A Year of small.news: Catching Up With 6 Small Business Owners We’ve Featured

By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant

(small.news) — One year ago, small.news set out to tell the stories of small business owners building something worth paying attention to. A year later, we went back to ask those who have been featured what’s changed since, and the updates ranged from new milestones and pivots to hard-won lessons about growth itself.

From accounting to events production to sustainability consulting to Indigenous cultural tourism, these are the small businesses that kept building, adapting, and showing up.

Humairaa Moola, HM Accounting & Business Solutions

Following her first feature, Humairaa Moola is boldly guiding HM Accounting & Business Solutions beyond traditional bookkeeping and into the heart of strategic growth. While compliance remains a cornerstone, Moola has dedicated the past months to expanding CFO advisory services, launching financial education initiatives, and creating tools that empower business owners to truly engage with their numbers. At the center of this transformation is the HM Accounting Client Hub, a dynamic resource Moola designed to give clients continuous access to financial tools, reminders, and educational content, all in one place. With new free and paid digital resources, her reach now extends to business owners far beyond South Africa.

Over the past few months, she has mentored small business owners, contributed to entrepreneurship programs, and begun coaching child small business owners in the fundamentals of money and business. She counts this last achievement among her proudest, saying, “A great win for me personally has been coaching the child small business owners and seeing how they begin to understand finances and actually enjoy it.”

But growth has brought its own tough lessons. For Moola, the past month’s biggest challenge has been realizing that growth is not about doing more. As she juggles a growing business and prepares to welcome her second child, she has learned to streamline systems and make intentional choices about her time, prioritizing quality over quantity rather than saying yes to everything.

Looking back, she wishes she’d made the shift sooner. “I would have started thinking like a CEO earlier,” she says, crediting her coaching work with Silver Lining for helping her see the business as more than client delivery—positioning, systems, leadership, and the life she’s building around it all.

In the coming year, Moola aims to take her advisory and education efforts even further. She plans to introduce more hands-on financial tools for bookkeeping, cash flow, budgeting, and funding readiness, while expanding the Client Hub and continuing her mission to coach the next generation of small business owners.

Her advice to other business owners reading this? “Know your numbers, but don’t build your business around numbers alone.” Revenue and cash flow matter, she says, but so do time, energy, and the reason the business started in the first place. “Build something that is financially sustainable, absolutely, but also build something that fits the life you actually want to live.”

Diego & Francisco Palma, Sportrade

Since they were featured, Diego & Francisco Palma’s events production company, Sportrade, has focused on building a stronger team and streamlining its internal structure. The Palmas proudly note that administrative controls have been significantly improved, laying a solid foundation for the company to pursue bigger, more prestigious projects in the industry.

And these projects have made a real impact. The company has organized events for Ecuador’s leading soccer clubs year after year, branched out into regional productions, and even taken its services beyond national borders. Their involvement in advertising campaigns for Ecuadorian brands during the last FIFA World Cup stands out as one of the year’s proudest achievements.

The Palmas also celebrate the company’s 10th anniversary, calling it a huge blessing to share it with the entire team, suppliers, partners, and clients. They also admitted that navigating risk, keeping cash flow steady, and learning to say no at the right moment have been some of the toughest parts of the journey. Reflecting on the past, they wish they had recognized risks earlier and moved on from underperforming projects sooner, even those they felt a personal connection to.

Looking ahead, they are shifting their focus from output to people. They are most passionate about creating better conditions and new opportunities for their team, aiming to make the company, as they put it, a great place for people to work. On the product front, the company remains in the exploration phase and is not yet ready to announce any launches.

Their advice to other business owners? “Follow your gut, surround yourself with people that share the same values and goals.” As for measuring progress, they’re clear on the yardstick—not competitors, but “the previous version of yourself.”

Ernest Baldwin, EZ Wrapping

Nearly a year after his first feature, Ernest Baldwin reflects that the most significant change at EZ Wrapping has been sharpening its focus, gaining a vivid sense of who it serves and how. This newfound clarity has fueled real structural growth. Baldwin recently completed the LA21 cohort program, which he calls the turning point that transformed him from simply owning a business to truly running one.

Of all his milestones this year, Baldwin highlights one that feels especially personal: Being invited to join this anniversary feature, in partnership with Silver Lining, to honor fellow small businesses in the Silver Lining community. Baldwin did admit, however, that staying motivated during tough times has been the hardest part of the past year. In hindsight, he wishes he had mastered business finances much earlier.

