In this exclusive CanadianSME Small Business Magazine interview, Faye Pang, Chief Growth Officer at FreshBooks and limited partner at the Women’s Equity Lab, shares how her experience building brands across tech and CPG and growing up in a small business family shapes her mission to make finance feel simpler and more empowering for entrepreneurs. From expanding AI-powered tools and payroll partnerships to championing inclusive culture and policy advocacy, Faye offers practical insights on how Canadian small and medium-sized businesses can stay adaptable, financially confident, and customer-focused in the years ahead.
Faye is the Chief Growth Officer at FreshBooks, a small business platform designed to simplify the financial complexity of running a business. Prior to FreshBooks, Faye has spent her career building brands and businesses in both consumer packaged goods and technology. Outside of FreshBooks, Faye is a limited partner at the Women’s Equity Lab, a fund that focuses on early-stage Canadian startups with female founders and CEOs.
FreshBooks is recognized for supporting small business owners. What new initiatives is the company prioritizing to further empower Canadian SMBs in the year ahead?
FreshBooks is software designed to simplify the financial complexity of running a service-based small business. Today, we’re focused on three areas that directly strengthen how Canadian small business owners operate and grow.
First, we’re expanding the practical, real-world applications of AI across the product. Service-based business owners have limited time and constantly shifting demands, so we’re developing tools that automate repetitive admin, surface meaningful insights, and make it easier to understand what’s happening inside the business—without the steep learning curve traditionally associated with financial software.
Second, we’re strengthening the financial ecosystem behind FreshBooks. Getting paid and managing cash flow remain some of the most critical pressure points for small businesses, and recent payroll and compliance changes have only amplified that. Through our expanded partnership with Wagepoint (another great Canadian brand!), we’re giving owners a simpler way to run payroll and stay compliant without added administrative burden.
Finally, we’re elevating the voice of small business owners in policy conversations. With open banking and broader financial modernization on the horizon, we want to ensure the realities of service-based businesses are heard. Programs like FreshBooks’ Your Voice Roundtables help translate lived experience into policy insight and action.
Across every initiative, our goal remains the same: make running a small business feel easy.
You’ve successfully scaled businesses across technology, logistics, and financial financial management. What unique challenges have you encountered in launching and growing brands within the small business ecosystem, and how have you overcome them?
My connection to small business is deeply personal. Watching my parents build their own business over 23 years showed me the immense pressure and responsibility entrepreneurs carry. This experience grounds my leadership approach: practical, fast-moving, and focused on impact.
One of the greatest challenges across the last decade has been the accelerated pace of change. Tech cycles now shift in months—from on-demand logistics to cloud adoption, and now, the acceleration of AI. Small business owners feel this intensely, especially when coupled with new compliance expectations, tax updates, and payment regulations.
Another major challenge is rising customer expectations. Consumers now expect the speed of Uber, the simplicity of Apple, and the convenience of Amazon, even from a one-person business. This expectation gap puts significant pressure on the owners we serve.
At FreshBooks, we address these hurdles by building software that is intuitive from day one and genuinely helpful over time. We constantly incorporate feedback from small business owners—those who are currently navigating price hikes, supply snags, and tighter customer pipelines—to ensure our product decisions reflect real conditions, not just assumptions.
Across my career, one truth has been a constant: growth and adoption happen when you design and build with the customer in mind.
Inclusivity is core to FreshBooks’ culture. How does the company embed diversity, inclusion, and belonging into both the employee experience and the customer experience?
At its core, inclusivity at FreshBooks is about removing barriers, for our people and for the small business owners we serve. It’s about making sure everyone feels seen, respected, and able to meaningfully contribute.
That philosophy shows up in how we hire, how we collaborate, and how we build culture. We believe diverse teams build better products. We prioritize hiring individuals with varied backgrounds and unique perspectives to ensure our products and services truly reflect the diversity of the small business owners who rely on FreshBooks.
We also believe that diversity without inclusion and belonging is a missed opportunity. We launched four ERGS this year – Women at FreshBooks, Black FreshBookers & Allies, 2SLGBTQIA+, and Neurodivergent FreshBookers, each supported by an executive sponsor, to celebrate, help create psychological safety, and provide spaces where lived experiences can be shared. Similarly, every quarter, we run small group sessions hosted by different members of our leadership team. These sessions give FreshBookers the chance to meet with leaders and colleagues from different departments to share experiences, ask hard questions, and build a stronger community.
Importantly, inclusivity also guides how we build for our customers. FreshBooks is designed for small business owners from different backgrounds, industries, and levels of financial confidence. Clear language, intuitive design, and supportive automation help ensure the product feels approachable and confidence-building, even for owners who feel overwhelmed by financial tasks.
What practical advice would you offer small business owners looking to accelerate their growth in today’s competitive landscape?
Having worked in both fast-moving startups and more established organizations, the best advice I can offer is to adopt a bias for action. Growth often comes from the person who sees a problem and chooses to solve it rather than waiting for perfect conditions. If you spot a gap in your process, close it. If you hear customers repeating the same need, test a solution. Small, fast experiments usually reveal more than any long planning cycle.
Another piece of advice is to get clear on the value you deliver for your customers. In a crowded marketplace, businesses that grow are the ones that communicate their differentiation simply and consistently.
I’ve also seen how transformative operational discipline can be. When your pricing, workflows, and finances are organized, you create the space to think strategically instead of reacting day to day.
And finally, surround yourself with people who push your thinking. A common refrain I hear from small business owners is how lonely it can be as an entrepreneur. The right peer groups or partners often surface solutions or insights you wouldn’t discover on your own.
Finally, what would you like to share with CanadianSME’s readers about future trends or lasting lessons for small and medium-sized businesses hoping to innovate and grow?
I think the future of small business will be shaped by a few clear shifts, the first being adaptability. As technology cycles accelerate and customer expectations rise, thriving businesses must stay curious, experiment often, and adjust quickly to changing conditions.
The second is the growing value of financial visibility. With tighter margins and increased economic volatility, real-time numbers will become a competitive advantage. Clarity in forecasting cash flow and tracking profitability enables better decisions and reduces uncertainty.
We’re also hearing that customer acquisition is harder, supply costs are elevated, and time management remains a challenge. These ongoing pressures make tools that simplify operations, not complicate them,more essential than ever. Small improvements like tightening processes and delivering consistent service will create momentum for your business.
Finally, connectivity between your tools will continue to matter. Policy modernization, such as the recently announced progress on open banking in Canada, will reshape how small businesses can integrate financial tools and ultimately unlock more operational flexibility.
Success depends on businesses that stay adaptable, stay financially aware, and stay connected to the customers they serve.
