Evan Hallward
For those who are not familiar with you, what is your story?
I was born and raised in Montreal and then moved to Halifax to study business management at Dalhousie University. In the summer of 2015, I moved to Toronto to pursue my passion for technology and the tech sector in general, because that was the best place to be in Canada for tech. I’ve always loved how technology is used in our day-to-day life to live healthier or work better. So today, I’m building my own tech company called Aboard to help growing companies better onboard their new employees.
What are some of the biggest things you’ve taken away from your journey?
I have a two-sided answer here, but the first side is to put in the work. This takeaway is something I started realizing in university, about having the focus and motivation to do the hard work. I always say to individuals coming out of their undergrad or school program who are unsure where to go, is that it’s good to get to work if you can and learn on the job. You can find what you like and don’t like so you can improve. Personally, I’m very action-oriented, so I have a problem-solving mentality.
The other side is knowing when to disconnect, relax, and enjoy life. It’s a balance of doing the work, being committed, being motivated, and knowing that you have to turn off work. Enjoy being with people if that’s what you like to do, or travel, which I love. It can be anything, just not all about work.
What was the most important thing you’ve learned this year?
As soon as I heard this, my mind thought of learning to be patient. I’m generally not a very patient person, but I feel its significance now more than ever during the pandemic because we can’t change it or fix it. Interacting with other people walking their own path in life also teaches me to be more patient. Aside from that, I feel like I learned 100 things a day as an entrepreneur.
How do you stay motivated in your losses or grounded in your wins?
When you experience loss, it’s important to acknowledge that you’ve had a setback and sit in the loss. Then, I see it as not necessarily pushing through but floating through a loss, letting yourself go with it. It sucks, but you’re going to sleep that night and wake up with a new day. You can start over, start fresh, and get moving again.
For being grounded in wins, I like to think of the accomplishment as a good job, but I need to keep going. If I get one win, then I want to go and get five or ten more. I try my best to acknowledge the wins and celebrate them, but I also use them as momentum to achieve the next one.
How do you stay resilient in these uncertain times? How are you adapting to the new norm?
I’m a highly extroverted person, so it’s important for me to be around people. I’m super thankful that I have had my support network around me even through these hard times. Those people include my life partner, business partner, friends and family, who have remained present in some form. I get so much energy and joy from them. This extends to customers for my business, as I am thankful to interact with them every day.
What made you realize you had a passion for technology?
Growing up, I was always interested in how technology kept cropping up more and more in our daily life. This interest started with video games and movies for entertainment, then flip phones for calling my parents while visiting friends. These were things that even a few years prior weren’t available. As technology gets more sophisticated, I love to see how new technologies come out and how we adapt to them as humans. I look at technology as a source for good.
Some of the people behind Aboard!
Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind this company?
Aboard started with a personal problem, which was never receiving great onboarding, having worked in the tech industry for four or five small to medium-sized businesses. It was always a weird, awkward experience joining a new company that I was super excited to get, but I always found proper onboarding was missing. The process was a pain that I shared with my business partner, who experienced it in his own way. As problem solvers, we got together and decided to fix it instead of settle.
