Marla Kott is a Chartered Accountant and Chief Executive Officer of Imprint Plus. She was the 2013 winner of the WeConnect Canada WBE Ambassador award, the 2012 winner of the Bank of Montreal Global Growth Award, and a 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist. Marla’s relationship with Imprint Plus began a $20,000 angel investment and a personal bank guarantee, needed to keep a 7 year old start up afloat for a childhood friend. When the bank called the loan in 2000, she gave up her Chartered Accounting practice, moved across the country to Vancouver, British Columbia, and became the full time CEO of Imprint Plus. Marla arrived to face an unproductive management team, thin capitalization and a balance sheet that sported a debt of $700,000. In the thirteen years that Marla Kott has operated as the CEO of Imprint Plus, she has built the company into a thriving international exporter of name badge systems with a goal to becoming a category leader in this niche market. IP operations head office is in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company also has offices in Florida, Ontario and the UK. Imprint Plus has been listed in Profit Magazine’s as one of Canada’s top 100 women owned businesses for 7 consecutive years. The company today has over 35,000 customers in 75 countries.
The 2017 EXCELerate Conference exceeded my expectations. The plenary sessions alone were worth the fee … the level of speakers gathered— and their synergy—was absolutely brilliant. Regarding the break-out sessions: Ann Gomez’s session, ‘Focus Your Time to GroYourBiz: Personal Productivity for Busy People’, blew my socks off with its relevance and practical applications. Her book, ‘The Email Warrior’, is easy to read and the tips within it are easy to implement. Wow!
Click Media WorksWow what a powerful three days of speakers, workshops, networking and collaboration.
GroYourBiz Surrey/White RockI think it’s safe to say that we were all blown away by the calibre of the gala – the dinner was fantastic, the performance lovely and Ann Mukerjee’s keynote was beyond inspiring!
Stephanie HayesLeadership DevelopmentOverwaitea Food GroupLoved it!
Christina Stewart Praxis Performance GroupExceptional conference!! The content, quality and quantity of speakers, venue, scheduling, are all exceptional. It is engaging and motivating, and I don’t know of any other event where you’d have the opportunity to hear from so many “keynote” speakers.
After 3 days with amazing business women from around the world, I am truly inspired and empowered. Thank you Barbara Mowat and GroYourBiz.
Vancouver TumblebusI have been a delegate and speaker at many, many, many conferences but this one is I have to say is the best I have been to. When I first looked at the itinerary I could not wrap my head around why you would choose such world wide speakers to talk about things larger than us small businesses but it wasn’t long after the speakers began on Wednesday evening that I became so deeply inspired and then even more so as the next two days passed.
Little Fish Big PondEXCELerate was Transformational. I hope that this will be an annual event as it is something I would like to mark in my calendar as the most important thing to do.
Shehnaz Hussain OwnerIntuitive Financial SolutionsThanks Barb Mowat and EXCELerate2017 for a brilliant conference bringing together so many who are committed to advancing women’s entrepreneurship.
East West CenterA wonderful event. I met some incredible people and was very inspired. You have gathered such an amazing group of people.
Vicki SaundersFounderSheEO