Colleen Walker has come a long way since working out of her bachelor apartment on Avenue Road in downtown Toronto. Her company, Catered Affare Cuisine and Event Design has grown into one of the largest and most successful of its kind in the competitive Toronto market.
But ask her to measure her successes in business after 19 years, and she doesn't point to accomplishments such as being a four-time winner of best catered event in Canada or a winner of best wedding in Canada (2004).
Ms. Walker puts being a consistent presence in the lives of her two teenage daughters on top of the list.
"Sure, it's hard [running a business], we don't like to admit that we like to have control, but that's a major part of entrepreneurship, to have control over your time and your allocation of work-life balance," explains Ms. Walker, president, CEO and co-founder of Catered Affare. "I'm in a particularly hour intensive company, but I still manage to take eight weeks holidays a year and never miss anything at school with my teenage daughters.
Colleen Walker, president and CEO of Catered Affare Cuisine and Event Design
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"That's invaluable to me," she adds.
A recent survey by RBC found that Ms. Walker's position is not uncommon among Canadian female entrepreneurs. According to the Ipsos-Reid poll, a majority of Canada's current and aspiring women entrepreneurs are driven to own their own businesses in order to have more control over personal priorities rather than simply accrue money.
According to the survey, 36 per cent of men planning to open a business do so to become wealthy, while only 23 per cent of women do so for the same reason. Access to a more flexible working schedule is a greater motivator for women entrepreneurs (63 per cent) than men (51 per cent), the survey found.
Certainly Ms. Walker agrees with the survey's findings. Women in business, she says, work in order to be more accessible to their families.
Ms. Walker started her business 19 years ago out of her bachelor apartment. She later met her husband Robert Hudyma at George Brown College's Culinary Management Program. Together, they founded their first business a few years later at the site of their current business (813 O'Connor Drive, in Toronto).
Mr. Hudyma recently left the business to pursue a career in stone sculpture, leaving the sole job of running Catered Affare in Ms. Walker's hands. But having Mr. Hudyma with her while her children were young, allowed the couple to effectively balance the work-life demands of a growing family.
"Women shouldn't underestimate the responsibility of being a mother, it sways greatly to the mothers, and that certainly was the case for me. Having a husband who worked in the same business made it very understanding and comfortable for us to schedule our time, knowing what our responsibilities were to our family and our clients," she said.
As a member of the Women's Presidents Organization, a U.S. based organizations for women who lead businesses of a certain size, Ms. Walker hears female business owners talk about this topic all the time.
"It's control of your time, and control of your income. The more you work, the more money you make," she said. "The better you balance your time, the better family and work life you have. It gives you a lot of options."
According to the survey, women are less likely than men (51 per cent versus 59 per cent) to start a business because they want to be their own boss. Additionally, women are more likely to employ a spouse (43 versus 37 per cent) or a child (16 versus 10 per cent) and to be first-time business owners (73 per cent versus 65 per cent).
Ms. Walker has mentored in the Women Entrepreneurs Step Ahead Program for three straight years, helping women entrepreneurs to grow their companies. She served on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association of Women Executives and Entrepreneurs, been an active member of the Women Entrepreneurs of Canada, and has served as an Honorary Business Ambassador for the Province of Ontario.
There has been more of a focus on work-life balance issues as more and more women decide to run their own businesses. Since 1981, RBC says that the number of Canadian women who run their own business has grown my more than 200 per cent.
"Women are choosing to become entrepreneurs in increasing numbers in all major industries and are responsible for starting the majority of all new businesses in Canada," added Kris Depencier, RBC Royal Bank's national manager, Small Business. In fact, firms run by women collectively contribute about $18-billion to the Canadian economy."
The Ipsos-Reid/RBC Royal Bank poll was conducted between Aug. 12-16, 2005. For the survey, invitations were sent to a representative sample of Canadian adults 18 years of age or older, resulting in 2,380 completed on-line interviews among entrepreneurs and 1,661 completed on-line interviews among aspiring entrepreneurs. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within plus or minus 2.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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