Business Owners

Why have employees?

Many business owners are extremely reluctant to hire employees, thinking employees bring more pain than they are worth.

Description: This presentation is designed to cover all the advantages of having a team, big or small, and to work through ways of reducing the pain of having employees.

Who will benefit: All business owners.

Participants will learn:

• Advantages of having a team
• How to select the right team
• When is a good time to hire
• How to determine wage offers
• How employees can impact the bottom line

Hiring: Selecting the Right Team Members

Description: Selecting the right team members for your organization is far more challenging than most people think. Only once you become an employer do you fully understand the importance and difficulty of selecting the right candidate. This workshop will discuss ways of selecting the best candidate.

Participants will learn:

• How to tailor questions to bring out the attributes the employer is looking for
• How to “sell” the opportunity of employment to a potential candidate
• How to negotiate a fair wage

Pricing Products and Services

Description: How do you determine the value of the product or services provided? How do you determine that amount where you’re charging the maximum price without scaring current or potential customers away? Are there times when charging for services by the hour is more appropriate than a fixed pricing model?
This program will walk you through looking a the value provided from your client’s perspective. It will focus on asking the client the right questions, and touch on a few negotiation techniques that will greatly increase the odds of achieving much greater profit and satisfaction with every sale.

Participants will learn:

• The art of determining the value of services and products provided
• How to discuss and sell the value to clients
• Techniques to improve the client’s perspective on the value of products and services provided
• How to discuss billing with a client
• Training and motivating your team to properly value and discuss amounts charged with clients and prospects
• When it’s appropriate to charge by the hour rather than using a fixed pricing model

Negotiating

Description: Negotiating is a skill we start to learn as a toddler, but few ever learn to master it. There are many courses offered on how to negotiate, and this workshop is a good introduction with some great insight into the ins and outs of negotiating.

Participants will learn:

• How to negotiate for success
• How to improve skills at negotiation
• How to improve odds of negotiating a better deal (every time)

Marketing

Description: Promotion of your business is one of the keys to its success. This workshop will explain why establishing a consistent, relevant and memorable presence in the markets you serve is so important from an owner’s perspective.

Participants will learn:

• Why you should market your business
• How a marketing plan is created
• How to establish a budget for your marketing initiatives
• Ways to measure the results of your marketing efforts
• The role company culture plays in marketing
• Practical ways you can promote your business in various markets

How to Compensate Yourself as the Owner of a Corporation

Description: Incorporated businesses can compensate their shareholders in various ways. How best to decide on a strategy must be evaluated on an individual level given the multitude of variables at play.

Who will benefit: Corporate business owners

Participants will learn:

• Differences between paying yourself a salary and a dividend
• Factors in deciding which is best for you
• Income splitting – how it worked and new TOSI implications

Admission of new partners

Description: Most will agree that business partnerships seldom survive. So how do you increase the odds of success? Jean-Guy will share what he’s learned from studying business partnerships that thrive as well as those that have failed. He will also share many of his own challenges and discoveries he’s made working with his own partners.

Participants will learn:

• How to properly select the right partner for you
• How to communicate safely amongst partners
• What should be included on the unanimous shareholder/partnership agreement
• How to resolve conflicts
• What part your core values play in a healthy partnership

Journaling

Keeping proper journals of ideas and activities can contribute greatly to any business success and provides great memories for the future. Jean-Guy will share the different journals he uses and how each one has an important purpose in his life.  He will also share how to make the best use of it, and how to organize the thoughts and entries to maximize its impact on our life.

Balancing Work and Life

Description: Few people have mastered balancing work life with personal life. The process is a precarious balancing act with dire consequences and big rewards. Jean-Guy will share what he’s learned over his 35-year career, from being self-employed to growing his practice from a one-person operation to its current size of nearly 60 employees. Jean-Guy will share his struggles, his success bouncing back from a severe burn-out, and tricks to living a happier, healthier life.

