CAPITAL IDEAS UPCOMING EVENTS SEPTEMBER 21: LUNCH WITH GOOGLE: THINK WITH GOOGLE AND MICRO MOMENTS Join Adster Creative & Google’s SMB Marketing team to discuss digital advertising strategies that make sense for your business and budget ■■ Where: #4218 - 10230 Jasper Avenue ■■ When: 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. ■■ Admission: Free. Reserve your spot at adster.ca/ events
C A P I TA L Q U E S T I O N
WHEN SHOULD YOU START PLANNING FOR SUCCESSION? Entrepreneurs share how they’ll transition ownership of their business “You can not start succession planning soon enough, it doesn’t matter if you are six months or five years into business, deciding what talent you have in the pipeline and assessing their attributes and implementing processes needs to happen as soon as possible.
Nadine Litwin, advisor and solutions manager at Integrity Plus Financial Inc.
“Succession planning is an integral part of a business plan and should be considered at the onset of the business, it’s a plan within the business plan. The starting point is to chart your time horizon for succession and then work backwards from there to determine the timeline for putting the pieces into place. How an entrepreneur plans to retire impacts the timeline.”
SEPTEMBER 22: 2015 IMPACT The newest member of CBC’s Dragon’s Den, Alberta’s own Manjit Minhas, shares her story of entrepreneurial success. ■■ Where: Maclab Centre for the Performing Arts (Leduc, AB) ■■ When: 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. ■■ Admission: $65. Tickets at business.leduc-chamber. com/events OCTOBER 19-23: SMALL BUSINESS WEEK This year’s Small Business Week focuses on need-toknow information for small businesses seeking stability and prosperity in a rapidly changing marketplace. ■■ Where: Various locations (Edmonton, AB) ■■ When: New events every day (Monday-Friday) ■■ Admission: Details at edmontonchamber.com/ events
For more great events, visit capitalideasedmonton.com/ edmontonevents.
COMMUNITY QUESTION
Debbie Engel, owner of Debbie L. Engel Professional Corporation, depc.ca
“The best time is at the beginning. That way you are always grooming the next in the leadership position and more importantly, you are structuring your business in a manner where you won’t be needed. This means, documenting processes, ensuring disaster recovery planning, creating redundancies where needed, building a great team, etc.” Ashif Mawji, president of Trust Science, trustscience.com
“Succession is not an event or a project, it is an ongoing cultural consideration for knowledge retention, career pathing and employee development. If you have not started, start now and build it into your HR processes and culture for long term vision attainment.”
Darryl Moore, vice president of Executrade, executrade.com
“Planning for succession should happen when you are developing your business plan. Plan for it early, but be prepared to revise the details over time. Owners should always be thinking of their businesses value and who will be in charge of it in the future.” Leanne Brownoff, business coach, Leanne Brownoff Consulting, leannebrownoff.com PHOTO SUPPLIED BY: LEANNE BROWNOFF
“I have started to plan for succession from the very beginning. It changes with time, but it is always in my back pocket. I try to keep things neat and tidy financially as I can, and I have brought in a specialist at the beginning to help me out.”
Kevin MacDonald, business consultant at L6S Business Consulting Inc, L6SBC.ca
What skills and resources should postsecondary institutions be providing to entrepreneurs?
“Succession is possible when you don’t care who gets the credit or leadership. If you as the owner, are suddenly unable to run the business, there should be no business disruption. The vision and mantra remains the same regardless of location or manager.”
Paul Tessier, CEO of Rope Access Maintenance, ramaccess.ca
“Succession planning should be considered when you start your business as it may change the way you setup your business. For existing businesses, consider how old you are. If you are within 5 years of retiring, you need to be planning now. Look at the age of your senior people and consider when they plan on retiring. Part of your plan is replacements for them.” Lorn Stanners, estate and tax guide, financiallyspeaking.ca
These answers are in response to a question posed by Wellington Holbrook, executive vice-president of ATB Business. Here’s his take:
“You need to start planning now, maybe sooner. It’s a fact that too many entrepreneurs wait too long to put a plan in place and it is fair to say that it costs them a lot of money or lost opportunity. Sometimes the hardest part is knowing where to start. Talk to the professionals around you, like your accountant, your lawyer and yes, your banker. Two best pieces of advice I can offer is: 1) Document your processes. If someone buys your business, they will need to know how to operate it; and 2) Get audited financial statements. Potential buyers will be leery if they can’t rely on the financial information and audited statements provide a lot of
More post-secondary institutions are offering students chances to learn entrepreneurial skills outside of class and some schools even have business incubators, which is why Stacey Ohlmann, director of innovation and technology priorities at NAIT, is curious to hear from you: What skills and resources should post-secondary institutions be providing to entrepreneurs? You can answer the question in two ways: Open today’s Capital Ideas email if you’re a member or visit capitalideasedmontoncom. We’ll publish the best answers, along with your business name and website address, on September 23rd.
Business owners helping business owners
JOIN US! S I G N U P AT : capitalideasedmonton.com
comfort and will help you maximize the value of your business.” R O U N D U P : R E C E N T P O S T S F R O M C A P I TA L I D E A S M E M B E R S Find the full posts on these members’ LinkedIn profiles or at their websites. We’ll curate a selection every Friday in our LinkedIn group, Capital Ideas Alberta. To bring yours to our attention, email it to hello@capitalideasedmonton.com or post to LinkedIn with the hashtag #capitalideas.
From “You Can’t Improve Customer Service With Disconnected Systems. But How To Connect Them?” by Tema Frank, founder of Frank Online Marketing ( frankonlinemarketing.com):
From “3 Years in Business. What I’ve learned and where I’m going!” by Kyle Giesbrecht, owner of fotofoto ( fotofoto.ca):
“If they are looking for an amazing virtual “One of the biggest experience that will barriers companies face trying to improve make them and their customers take a look customer experience at their company and is the challenge of say ‘wow’, or ‘that is so systems integration. All the wonderful tools cool’, then that is what I desire to do! I plan to we have now to help do that by diving deep us do more effective and focused into the marketing need to rapidly growing world share data quickly, of Virtual Reality.” easily and reliably. But how do you get them to do that?”
From “Job seekers are saying ‘No’ because of you” by Alison McMahon, CEO at TwoFold (gettwofold.com):
“In recruitment speak, we call the entire interview process the “candidate experience.” It is the job seeker’s perspective on how they are treated from the first day you make contact with them. This should get you thinking… how would someone describe the candidate experience at your company?”
Join our LinkedIn group: Capital Ideas Alberta • Follow us on Twitter: @capitalideasyeg