BMO Bank of Montreal and PROFIT Magazine Business Coach Podcast

As energy costs and environmental consciousness arise, more companies are looking for better ways to manage their energy usage. It sounds simple but there is a lot more to effective energy management then turning off the lights at night. Not surprisingly then, certification programs in energy management and energy efficiency have emerged in recent years including the ISO 50000 program. Your business might stand to gain from such certification and will certainly benefit from wiser energy management. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with David Arkell, President and CEO of 360 Energy Incorporated.

As energy costs and environmental consciousness arise, more companies are looking for better ways to manage their energy usage. It sounds simple but there is a lot more to effective energy management then turning off the lights at night. Not surprisingly then, certification programs in energy management and energy efficiency have emerged in recent years including the ISO 50000 program. Your business might stand to gain from such certification and will certainly benefit from wiser energy management. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with David Arkell, President and CEO of 360 Energy Incorporated.

Surveys show that two thirds of Canadian business owners wish to exit their companies over the next 10 years. Surveys also show that as few as a quarter of business owners have begun their succession plans. Moreover, many if not most business owners expect a big payout at the end of the line, neglecting all the problematic circumstances that might surprise them in the meantime. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Larry Klar. Larry is a partner in a succession fund which helps business owners address some of these circumstances.

Within just a few years of its launch in 1998, Google Inc. became a titan of the global technology industry. Today, it's a titan of all industry, not to mention a verb officially recognized by the Oxford English dictionary. And Google's line of products and services has quickly expanded from a simple yet powerful search engine into a wide array of offerings that help people and businesses find information, collaborate and communicate. In recent years, Google has placed increased emphasis on serving the small business market. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Andrew Swartz from Google Canada in Toronto.

Most Canadians don't think much about the domestic agriculture industry and the challenges it faces. Even though it directly employs more than 300,000 people and touches every single one of us each and every day through the food that we eat. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Ron Bonnet, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, which represents more than 200,000 farmers and farm families.

Each year, about a quarter of a million people come to Canada to start a new life and a significant percentage of them are or hope to be entrepreneurs. Starting your own business is tough, no matter who or where you are. But that task is even tougher for new Canadians who often face linguistic and cultural barriers not to mention the lack of established professional network in their new country. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Roger Peers, founder of Newcomersstartup.com, a Toronto based consultancy specializing in immigrant startups. Also joining the Business Coach Podcast is Royson Ng, the president of Samtack Incorporated, a distributor of computers and consumer electronics based in Markham Ontario.

Although cloud is one of the hottest buzzwords in business and technology, the concept of cloud computing has been around for more than a decade. In fact, you might have been in the cloud for years without even knowing it. That’s because web-based email services like the ubiquitous Hotmail are cloud computing applications. Why is the cloud so hot today? Among small business owners and the companies that serve them, cloud computing represents a chance to do away with a lot of expensive IT infrastructure and access the latest and greatest applications on a shoestring budget. But as with any hot new technology, there are myths and misconceptions about doing business in the cloud. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with David Senf, Director of the Infrastructure Solutions Group at IDC Canada, in Toronto.

Female entrepreneurs are a large and growing market in Canada, but you might not know just how large. According to Statistics Canada, there are about 1.1 million employer businesses in Canada. Fully 46 percent of them have some degree of female ownership; 19 percent of all SMEs have equal partnerships between male and female owners; and 16 percent are majority own by women. Do the math and you’ll see that hundreds of thousands of Canadian companies are owned and run by women. Their economic contributions are huge. Despite the hefty vibrancy of this segment of the business world, female entrepreneurs continue to face some barriers to their success. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Professor Barbara Orser, Deloitte Chair in the Management of Growth Enterprises at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa.

In the fall of 2011, volatile might be the only adjective that applies to global financial markets on any given day. The same goes for the economic indicators on which many business owners placed their bets for the quarter and the year ahead. It seems that every piece of positive economic news is followed the next day by negative economic news and that is sure to make an entrepreneurs life difficult. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital.

It is a well known fact that on average big businesses offer richer compensation and benefits packages than smaller companies do. And while money isn't everything, it is a significant something to just about everyone in the workforce. And that makes competing for talent a tougher job for entrepreneurial firms. However, offering an employee health benefits plan might be easier and less costly than you think. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Michael Worb. Michael is the President and CEO of Pal Benefits, a human resources consulting practice, headquartered in Toronto.

Whether you are getting ready to sell your own business, merely thinking of starting a business, or fall somewhere in between, business valuation is a crucial subject for you. However, for a lot of Canadian entrepreneurs building business value is an afterthought, and many overestimate just what their companies are worth. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with John Warrillow. John has built and exited four companies during his entrepreneurial career. John is also the author of Built to Sell, creating a business that can thrive without you.

We are constantly reminded of the innovation deficit in Canada, the notion that Canadian companies are not creating enough world class products to sell on the global stage. Although the term is usually applied in reference to technology companies and university research labs, there is an innovation deficit with small and mid-size businesses as well. One of the best sources of innovation and competitive advantage is simply this: knowing your customer well and applying that knowledge in beneficial ways. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Paul Rivett, Client Services Manager at VentureLAB.

Every Canadian business and business person has the opportunity to join a Chamber of Commerce and many do. But for the many that don’t, what are they missing out on? Valuable opportunities for networking, professional development and influencing public policy are among the benefits of belonging to a Chamber of Commerce. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Valerie Payn, president and CEO of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce.

No generation in today’s workforce is as maligned as the cohort known as Generation Y or the Millennials. Born between the late 1970s and early 2000s, members of the Gen Y cohort are often described as self-absorbed, impatient, overconfident and the keepers of a massive sense of entitlement. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Grail Noble, the founder and President of Toronto based event management firm Yellow House Events. From 2005 to 2010, sales at Yellow House grew by 1,268 percent, earning it 41st spot on this year’s PROFIT 200 ranking of Canada’s fastest growing companies. All of that growth was achieved with an employee base comprised exclusively of Millennials.

According to common notions of leadership, business leaders are charged with guiding and energizing their people and partners consistently and continually. It is a tall order but there is no single secret to filling it successfully. How do you win that battle? By applying the six "C's" of the maestro. In this episode of the Business Coach Podcast Ian chats with Michael Lipkin, president of Environics Lipkin, the Motivation Arm of Toronto based Environics Research Group. Mike is also one of North America's preeminent coaches and motivators, and one of the keynote presenters at Growth Camp 2011, PROFIT Magazine's upcoming conference for Canada's top new growth companies.