Participants will learn:

• How to communicate effectively
• How to put up healthy guard rails, such as learning when and who to delegate to
• Strategies for protecting your mental health
• How to effectively manage stress

5 Ways to Increase the Value of a Business

Description: This workshop is designed for business owners who are looking to sell their business in the future (usually at least 3 years away). It explains how to determine a selling price, ways in which the value (and price) can be increased, and how to minimize the tax consequences upon the sale.

Who will benefit: All business owners

Participants will learn:

• How to increase the value of their business using five strategies
• Common ways a business is valued when deciding on a selling price
• Ways to minimize the tax consequences upon the sale

Buying & Selling a business

Description: For obvious reasons, few people have much, if any, experience in buying or selling a business. We will look at this transaction from both sides of the coin – the buyer and the seller.

Participants will learn:

• What to look for in a buyer when selling a business
• How to know if a business that’s for sale is right for you
• The elements that will influence the price
• How to negotiate a fair purchase price

Advantages and Disadvantages of Incorporating

Description: This workshop is designed for small business owners who are running a business under their personal name and are wondering if incorporation is worth it. This presentation goes into detail about the estimated costs of incorporation and possible tax savings that could be realized.

Who will benefit: Anyone starting a business or operating as a sole proprietorship

Participants will learn:

• What is incorporation and how it is different from a sole proprietorship
• How business’ taxes are calculated in a corporate structure
• The process of moving from being a sole proprietorship to a corporation
• Steps to incorporating
• When a business should incorporate
• Dividends versus wages
• Sample share structures for corporations
• Advantages and disadvantages of setting up holding corporations
• Role of family trusts in corporate structure

Business Tax: Everything You Need to Know!

Description: As a business owner, it’s important to understand the full scope of how taxation rules can work for or against you. This seminar will cover what you need to know about taxes if you’re in business or own a rental unit.

Who will benefit: Self-employed individuals or corporations

Participants will learn:

• Which expenses are deductible and which are not
• The differences between sole proprietorship, partnership, and a corporation
• What GST is
• Payroll (Deductions, T4, etc.)
• Lease versus buying decision
• How to defend yourself against a CRA audit
• How to keep proper documentation (bookkeeping and receipt keeping)
• Miscellaneous tax tips and tricks

Active vs. Passive Income

Description: All sources of income are not created equally when it comes to a corporation earning them. This workshop deals with the complexity of passive income; from investments, such as interest or rental income, as it relates to a corporation that earns it.

Who will benefit: Corporate business owners who have excess capital invested within a corporate structure

Participants will learn:

• How different sources of income are taxed
• What CDA and RDTOH are and how they impact your tax planning decision
• What are the most efficient investment types held by a corporation

Employee’s perspective: Becoming a more attractive candidate for any firm 

Description: This workshop is designed for employees working in an accounting or bookkeeping practice. Being employed in a practice provides tons of learning and earning opportunities, yet few employers seem to be able to recognize their employees’ full potential.

Participants will learn:

• How to take advantage of what they learn and convert that into better pay
• How to increase their value to the firm which in turn will give them the ability to earn more than ever
• Learn to look at their job from the owner’s perspective and learn how to become indispensable and more valuable
• How to become a more attractive candidate for any hiring firm

Practitioners

Building and Maintaining a Healthy Practice – ‘Melting Pot’ 

Description: There are so many moving parts that ensures a practice is extremely profitable. This workshop is a great place to start as it will touch on many areas of a practice without going much in depth in any one. This workshop will provide a great list of recommendations and ideas of the many things which is sure to greatly impact your ability to thrive in practice and earn more than one ever thought possible. It will then allow practitioners to better identify areas that need immediate attention (low hanging fruit) and help identify which other presentations that may be useful and of interest to them.

