Special Offer For New Businesses

We understand how overwhelming it can be to get a new business off the ground. Potentially hundreds of questions are swirling in your mind. How do you raise money? Where do you need to register? Why would you need the services of an accountant, lawyer or other specialist?

For a limited time Silver + Goren has a unique and valuable offer for new clients. You will receive a clear, easy-to-navigate, 50-page business handbook to answer all of your questions. The guide addresses everything from insurance to obtaining credit to specific accounting and bookkeeping requirements. Continue reading

Selling Your Business

Selling Your Business“I have spent the last 25 years of my life pouring blood, sweat and tears into developing my business. I won’t sell it for a penny less than a million dollars”.

We have heard this refrain or a similar one many times from business vendors. There seems to be a belief that you will be rewarded for working hard. Unfortunately, this is not the way the market works. Continue reading

Tax Minimization

Tax MinimizationWhen building your economic value, the tax rule is simple: pay the least amount of income tax as legally possible. To get there you need planning and organization. With Silver + Goren by your side, accomplishing this is simple too.

You pay tax in Canada on your net business income, and the amount you pay is determined by different tax rates per level of income. Net income is the difference between gross income for your fiscal period (everything you make) and your deductible business expenses. Generally speaking, an expense is deductible if its purpose is linked to earning income, it’s reasonable, and not capital in nature. Examples of these can include business vehicle operating costs, certain meals or office supplies. Continue reading

Financial Planning

Vacation homes, trips and sports cars. Most people want these luxury items. But when raising your family comes first – meaning food, clothes, education, hockey/dance/etc. – all of your income can be easily, and quickly, absorbed. In this day and age, saving for retirement is not an attractive activity and is often shuffled to the bottom of the list.

You can’t have the Porsche without the plan. Developing a financial plan should be an essential part of every person’s financial management. While there are many pros, fundamentally, it allows you to approach your affairs in a disciplined way. Continue reading

Business Plan

A business plan is crucial to the success of any operation. Just like anything you do in your business, you need to be perfectly clear about the purpose of the task before you start. Here are just a few of the reasons why a business plan can help you be an industry leader: Continue reading

Marketing Plan

Before you can effectively start working on any part of a marketing plan, you need a clear statement and understanding of what makes your business different from your competitors. You have to be able to enumerate the ways you can stand out in the minds of your prospective customers. If you haven’t already, make sure you read our Business Plan section before you tackle a marketing plan.

There are many marketing resources available that discuss the standard components of a marketing plan. While each resource may be slightly different, the core components of any marketing plan include:

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Risk Management

Risk ManagementThe very nature of running a business means you’re dealing with risk. If your business fails, you risk losing some or all of your investment, as well as any money loaned to you. In addition to the overall risk of business failure, there are a number of areas within your business that expose you to potential loss.

Selling your products and services to customers who take too long time to pay (or don’t pay you at all) is just one example of a loss that could cripple or bankrupt you.

If your business requires you to acquire inventory and you must invest a substantial amount of capital to pay for that inventory, then your capital is tied up on your warehouse floor. You can’t use it for things like marketing or new product development and innovation. If you sell products that are dependent on customer tastes and preferences that can change, it is possible that some or all of your inventory can become obsolete and not salable, or only salable at a substantial loss. Continue reading

Hiring Employees

After you have your plan in place, you can start focusing on building an excellent team.

Hiring the right people is critical to the success of any business. In all but the smallest businesses your employees will have frequent interaction with your customers. No matter how hard you personally work at creating a great experience for your customers, your employees are the face of the company too. Their interaction with your customers will always have a significant impact on how your customers perceive your business. (see A Tale of Two Breakfasts blog for an example.)

How do you find the right people who will represent your business’s goals in the most appropriate way? Continue reading

Business Performance: Evaluation + Improvement

Business PerformanceEvaluation: Helping Your Business Keep Getting Better

Most small businesses keep records simply because the government insists on it. Records form the basis for financial statements and tax returns, used to calculate your tax liability. Often this process is only done once a year when the tax return is due (too often, the week before the filing deadline).

Our team at Silver + Goren believes record-keeping is not a chore but one of the critical factors in running a successful business!

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