."

How will he fund the first nine episodes of the online show? Online, of course. Chato launched a Kickstarter campaign just over a week ago. So far, he's raised $13,000 of his $50,000 goal. Perks for those willing to support the project range from being among the first to see the GUNI episodes ($10) to being an extra on the show ($1,000).

Why would someone like Chato, already a brand name in the Canadian entertainment scene, choose a fundraising model popular mostly with penniless startups? "I was really intrigued to learn what Kickstarter is all about," he explains. "I think the future [of television] is crowdsourced funding—YouTube and Netflix are going to be taking away a lot the cable networks' power; we have a whole new world and I wanted to be an expert in it."

Plus, if you're successful in Kickstarter, then you've got a built-in audience, says Chato.

But if you're not successful, you may have irrevocably tainted your project for other funding. "That's entirely true," concedes Chato. "Also, the big stories on Kickstarter are few and far between." There's also the question of whether you taint the project just by going on a crowdfunded venue. "Does it make you look lowgrade compared to getting your money from the network?" muses Chato. "There are all sorts of pros and cons."

Bill Sweetman is president and lead ninja at domain consultancy Name Ninja. If you can forgive him the "ninja" title, he's got some important information about upcoming changes to how the Internet is organized.

"I registered my first domain name in 1994 and sold it for $10,000," recalls Sweetman. Since then, the business or buying and selling domain names (the part that comes before a .com or .ca extension) has remained more or less the same. "Now, things are changing in a big way," says Sweetman. "It's the biggest change to happen in the Internet name space in the history of the internet."

The change has to do with top-level domains (tlds)—the extension that specifies website type and location, like .com or .org. There are currently only a handful from which to choose. But a massive expansion will see 1400 possible tlds becoming available over the next year. Name a keyword and it will most likely be available in a few months, from .baby to .music. to .cats.

"It's going to create a lot of opportunity—and a lot of confusion," says Sweetman.

The first batch of new extensions have already been added to the route, though they're not yet available for purchase one yet. Sweetman says it will be at least a few more months before businesses, bloggers and anyone else with a personal website can start personalizing their URLs.

This expansion is both good and bad news.

The bad news: North Americans are conditioned to going to something.com or something.ca. "All of a sudden, we're going to start to see marketing campaigns driving people to go to something.apple or something.pizza," explains Sweetman. "This is going to require quite a mindshift for some people, and it's certainly going to cause some confusion."

The good news: For certain businesses, this is a giant opportunity to capture more web traffic in a specific vertical. "Think about the keyword value of these new extensions," says Sweetman. "If, from an SEO perspective, the word ‘art' is important to you, you could be specific pages like find.art, Canadian.art or antique.art." Sweetman advises SMEs to start thinking about whether there particular niches that they really want to showcase themselves around. "If you look at that list of 1400, you'll see some synchronicity there with what you're trying to accomplish strategically," he explains. "For example, it's important to position myself around .quebec because I'm serving that province."

How much would .quebec cost you? It depends on how serious you are about shutting out the competition. The initial application fee for a company that wanted to be the proprietor or manager of that extension is $185,000. However, if you're happy to be one of many with the same extension, you can buy these an extension from its proprietor for as little as a few dollars. The process is identical to purchasing a domain name. When it comes time for these extensions to be released, you can go to any domain name registrar and reserve the one you want. The Domain Name Association has launched an information site about this to learn more about these new extensions with more helpful tips and a good overview of how this will all work.

If you're wondering whether or not to bother will this, Sweetman says it depends on how important you feel it is to brand yourself as the place to go for .music or .pizza. "Using the example of Italian art, ask yourself how much business you would lose if your competitor got Italian.art," he says. "What's that worth to you? You're the only one who can say."

What is LinkedIn? According to Brian Church, it's one of your most powerful networking tools and a valuable resource for information, as well as an opportunity to brand yourself and your company.