Participants will learn:

• Key financial and performance numbers to watch 
• Marketing in the accounting world 
• Time management 
• Employee performance, evaluation and how to motivate 
• Pricing your services (value billing) 
  And much much more

Practice Profitability

Description: This presentation is intended to help business owners/managers identify the factors and adjustments to their business that will most have the most impact on the profits of their enterprise. We will provide ideas of where to prioritize efforts, concentrating first on the low hanging fruit that will give greater return sooner rather than later. The workshop will also provide everyone with better insight on how to prepare, read, and use financial statements for management purposes and to gain insight on where to concentrate efforts for greater profitability. Also, we’ll provide owners/managers with reports that will help shed light on the business’ weaknesses and strengths.

Participants will learn:

• How to generate the information needed
• How to determine the right benchmark for the team
• How to read financial statements
• The value of preparing projections
• How to prepare forecasts that will ensure success
• How to identify key features of increasing profits

Time Management

Description: Running a business puts a huge amount of stress and demand on our time. Each day provides us with a limited amount of time. It’s critical that business owners make every minute count. Prioritizing tasks is no easy feat, but good time management can make all the difference between always being stressed (or not) and running a healthy, successful, and profitable business (or not).

Participants will learn:

• How to prioritize
• What to delegate and what to not delegate
• How to increase production
• How to deal with technological interruptions
• How to deal with time suckers

Delegating 

Description: Leveraging your team’s time and abilities is an important ingredient to the success of most business owners and especially accountants and bookkeepers. Most of us know this. Yet, it’s a skill most practitioners struggle with all the time. So what are the pitfalls? Why do so many business owners struggle and fail so miserably at delegating?

Participants will learn:

• The tremendous value and benefit proper delegation skills can have on your practice 
• The 7 most common pit-falls of delegating 
• Solutions to some of the most common problems of delegating

Dealing With Nuts Without Going Squirrelly

Description: Regardless of the business you’re in, you will be dealing with nuts. You know who they are. Those people who are totally irrational and cannot understand common sense in its simplest form. So what do you do? How do you talk to these people? What do you say or not say to such nuts? Ohhhh, the stress of it all.

Participants will learn:

• How to recognize a nut sooner 
• How to recognize the nuts that make you nuts 
• How to keep control of your own mind and not become nutty yourself and not crack under pressure 
• How to reduce the temperature of the discussions when nuts are boiling over 
• How to get nuts to at least consider your point of view when they’re so far up the tree, they cannot see the ground

Email Etiquette 

Description: Email is one of the best office tools ever invented. Or is it?

Those of us who lived in a world before emails will remember coming to work and getting right to work. No inbox to check, no distractions, and only the odd letter to open. Ahhhhhh yes! Those were the days. But of course, email has done wonders in our ability to communicate, do business day or night, having better documentation of conversations and discussions, and the list of the benefits is endless. But many of us have become a slave to emails, to the point where many would agree they’re the devil’s work. 

So, how do we regain control of our emails? How do we convert email to becoming a tool rather than us becoming a slave to it? 

Participants will learn:

• How to write better emails 
• How to make emails less time consuming for the reader 
• When to cc or not cc others 
• How to reduce your emails by 50% or more 
• How to deal with emails while on vacation 
• And much more

Effective Use of Time Sheets

Description: “I hate time sheets! Why bother with them?” Filling out timesheets is a pain, it’s time-consuming, and it’s difficult. So why do it? The reason time sheets fail so miserably for most practices is because most practitioners (accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, engineers, architects)  are either not using the right time/billing software and/or they don’t know how to use it. Proper use of timesheets will, without a doubt, increase firm profits by tens of thousands of dollars.

Participants will learn:

• How to properly use timesheets
• How to properly use a timesheet system
• How you can increase your bottom line immensely with very little effort or time

Employees: Retention and Motivation

Description: This workshop will discuss ways to excite your team and help reduce your stress, but more importantly, help make everyone’s life better and have more fun than ever.

Participants will learn:

• How to increase employee production
• How to ensure everyone is happier
• How to reduce turnover

Benefits of Team Meetings and Retreats

Description: A business owner should never undervalue the power of great team co-operation. To have an entire team all rowing in unison and in the same direction will contribute immensely to its success and the fun of the work environment.

