Entrepreneur Jordan McTaggart has found a way to have the best of both worlds: a thriving online business and enough time to pursue other life and career goals.
For many business owners, “work-life balance” is an illusive concept, but McTaggart told YYC Business that he achieved it with the support of community and some powerful web tools.
McTaggart, 28, is the founder of clothing business Your North Apparel, and is part of one of the fastest-growing segments of the Canadian business landscape: : online entrepreneurs between the ages of 25 and 45. Many of them are multi-hyphenate side-hustlers aiming to make money in the dot-com space and still have time for passion projects and personal lives.
For McTaggart, the ease and convenience of the web tools offered by GoDaddy – the world’s largest domain registrar for entrepreneurs with more than 20 million customers worldwide – made that balance possible.
“The best thing with GoDaddy is that I can do it from anywhere,” he said, noting the company’s range of services from web hosting to marketing tools, including search engine optimization. “It’s given me the flexibility for more personal time [while still making] money.”
And Your North Apparel is making lots of it: In 2021, McTaggart continued to grow his revenue year over and continues to grow organically, eyeing new markets beyond Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, after just six years.
In 2016, inspired by his hometown of Grande Prairie in the beautifully rugged Peace River Country of northwest Alberta, he launched Your North Apparel with the idea of selling branded leisurewear to outdoor-loving communities. His instincts and proximity to other passionate sports enthusiasts and outdoorsy types convinced him there would be an appetite for his clothing and apparel.
“We didn’t have a whole lot of direction at first, but it escalated quickly, and it grew,” he said. “How much support we [received] really helped us.”
In the early days, the bulk of the support came from the people in his community, which he discovered through the company’s Facebook and Instagram feeds of locals wearing his products while camping or hiking. Initially, McTaggart relied on social media to get the word out about his T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps and joggers. He also put in the time to sell his clothing at local hockey tournaments, local farmers’ markets and pop-up shops. From the outset, McTaggart knew he wanted a business that afforded him more balance, as difficult as that can be as an entrepreneur. As a student, he needed to pursue his studies and work part-time, but still have a steady and hopefully growing stream of income.
But he couldn’t achieve that balance if he couldn’t meet demand, and in the early days the appetite for Your North Apparel was stronger than anticipated. “We realized, wow, there is a [growing] demand for our product,” he recalled. “It was [really] eye-opening.”
Since 82 per cent of Canadians now shop online for everything from clothing to furniture and groceries, McTaggart knew he needed a website to bolster sales and support his work-life balance ambitions. Admittedly “not a tech-savvy person,” he researched a few web-hosting companies, but many lacked the straightforward yet powerful toolkit he found with GoDaddy, a service he was familiar with only through the brand’s popular TV spots. He learned that the company offered entrepreneurs a suite of affordable solutions, including customizable webpage designs that were easy to use, and easy ways to communicate with new and existing customers.
From the moment he called for his free consultation to learn about subscription rates, McTaggart was instantly impressed with the speed of the one-on-one service with a real GoDaddy Guide. “When you call other help lines, more often than not, you’re waiting for a long time and not getting what you need,” he said. “But GoDaddy had a solution every single time we called.”
When it came to building the website, McTaggart felt like he had a personal tech champion helping him every step of the way. Within an hour, YourNorthApparel.ca was up and running, “pictures and all,” he recalled.
Today, he’s more tech-savvy than ever with the intuitive, foolproof site, and can make modifications with ease, adding or deleting items, promoting discounts, and reorganizing pages whenever from wherever. He even started using GoDaddy’s newsletter feature, which he says led to a “huge jump in sales.”
Plus, with the extra time these user-friendly services have given him, McTaggart has been able to tap into GoDaddy’s career-development and web-skill offerings, including conferences with experts on topics from site maintenance and security to optimizing online relationships with customers.
Best of all, he still has time to pursue his studies in physiotherapy beginning next month. Even with a busy class schedule, McTaggart can easily manage the Your North Apparel website as needed, while prioritizing his education and career development
“As an entrepreneur, it’s important that I’m always trying to better myself and carve out the time for that,” he said, “so both my business and I see good returns.”
