Summer is still a few months away but it is not too early to start thinking about your summer staffing plan. Specifically, hiring summer students. Students are eager to learn and work, great attributes in any employee! If you are interested in hiring a summer student there are a number of government programs to assist [...]
Over my many years in public accounting I have often run into clients who freeze when they think about the possibility of being audited by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). The general feeling with Canadians is that CRA are the bad guys and our government charges us too much for taxes anyway. I sometimes joke with [...]
Learning Business From Nature This piece originally appeared in the summer 2010 issue of Mingle. We particularly like the way Geoff uses nature to illustrate his ideas and challenge his readers to stretch the way they look at their business’s cycles. (J.T.) Since summer is the best time of year to vacation, play and be [...]
Make the most of it. The relevance of face-to-face time with prospective clients cannot be understated. A strong relationship with clients and prospects does many things: It helps to solidify your brand presence in the marketplace with positive word-of-mouth. It increases client retention. It encourages referrals. The question is, how do we create trusting, long-term [...]
Basic tips for moving receipts out of your wallet and into time-saving order. Talk to your accountant. Make sure you are clear about what is expensible in your business area. Keep all your receipts! Credit card and bank statements are not enough if your are audited. When you get a receipt, indicate what and/or who [...]
A Guide to Financing for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Atlantic Canada Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), generally defined as businesses with fewer than 500 employees, are a core component of the Canadian economy. In 2008, SMEs with fewer than 50 employees made up 97.8% of all businesses in Canada. The 5-year survival rate for [...]
How will you reduce your risk? As a business owner you’ve worked hard to accumulate your assets, so it is important to take precautions to protect them from risk. Following are some strategies that may help. Protect personal assets Gifting assets. If you gift assets to family members you may reduce the amount of assets [...]
Making work work for you. What with social media, smartphones, clients, friends and family all pulling us in so many directions, what do we do for sanity? Oh yeah, try to enjoy the summer time! Wouldn’t it be cool if over the summer we were able to build some balance in our lives, use technology [...]
In our anniversary edition, Mingle profiled realtor and developer Don Gardiner. Don was in the process of launching Gardiner Atlantic Consulting Group Inc., a new division of the very established Gardiner Group of Companies, and working with clients he couldn’t name at that time. The cat is now out of the bag, as they say. [...]
The tools of effective communication are basic. Here’s a communication skills checklist for a quick refresher: Eye contact: The next time you are at an event, have a look around the room. How many people are actually looking at the person they are talking with? The expression “shifty eyed” came about for a reason. When [...]
