The punch everyone already asked for
CJ's Punch didn't start as a business. It started as the thing you brought. Rooted in a Kittitian and Jamaican family, it was the rum punch asked for by name before anyone took a plate of food.
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Owner · Perth, ON
We built the menu out of our neighbours. The beans, the bread, the brews are all local, and a lot of what comes in goes right back out into Perth.
Mobile barber · Milton, ON
Tristan Miller started cutting hair in his parents' garage at seventeen. A few years later he was cutting for the CFL, NFL and NBA.
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Building something, and young enough that people still call it a side project? Tell us what you are making. This seat is yours next.
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The punch everyone already asked for
CJ's Punch didn't start as a business. It started as the thing you brought. Rooted in a Kittitian and Jamaican family, it was the rum punch asked for by name before anyone took a plate of food.
Jazzy’s Brewhaus
We built the menu out of our neighbours. The beans, the bread, the brews are all local, and a lot of what comes in goes right back out into Perth.
The grant nobody tells you about
Plenty of small businesses hire the same way every summer: pay full wages, absorb the hit to margin from June through August, and hope the fall makes up for it. Canada Summer Jobs exists to change that math, and many owners only hear about it from a customer. Here is what the program covers, how the application works, and how to tell if you are leaving money on the table.
Cash flow is the thing that kills you, not profit
Most Canadian small businesses that fail were profitable on paper. The money just arrived later than the bills did. Here is the simplest 13-week cash view that gives you 90 days of warning before a gap opens. And what to do the moment you see one coming.
Your first hire costs more than their salary
Between CPP, CPP2, EI at 1.4× the employee rate, and the time you stop billing to manage someone, your first employee costs far more than the wage. Here is how to budget the real number before you post the job. So the hire grows you instead of sinking you.
The grants you can actually get vs. the ones you can’t
A huge share of program funding is for non-profits and charities, not businesses. Chasing the wrong ones wastes the one resource you can't get back: time. Here is how to tell, in two minutes, whether you can apply directly, need a partner, or should walk away.
Raising your prices is a sentence, not a strategy
Owners agonize over a price increase for months, then deliver it like an apology. The increase is almost never the problem. The delivery is. Here is the plain way to tell existing customers, what to expect, and why far fewer leave than you fear.
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If you have run a business for a few years, you know things that matter to every founder coming up behind you. Mentioned exists to make that knowledge visible.
We lightly edit for clarity and length. No commercial pitches, no thinly disguised marketing. Just the real version of what you would say to another founder over coffee.
How contribution works
- 01 Pitch us a topic from your dashboard
- 02 Write 600 to 2,000 words in plain language
- 03 We edit lightly and publish within a week
- 04 Your business is linked from the piece