Participants will learn:

• The importance of holding regular team meetings
• How often to have team meetings
• How to ensure team meetings are constructive and not time-consuming
• How to make team meetings profitable
• The benefits of annual team retreats
• How retreats can catapult a practice/business to extraordinary new heights if properly executed

Section 85 Rollover for Beginners

Description: This workshop is designed to provide bookkeepers and accountants providing tax services to business owners basic ground knowledge related to preparing a Section 85 rollover. It will not get into many specifics but will touch on possible pitfalls/risks and how to mitigate them.

Who will benefit: Practitioners and bookkeepers who have never done a Section 85 rollover and would like a better understanding of when it should at least be considered and willing to understand it enough to explain it to their clients

Participants will learn:

• How it works (in easy-to-understand language)
• When to do Section 85 (and when not to bother with it)
• Alternative ways of rolling assets into a corporation
• Suggestions to minimize the risk of a lawsuit
• Checklist of things to consider when rolling assets into a corporation
• How to do an actual practice set (prepare T2057 and letter of instruction to lawyer)

Firm Retreat Facilitation 

Description: RPM hosts retreats on site at the venue of your choice. Our RPM/T&A Training Centre is available for your team of up to 70 as well. All of our retreats are presented in a fun and engaging manner.

Participants will learn:

• SWOT analysis 
• Direction of the firm/company 
• Efficiencies 
• Marketing 
• Concentration on employee growth
  (how they see themselves, what they want for their futures, what they like/dislike etc.) 
• Looking ahead to be a cutting-edge firm

All retreat content is customizable and is really dependent on a consultation between Jean-Guy/team and the organizer.

Farmers

Succession Planning: Transitioning the Farm to the Next Generation

Description: This presentation provides in-depth information on what a retiring farmer needs to be aware of from an accounting and tax perspective. We will give an overview of options that are available and their tax consequences.

Who will benefit: Parents looking to transition to the next generation and farming children considering taking over the farm operation

Participants will learn:

• Strategies to slowly bring children into the farm operation over time
• Gifting versus selling to the next generation
• How to deal with farm assets (land, inventory, and equipment)
• Implications from an un-incorporated farm operation/implications from an incorporated operation

Succession Planning: Tax Implications Upon Selling the Farm to Third Parties

Description: This presentation provides details of what the tax implications are of selling farm operations to third parties.

Who will benefit: Farmers who are looking at retiring from farming, but don’t have the next generation to take over

Participants will learn:

• The options available to defer and reduce tax with proper planning
• How renting land might impact the Capital Gains Exemption
• Dealing with asset sales such as land & buildings, machinery, and inventory

Farm Succession Workshop

Description: This workshop is designed to present farmers who are looking at transitioning their farm to the next generation with a complete overview of options available to them by going through real-life scenarios. This presentation will take into consideration the emotional, practical, tax, legal, and financial implications of transitioning the farm operation and its assets.

Who will benefit: Farmers who are looking at transitioning their operation to the next generation

Incorporating Your Farm: What You Need To Know

Description: This presentation highlights all details of incorporating your farm including the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating.

Who will benefit: Any farmer who is considering incorporating

Participants will learn:

• When incorporation makes sense
• Pros and cons of incorporating
• How incorporation is done (steps and procedures)
• Corporate structures and how they work
• Using Section 85 (rolling assets into a corporation on a tax-deferred basis)

Delivery Methods

Presentations

Description: The workshop directory above includes many topics that are often of interest or challenges for business owners and leaders. However, should you have a different topic for which you would appreciate a presentation or a facilitator, Jean-Guy would be happy to share what he knows based on his many years in practice.

Jean-Guy only presents on topics on which he has extensive personal experience.

Webinars

Description: A great choice for those located in different offices or geographical locations, viewers simply enjoy a live stream presentation with the option to ask Jean-Guy questions.

Bootcamps and Retreats

If you’re interested in a bootcamp or facilitated team retreat lead by Jean-Guy, visit RêveNew Practice Management

Our 2 Conferences