Growclass is a company designed for women and minority business owners to come for support and build skills to grow their small businesses in Canada. Founder Sarah Stockdale wanted to create something that would give people the most up-to-date skills and opportunities. We connected with her to learn more.
What is your business called and what does it do?
Growclass is an award-winning course and community specializing in Growth Marketing, equipping Founders and marketers with the technical skills, professional network, and support needed to grow businesses.
What made you want to do this work?
I built Growclass because I couldn’t find a space for women and underrepresented people to learn non-fluffy growth marketing skills. All of the offerings in the market weren’t specific to growth, had a lot of jargon and arrogance, or had really outdated digital marketing content. With years of experience in building growth teams and advising companies, I recognized the challenge in sourcing and training new talent. I wanted to build a place where women and underrepresented people could acquire tangible skills, build a real professional network, and accelerate their careers in a space that feels supportive and never intimidating.
What problem did you want to solve with the business?
Tech suffers from a dire inclusion problem. Only 17% of Canadian small and medium-sized businesses are owned by women, and only 2% of VC funding goes to women. The current gender breakdown in high-paying growth marketing roles is also dismal, with 73% of high-paying growth roles going to men.
I wanted to create something to help women and equity-deserving people build technical skills, yes, but also build a real professional network and have a safe place to go for support.
So many of us don’t have well-connected families, generational wealth, or business degrees. We need to learn on the fly, and we deserve the same access to mentorship, education, connections, and capital.
It’s why we built Growclass.
Who are your clientele/demographics?
We work primarily with women and equity-deserving folks who are in marketing roles and want to break into a higher-paying role. We also train a lot of Founders who need to learn how to grow their businesses, find great marketing talent, and connect to a professional network.
How does your business make money? How does it work?
We offer a six-week Growth Marketing certification that folks pay $2000 USD to join. We’re working with Upskill Canada on a 10 million dollar project with The Canadian Marketing Association, and Jelly Academy and the Canadian Federal Government to train 1200 equity-deserving Canadians.
Where in the city can we find your profession?
The term Growth Marketing was coined in San Francisco, but Growth Manager is the fastest-growing job title in Canada. We’re all over the world!
What is the best question a prospective customer could ask a member of your profession when comparing services? Give the answer as well.
There are so many marketing courses, what makes Growclass any different? There are a lot of courses online, but most of them focus on older marketing skill sets. I’ll be honest, most marketing courses are needlessly broad. They give you high-level information without really explaining how to do anything in practice, so you feel like you’re learning something but when you go to actually apply it– you don’t know where to start.
Growclass is focused on teaching you practical growth marketing skills that you can learn and then implement at work. And it works, on average, our students use their new skills and earn $27,600 more within 6 months of taking the course through promotions and securing better, higher-paying roles.
With most courses, the support stops at graduation, but Growclass isn’t really just a course. We’re a big, warm community of marketers and entrepreneurs. We have alumni in our community who are still engaged after taking the first course in 2020. We offer our students access to career coaching, mastermind communities, mentorship, accountability sessions, and ongoing workshops.
Last week we hosted an in-person co-working day just so the community could come out and meet each other, get some work done, and get out of the house. It’s just a seriously lovely group of people.
What is the best part about what you do? What is the worst part?
The people, the people are the best. Our team, our students, our instructors, our community, I get to spend my days talking to smart, kind, creative people who really care about helping each other and I fear that’s rare in 2024. The worst part is that there are a lot of people using courses and community as get-rich-quick schemes, so people who really need education and support can be burned if they look in the wrong places.
We’re constantly looking for ways to cut through the noise and find our people.
What is your favourite joke about your own profession?
Can I use one of my own? San Francisco is like if mansplaining… was a city.
Where can we follow you?
You can find Growclass on Instagram and TikTok at @growclass! We also have a great newsletter you can subscribe to here.
PAY IT FORWARD: What is another local business that you love?
I’m a huge fan of Three Ships (Growclass alumni) and Province of Canada!
