About this event
LearningUnderstanding the system is one thing; building a business that survives it is another. This session is about practical resilience — reducing dependency on any single platform, building channels you actually own, and finding growth outside the algorithm. We'll cover creative export into the U.S. and U.K., wholesale and in-person markets as ballast against digital volatility, and the documentation habits that make the difference when something goes wrong. We'll also look at where Canadian policy on marketplace regulation is heading and how small sellers can get their experience into that conversation. Rough outline: - Auditing your dependency: where your revenue actually comes from, and what happens if one channel disappears - Owned channels — email, direct storefront, community — and what's realistic to build at small scale - Creative export: selling into the U.S. and U.K. as a small Canadian business - Markets, wholesale and offline revenue as deliberate strategy, not fallback - Documentation and escalation practices that hold up under pressure - Where Canadian marketplace policy is going, and how to be heard - Attendee-driven Q&A carried forward from Session One Who it's for: Anyone selling through Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, Square, Instagram or a marketplace they don't own. No technical background needed. About the facilitatorLaura Sultan is the founder and CEO of Designs by Nature Gems, a handcrafted gemstone jewellery studio she built from a market stall into a multi-brand business operating out of the Centre for Social Innovation on Spadina. The company sells across Amazon, Etsy and its own storefront in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., and employs artisan jewellers in Toronto at living wages with full benefits.