"People still think of LinkedIn as your resume on the internet," says Church, who is country manager for Canada at the social media site. "They don't understand how powerful the site can be."

In this week's episode of the PROFIT BusinessCast, Church explains the ways in which LinkedIn wants to be powerful:

Recruiting. Church says only a small percentage of users are actually doing this.

Branding. Profiles become your individual brand; business pages and groups your corporate brand. This is not your resume, says Church. "Think about how do you want to promote yourself in the marketplace. Make your profile more robust—write it like a story." He suggests taking advantage of the site's rich media options and posting video to your profile.

Social selling. Church explains that once you have a strong brand, you can use it to schmooze the right people, either as a potential partner or client. "One of our goals is to eliminate the cold call—nobody wants to be cold called," says Church.

What are Church's goals for SMEs in Canada?

Focus on talent. "It can't be underestimated how transformative getting the right people in place can be for an organization of any size," he insists.

Establish culture from the beginning. "It's something people are exposed to right from the beginning at LinkedIn, starting with the interview process," says Church.

Transform our country with innovation. "I'd love to see us really become the country the world looks to for innovation in different categories."

The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCAC) is only a year old—but it's been quite a year for crowdfunding in Canada. Murray McKercher, a board advisor for the young association, says the fundraising model has blossomed in Canada over the last 12 months, with major sites Indiegogo and Kickstarter targeting Canadian entrepreneurs.

While many have pointed to the spinoff benefits of a crowdfunding campaign—free R&D, for one thing— McKercher says the model really isn't about crowdsourcing. Put simply: it's about getting some initial capital into an entrepreneurial startup. "I do a lot of advising for startups through [various] accelerators, and getting that first $50,000 is really difficult," says McKercher. "Crowdfunding is a vehicle to allow those young entrepreneurs to get some capital into their company."

Right now, the model is limited to perks and rewards for investors—it's not possible for Canadian investors to buy common stock or shares or make an actual equity investment in a crowdfunded initiative. But McKercher says the model has had great success in the UK and elsewhere, and believes it's gaining momentum in Canada. The NCAC is working with bodies like the Ontario Securities Commission to create a an equity crowdfunding model that protects both the entrepreneur and the investor. If equity crowdfunding becomes a reality, it would bring the model to the next level, putting it on par with other viable options such as the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Read: OSC Considers Changes to Exempt Market Regulatory Regime

The NCAC is also conducting research, including a national survey for which it's seeking input. It has also compiled a directory of crowdfunding portals for Canada. There are over 65 to choose from in Canada, which may surprise those who are mostly familiar with big players such as Indiegogo. "It's important to match the portal with your particular strategy and offering," says McKercher.

Is this model over-hyped? Will it become a significant tool in the startup's fundraising kit?

Just a few days after BlackBerry announced that thousands of its staff would lose their jobs, Google's Motorola announced that it would be establishing a new engineering hub in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

On this week's PROFIT BusinessCast, Derek Phillips, engineering director of Motorola Mobility Canada, explains that the plan isn't to prey on BlackBerry's leftovers; it's to take advantage of all that the region has to offer as a tech hub—one that includes BlackBerry. "It's good for Kitchener-Waterloo for all the companies [in the area] to be doing well," he says. "It's important that we have a strong tech community."

The engineering hub is part of Motorola's increased focus on R&D. "Where Motorola as a company has been successful before is innovating in the hardware space," says Phillips. "Where [Motorola] will be successful in long term is developing the software that makes our innovative hardware shine."

When Google acquired Motorola Mobility in August, it released a statement asserting: "Google is great at software; Motorola Mobility is great at devices. The combination of the two makes sense and will enable faster innovation."

So far, the tech community sees Motorola mostly as a liability to Google. Phillips is confident that the big ideas (and results) from Motorola are still to come, and that they'll come out of this new engineering hub.

How will the tech coming out of Motorola's new engineering hub be different from a Google Android product? What are the firms' key measurements for success? And what does it all mean for the tech community in Canada?