Grow your Ontario business on a plan you can check every month

What growth usually looks like for an Ontario SMB

For most established firms, growth comes from three places: more of your best customers, a higher value per customer, and keeping the ones you have. New products and new cities come later, and only when the first three are working.

A quick way to see where you stand: take last year's revenue and split it by customer type or service. In most owner-run businesses we look at, one or two lines carry most of the profit while several others quietly lose money once the owner's time is counted. The first job is to make that visible.

Here is a worked example you can redo with your own numbers:

Service A earns about $254,000 in gross margin on 30 hours of your month. The small jobs earn about $10,800 on 40 hours. Shifting even a third of those small-job hours into selling more of service A is usually worth more than any new campaign. That's the kind of trade-off a growth diagnosis puts on paper.

How we help

We do three things: diagnose, plan and execute, in that order. You can stop after any step.

• Diagnosis and plan. We study your numbers, customers and market, then write a 12-month plan with a small number of measurable targets. See growth diagnosis and planning.
• Local marketing. Ontario buyers search town by town. We help you show up in the places you can serve well, through Google Business Profile, local pages and reviews. See local search and marketing.
• Website and conversion. If people visit but don't call, the fix is often on the page, not in the ad budget. Ali founded Conv.ca, a conversion-rate optimisation agency, and that method runs through our website and conversion work.
• Expansion and ongoing advice. When the home market is working, we help you test a second Ontario market and can stay on as your monthly growth advisor.

The full menu, with guidance on which to start with, is on the services page.

Ontario is several markets, not one

A plan that works in Mississauga can fail in Midland, so we plan by region. The GTA, Ottawa, Hamilton–Niagara, Waterloo Region and Guelph, and Barrie with Simcoe County each have their own buyers, seasons and competitors.

Housing alone tells you a lot. In the 2021 Census, single-detached houses made up under a quarter of Toronto's occupied dwellings but more than half of Brampton's, and about two-thirds across Niagara Region. A home-services company, a furniture retailer or a renovation firm would sell very differently in each. Our areas page walks through every region we plan for, with links to the detail for the GTA, Ottawa and the others.

What we've learned from our HVAC work

Our deepest track record is in home services, and the method transfers. These are results from our HVAC work, not from other sectors, and we show them because the mechanics of local demand, follow-up and reviews are the same for most Ontario service businesses.

• Roma Heating & Cooling grew organic traffic 400% in 12 months.
• BCWide.ca tripled its leads in 90 days.
• HVACDeal.ca produced 500+ leads at a 12:1 ROI.

What each one teaches, and what doesn't carry over, is on the results page.

Who you'll work with

You work directly with Ali Sedighi, MBA in Technology Management, who has 17+ years in digital marketing and growth. He founded ONE.ir, a full-service digital marketing agency, in 2007, later founded Conv.ca and MyAutomation.ca, and is Founder and Managing Partner of SAZ.ca. He has built 150+ live HVAC websites and advised clients in Canada, the USA and Dubai. More on the about page.

The wider group includes Sedighi.ca, Ali's growth, marketing and technology consulting company, and BusinessConsulting.ca. If you're still at the naming-and-registering stage rather than growing an existing firm, our sister site Ontario.company is the better starting point.

What it costs and how to start

Consulting starts at $175 an hour, projects at $3,500 and retainers at $2,500 a month, all in Canadian dollars. The first 30-minute conversation is free. The pricing page explains what drives the cost and how to choose.

To start, call, text or email with three things: what the business does, roughly where revenue sits, and the one result you'd most like a year from now. Our contact page has a simple template, and the FAQ covers contracts, ownership and reporting.