Looking ahead, Baldwin is setting his sights on building relationships: forging connections and partnerships with businesses that can benefit from EZ Wrapping’s services. He hopes to collaborate with the City of Philadelphia’s senior centers or occupational therapy programs, using his expertise to help seniors remain active and independent.

His advice to other business owners is rooted in persistence: “Keep the faith! Let the business work on you, be the best you can be, until the business starts to work for you.”

Baldwin credits that mindset with guiding EZ Wrapping through its journey of growth, and he is determined to carry it forward into another year of partnerships and community impact.

Quyen Mai, Reaching Out Vietnam

Reaching Out Arts & Crafts stands firmly rooted in its founding mission: to create sustainable jobs for deaf people. Quyen Mai shares that the business’s proudest achievement is watching its deaf artisans confidently shape their own destinies, whether in bustling craft workshops or tranquil tea houses in Hoi An. Here, they become living ambassadors for what Mai beautifully describes as “the beauty of silence.”

Balancing purpose with business brings its own set of challenges. As a social enterprise, Reaching Out faces the ongoing struggle of safeguarding its members’ livelihoods amid economic uncertainty and rising costs, all while upholding the meticulous craftsmanship that defines the brand. “We are constantly searching for the best way to both preserve our core values and bring the name Reaching Out to a wider audience,” Mai says.

For Reaching Out, growth is about expanding without ever sacrificing its ideals. The organization is nurturing more interactive workshops, all guided by deaf artisans. Here, visitors craft handmade treasures or savor local flavors, connecting through sign language, shared glances, and heartfelt empathy instead of spoken words.

To connect with people far beyond Hoi An, Reaching Out has launched a seamless online store, inviting customers from anywhere to welcome its handcrafted creations into their homes, even if they have never set foot in the town, Mai says the business is choosing deliberate, unhurried growth over rapid scale.

“We choose to take slow, steady steps, remaining steadfast in our original values,” she says — building sustainable livelihoods for people with disabilities, and ensuring every product that leaves Reaching Out carries the same meticulous care it always has.

Petal Joseph Roberts, i3 Green Consultants Ltd.

Petal Joseph Roberts has been refining i3 Green Consultants Ltd.’s identity, steering it from a broad sustainability consulting image to a more focused, strategic suite of services. This deliberate shift is designed to turn promising leads into loyal, paying clients with greater consistency.

That repositioning got a public vote of confidence this year. Roberts was a featured speaker at the second Trinidad and Tobago Disaster Risk Management (TTDRM) Conference & Expo in June 2026, joining a panel on designing resilient communities for emerging risks and leading a learning lab on infusing sustainability into technical and professional practice. The visibility, she says, validated an earlier goal: being recognized as an expert in her field.

Yet, growth has not erased her toughest hurdle. Landing paying clients remains the steepest climb. Roberts is often called upon for her expertise at the outset of projects, only to watch the work slip away when it comes time for execution. Bridging the gap between initial interest and lasting partnerships remains her greatest frustration.

Reflecting on her journey, she wishes she had believed in herself earlier. After investing thousands and hiring two web developers for a website that never quite fit her needs, Roberts realized she could have built it herself if she had trusted her own abilities. “Had I just had a little more confidence that I could figure it out — I’d have had the site I needed years ago,” she says.

She looks ahead with optimism, already surpassing her progress from previous years and setting her sights on new horizons. In the pipeline: an early-stage podcast concept and ambitions to broaden her capacity-building efforts, including more close-knit sustainability workshops like the recent session she led for home-schooled children aged 5 to 12.

Her advice to other business owners? “Start with what you have, where you’re at… it IS enough and so are you.” If you have the vision and the belief, she says, trust that it’s all you need.

Talaysay Campo, Talaysay Tours

From our first ever small.news issue to now, Talaysay Campo continues to grow Talaysay Tours as one of British Columbia’s leading Indigenous cultural tourism businesses, alongside her ventures Love The Land and THEDA X NENA skincare. This past July, she took the stage at the NextGen Business Summit in New Westminster, BC, delivering an Indigenous Land Acknowledgement and Knowledge Keeper Address—continuing the work of bringing Indigenous knowledge, cultural education, and reconciliation into rooms far beyond her own tours.

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