Entrepreneurs

Who Budding Entrepreneurs Should Be Following

A Twitter list featuring a who's who in the startup tech world >

Out Front: Entrepreneur Anuvinder Singh Wows Canadian Job Seekers

You’ve Got Work: Edmonton based online job board Wowjobs has expanded to 21 countries >

Show Me Your Niche

Meet a handful of entrepreneurs who saw big opportunities within small markets >

Old Country Ties Photo Gallery

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Getting the Picture Perfect

Were he alive today, Leonardo Da Vinci, medi­eval inventor – if only on paper – of the helicopter and the airplane and a master painter, may well have looked at Liette Tousignant’s creation, the Hang & Level, and thought: “Now why didn’t I think of that?” History records that Da Vinci, inventive as he was, usually failed – unlike Tousignant and her husband, Kelly Krake – to get his inventions off the drawing board.
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Don’t Fear the Plain Word

Christine Mowat
WordSmith Associates

When something is “contemporaneously therewith,” Christine Mowat swings into action with a scythe to cut through high and weedy language. Mowat is president of WordSmith Associates, an Edmonton-based consultancy that teaches plain language and lends simplicity to official documents.
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The ODD Squad

One in four small business owners in Alberta plan on retiring in the next five years, according to a 2005 study. Unfortunately, most don’t have a succession plan in place, says Tony Gifford of Corporate Partners International. Without it, owners can’t hope to get fair value out of their business and the company itself can take a hit.

Faced with a growing number of companies seeking – usually too late in the game – a succession plan, Corporate Partners created “operational due diligence,” a business-plan SWAT team, if you will. ODD provides a “quick and effective” diagnosis of a company that provides the basis for business investment, sales revenue and management review and the impetus for creating a succession plan, Gifford says.

“The succession plan looks at several different things,” says Gifford. “It includes an exit strategy and what would work best for that specific company, what kind of succession the present business owner/manager wants to see, and what kind of business strategy the owner wants to pass on.”

Small companies especially need a cohesive, formal plan because so many owner/managers don’t plan to retire completely. “We have a lot of people saying to us, ‘I’m not interested in retiring; I’m interested in advancing,’ which means there’s a possibility they’ll stay on as advisers, or move elsewhere into public service”, says Gilford. “These people need to know they’ve done the best they can for the company they’re passing on.”

Glenn Myers agrees. He’s a country manager with The York Group, which helps clients enter international markets and has worked with several Alberta-based companies in the last few years. Across the board he finds having a succession plan in place saves time and money in the long run.

“Exit strategies are the poor children of entrepreneurs. Everyone needs and wants them, but nobody spends a lot of time thinking about them,” he says. “You have to ask yourself, ‘what is your business strategy and what is your timeline,’ because what will bring the most value to the business is having all the processes and procedures already in place.”

Myers says that a prefect scenario for the owner/manager, the staff and shareholders would entail having a formalized succession plan in place three years before it’s needed. However, “I’ve never seen a company with one in place that soon,” he says ruefully.

When the day to move on comes, “you want to present a company that is clean and meets industry standards for revenue,” says Myers. And, most important, “you need to allow yourself time to do all the things that need to be done.”

Sorry, Hon, I have a conference call

If regular employees struggle to cope with work and family commitments, consider the plight of business owners: long hours, few holidays, modest pay – plus ear infections and 6 a.m. hockey practice. How entrepreneurs strike a balance between their companies and their lives >

Breaking Up

The Carpenters’ hit, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” is an anthem for business break-ups. >