In an exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, a leading voice from Xero shares insights into the company’s transformative new tagline, “Your business supercharged,” and its commitment to helping Canadian small businesses achieve growth and efficiency. With a global presence of 4.2 million subscribers, Xero is leveraging its innovative platform, partnerships with Canadian fintech leaders, and cutting-edge technologies to address local challenges such as cash flow management and productivity. This conversation underscores Xero’s role in equipping small business owners with the tools and insights needed to navigate the evolving economic landscape and embrace a more connected, digital future.
Ashalee Mohamed is a senior business leader with over 18 years of experience driving growth and leading high-performance teams across a variety of industries. As the Head of Canada, Sales & Go-To-Market (GTM) at Xero, Ashalee leads the Canadian GTM team, focusing on accelerating revenue growth and delivering operational excellence. Throughout her career, Ashalee has demonstrated a unique ability to build cultures of high performance, deliver results, and navigate diverse sectors. Her experience spans PR communications, media, travel and tourism, insurance, legal services, private investigations, and investor relations. Ashalee’s previous leadership roles at Cision, Adventure Canada, and Investigative Research Group showcased her talent for driving transformative business strategies and fostering growth at scale. Beyond her professional expertise, Ashalee is an advocate for small businesses, recognizing their essential role in shaping the Canadian economy. She is passionate about helping these businesses succeed by providing the tools, resources, and guidance they need to grow and innovate.
Xero recently unveiled its new tagline, “Your business supercharged.” Can you walk us through the vision behind this evolution and how it reflects Xero’s commitment to empowering small businesses in Canada?
The introduction of “Your business supercharged” is a tagline change that reflects Xero’s ongoing commitment to empowering small businesses and their advisors in Canada, and all over the world. Through extensive engagement with small businesses and their advisors, we’ve created a message that resonates deeply with their aspirations. It underscores how Xero delivers an intuitive platform, actionable insights, and expert community support to help them achieve growth and freedom—while showing the impact of listening to your audience to guide a brand’s direction.
With your extensive experience across diverse industries, how do you see Xero’s role in addressing the unique challenges faced by Canadian small businesses in today’s economic landscape?
Xero plays a pivotal role in helping Canadian small businesses navigate today’s complex economic landscape. By providing tools that enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and leverage automation and AI, Xero empowers small business owners to manage cash flow more effectively and adapt to macroeconomic challenges. By leveraging these time-saving tools, small businesses are able to focus on what they love and why the purpose behind their businesses, while scaling and growing.
In late 2024, we commissioned an online survey to gauge small business sentiment and heard that: 84% of Canadian small businesses expressed optimism for the future. Driven by improving cash flow and increased sales, Xero’s insights and solutions enable them to harness these positive trends while preparing for challenges such as evolving government policies and fluctuating economic conditions.
Xero has a global presence with 4.2 million subscribers. How are you tailoring Xero’s approach to meet the specific needs of the Canadian market, and what opportunities do you see for growth in this region?
Xero’s approach to the Canadian market continues to be anchored in empowering small businesses to embrace digitization and leverage technologies to address local challenges such as cash flow pressures, shifting government policies and productivity stagnation.
The opportunities for growth are significant as Canada’s small business sector becomes more digital. As part of our work to make life better for small businesses and their advisors across the country, we’ve partnered with leading Canadian fintechs like Caseware, Flinks, and Wagepoint. These partnerships are part of an in-depth app ecosystem that is designed to support the needs of Canadian small businesses’ full workflow — from managing cash flow to tax filing — and empower Canadian small businesses to unlock new potential in their unique market.
As we conclude, what advice would you offer to small business owners looking to leverage technology and financial tools to “supercharge” their operations in 2025 and beyond?
It’s important for small business owners to be doubling down and staying focused on what serves their business goals. At Xero, we encourage small business owners to take advantage of time-saving and simplifying technologies to increase productivity and introduce efficiencies into their workflow. With the help of powerful tools and technologies and personalized, actionable insights, small businesses can streamline internal operations and achieve more business freedom.
