Elan de Laforest: Why Growth Isn't About Getting Bigger

Most people think of growth as getting bigger. More clients, more revenue, more employees. Elan de Laforest, co-founder of SERI Canada (seri.ca), has spent her career proving that assumption wrong.

"Growth does not always mean getting bigger, it's more about change," she explains. "Good leaders grow with their clients, their people, growing with their staff and empowering them to do their work."

This philosophy has guided her through an unconventional career path that demonstrates how curiosity and continuous improvement can transform both your own trajectory and the businesses you touch.

Can you walk me through the big-picture of your career and what led you to co-running SERI Canada?

From Government to Business Skills

Elan's path to SERI wasn't linear. After studying environmental sciences at the University of Alberta, she landed a role as regional assistant to the executive director at Alberta Environment. “They wanted someone with rural roots who could work with people from all backgrounds but discovered someone with a natural talent for managing complex processes.” She explains.

"I really enjoyed that component of it. I'm good at keeping track of all moving parts to keep things moving forward," Elan reflects on those early days of business reporting and planning. The role immersed her in business operations, where she found she had a gift for seeing the big picture while managing intricate details.

Mission-Driven Leadership

After her government experience, the opportunity to lead Passive House Alberta offered something new: mission-driven leadership. "It was very interesting, exciting and fulfilling to make a small bit of change in the world," Elan recalls. For someone whose big goal is leaving the world better than she found it, the work provided deep satisfaction.

The nonprofit experience taught valuable lessons about patience, systemic change, and resource optimization. Around 2018, during coaching training, she experienced her biggest breakthrough, learning to ask better questions instead of providing ready-made answers.

"It's not about telling you what to do but instead asking what you want to accomplish," she explains. "I help them discover how to move forward by asking the right questions."

Building SERI's Foundation

What started as helping her husband, Christopher, establish SERI, handling accounting, workers' compensation, and basic operations, quickly revealed itself as something much larger. Elan was instrumental in establishing SERI as a multidisciplinary consulting firm that bridges engineering, environment, health, and business expertise.

When she returned to SERI with her transformed approach to business growth, she brought with her the coaching methodology and systems thinking she'd developed during her nonprofit leadership experience.

Did you ever picture yourself shifting into entrepreneurship?

"Working for myself was not something that is foreign to me," Elan admits. Before her government role, she had operated as a sole proprietor, serving as a liaison between company groups and small-town communities, farmers, and ranchers.

"It's been nice to weave through as an entrepreneur - all require a different focus and all operate with business plans and targets. It's the details that are ever so slightly different within each." This varied experience across entrepreneurship, government, and nonprofit work has given her a unique perspective that she now brings to her clients at SERI.

What does a typical workday look like for you at SERI?

Managing Business Seasons

"I head out to help with morning priorities and getting teams organized," Elan explains. Her role now combines high-level operations support, executive assistance, and leadership coaching, drawing on 20 years of experience across private, nonprofit, and government sectors.

The work varies dramatically based on client needs and business seasons. "Are you in a season of planning, of growth, are you in a season of changing direction? What do you want to focus on and then let's go."

Diverse Client Support

Sometimes that means handling business fundamentals for new entrepreneurs, legalities, bank accounts, contracts, websites. Other times it's stepping in during high-workload periods or helping established companies pivot their communication strategies. 

Her multidisciplinary background as a Professional Biologist with an MBA, Business Continuity Professional, and certified coach allows her to work across diverse sectors including energy, agriculture, and the built environment. She's particularly energized by clients bringing new products to market, helping them navigate everything from market analysis and research to testing, marketing, and integration.

Expanding the Practice Through Collaboration

That demand for both strategic insight and hands-on implementation support has continued to grow, and Elan has responded by deepening the bench of expertise available to her clients. She's recently established a collaboration with Edmonton-based consulting firm Marcelino Marise Solutions, expanding the reach of her practice across Alberta. 

By blending advisory, governance, policy, and practical implementation experience, the partnership helps organizations move from planning all the way through to real-world results, exactly the kind of end-to-end support that growing businesses often struggle to find under one roof.

What did your time at Passive House Alberta teach you about leading organizations?

Leading Passive House Alberta reinforced crucial insights about creating meaningful change and resource optimization. "Working with a non-profit, you really make your resources stretch, and what was significant to their success was the ability to ramp up as needed, to hire the skill set they needed as you need it."

The experience also taught her about the patience required for systemic change. "It's hard to make change like that, understanding how long or what was required was a big learning lesson," she notes. This perspective now helps her guide clients through their own transformation processes.

What are some of the most common pain points small businesses come to you with?

"They start a business because they love to do something, and from a best use of your time standpoint you do what you love then hand off to the experts," Elan explains. The entrepreneurs who seek her out typically face a familiar challenge: they're drowning in everything except what they actually love doing.

Her approach focuses on asking the right questions so clients can discover their own path forward while she handles the operational complexities that pull them away from high-impact work. This coaching-driven methodology helps business owners rediscover their focus and energy.

The Learning Never Stops

"A lot of times I'll work on a project and think 'that was interesting, I want to learn more about that' and take a course on it," Elan explains. As a professional biologist, she's required to complete development hours annually, but her learning goes far beyond compliance.

This curiosity has led her through studies in change management, business continuity, and coaching, skills that integrate depending on the situation. "I'm a very curious person and really enjoy learning new things."

In your view, what makes growth not just possible, but sustainable?

Redefining Growth

For Elan, sustainable growth starts with one fundamental element: "You need an interest in what you're doing, a desire, a spark, a sense of energy that makes people show up and go to work every day."

But her definition of growth challenges conventional thinking. "Even if it's not linear it's still growth. When you say the word change to people, growth seems more positive." This paradigm shift came from her coaching training, where she learned that growth isn't always about expansion, sometimes it's about getting better, pivoting, or changing focus entirely.

"Good leaders grow with their clients, their people, growing with their staff and empowering them to do their work. Growth can be getting bigger and also pivoting and changing a focus."

What's one piece of advice you'd give to founders trying to juggle growth with day-to-day operations?

Elan's advice is both practical and personal: "Find a mentor, someone who has walked your path before and has that hindsight and can cheer you on. Nothing ever goes perfectly all the time. Mentors play a foundational role."

She emphasizes alignment: "Enjoy what you do. If you're fired up about something it's a whole other life than when it's draining or not the best fit. Find what you like to do."

The Power of Perspective

Elan de Laforest has built her career on a simple but powerful premise: the right questions matter more than ready-made answers. Her journey so far, from government work to co-founding SERI, through nonprofit leadership, and back to SERI with deeper wisdom, illustrates how embracing change and staying curious can transform both your trajectory and the businesses you touch.

Through SERI Canada, she continues helping small businesses discover not just how to grow, but how to grow in ways that align with their values and capabilities. In a world obsessed with scaling up, Elan offers something different, the wisdom to know that sometimes the best growth happens when you're brave enough to change direction, dig deeper, or simply get better at what you already do well.

If you're seeking trusted support to help you lead with greater efficiency and capacity, you can connect through marcelinomarisesolutions.com or learn more about SERI's multidisciplinary consulting services at seri.ca.