Traverse Tax & Accounting, Inc. and Larkin Insurance Group, Inc.

What is your business doing to ensure that you retain experienced/key staff?  What bonds them to you and your business? 

Employees are your most important asset, and employee turnover is disruptive, unproductive and a severe drag on company assets and growth.

Nutriwise, LLC and Traverse Tax & Accounting, Inc

Prolonged anxiety in the workplace not only affects our on-the-job performance, but also our health.  On a personal level, discover how to recognize your symptoms of anxiety, and then how to create a healthier response.  This promotes peak performance, making a huge impact on your health.

Strategic planning can be complicated and overwhelming.  Sometimes getting a critical piece in place provides the momentum to jump start a stalled effort. 

Join this session on practical hiring tips and techniques that apply to any size of business and employer. 

We will include an interactive discussion on various topics, including:  reviewing resumes; preparing for an interview; interviewing format and questions; due diligence; and, answering the question “Does the candidate really want to work for YOU?” 

Lifetime Value of Your Clients

Once you acquire an ideal client, you have opportunities to add value and service to a relationship that can last for years.  A key to this process is accurately calculating the lifetime value of a client—and we’ll show you now to do just that. 

If you ever dream about buying a franchise, come to this presentation! 

Learn the basics of creating simple backups of your important data.  We will walk through the process of exploring your Outlook and QuickBooks files.  We will cover organizing your files and creating a useful backup system.  Learn how to burn the backup to a CD, DVD, or Flash Drive.  This class is for the normal computer user/business owner who wants to learn the basics of backing up and restoring data.  This class is not designed for IS or IT professionals. 

Eliminate Stress:  Learn “The Work” of Byron Katie

The Work is a simple, yet powerful, process of inquiry that teaches you to identify and question the stressful thoughts that cause suffering.  It’s a way to understand what’s hurting you, a way to end all your stress and suffering.  People who do The Work faithfully report life-changing results. 

This process can be applied to everyday business stress as well as to personal stresses.

What Every Woman Needs to Know About Her Financial Future

While we all need to save and invest, women face a number of unique challenges.  In this seminar, we will identify these challenges and propose strategies to overcome them.

Morale is the level of enthusiasm, discipline, enjoyment, conviction, and commitment that people bring to their jobs.  Morale influences productivity, performance, employee theft, turnover, absenteeism, employee-related law suits, internal conflict, customer service. . . your bottom line.

Learn how to improve morale in the workplace, satisfy your “internal customers,” and develop the continued success of your most valuable asset… your employees.

How do you get your marketing message in front of your ideal clients?  What roles will advertising, public relations, and networking play in your marketing effort?  It pays to have a coordinated plan, and we’ll show you how to put one together that results in more clients buying more of your product or service.

Creative Retirement Solutions

Ryan H. Sullivan

Are your personal assets at risk? The rules and regulations governing qualified/non-qualified retirement plans have changed over the past couple of years. Have you adapted to keep up-to-date with these changes in order to protect yourself as a plan trustee? Also, when was the last time you reviewed your plan design? Do you view your plan as "just an employee benefit" or as a high-end tax/retirement planning tool?  

Small business owners and participants in 401K plans will go away from this presentation with knowledge and ideas for improvement their retirement planning.

Self-Accountability and “Ownership” in Today’s Work Environment:  How to Achieve It and Why It Is More Important than Ever

In the “new” work/home environment today where employees feel stretched to the limit and business competition is intense, you don’t want your employees just “going through the motions.”  National surveys put employee lack of interest at around 87%.  Work is the cause of stress for 75% of employees.

This presentation will give you some ways to create and provide nurture in a work environment that instills employee “self-accountability” and “ownership” of responsibilities. 

Find a Franchise to Buy: Control Your Future—Live your Dream

If you ever dream about buying a franchise, come to this second offering of a popular presentation!

We’ll examine the growth of small business in the U.S., explore the benefits and risks of small business “start-ups” vs. franchise ownership, review the wide range of franchise ownership opportunities and the growth of franchising, and focus on franchise brokerage services which are free to those considering small business ownership. 

Does your business take advantage of available legal protections for its good will and creativity?

In today’s business climate, with traditional boundaries constantly expanding and blurring, maximizing any competitive advantage is a priority.  Learn how to select and legally protect identifiers for your business and/or products.  Determine whether your products or methods may be legally protectable.  See how trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets may apply to your business. 

Do you need to create Calendars or Newsletters to communicate with employees or customers?  Are you trying to complete these tasks in Microsoft Word, or you aren’t sure where to start?  This session is for YOU!

You’ll learn how using the Microsoft Publisher program can make these tasks simple and easy by using pre-built templates and formatting. 

Effective PR doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) drain your business budget.  This session looks at using public relations as part of an overall communications strategy.

We will discuss PR tips; setting priorities; realistic budgeting; techniques for greatest impact with few dollars; and using “free publicity” through events, talks, partnering, and relationship building.

Courageous Conversations for Successfully Resolving Conflict

Conflict is a normal part of life.  How we deal with it has a significant impact on business success.  It takes courage and skill to maintain safe, respectful relationships while still getting issues and concerns resolved.

This workshop highlights tools for courageous conversations that lead to successfully resolving all conflicts. 

Learn the latest tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the popular QuickBooks accounting software with QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor, Cindy Blaum. 

Profit from Gift Cards in Your Store or Restaurant

What if you could extend some of the Holiday shopping volume into January and February?  According to the National Retail Federation, 75% of consumers purchase gift cards in a given year.  We’ll discuss the reasons to use them to gain additional visits to your business, as well as to generate greater profits. 

This presentation will include design tips, printing options, merchandising, tracking, integrating with a point-of-sale system, and samples and best practices from various businesses.

Management

Is this a time when you need to determine the value of your business:  If so, then this session is for you. 

You will hear about the methods and approaches of estimating business value, simplified valuation formulas, and the impact of a private business on retirement planning and estate planning.  Also, we will discuss valuation strategies for passing on the family business to the kids and the implications of selling to a third party.

Improve Your Sales—Looking at the Salesperson “Problem”

Rick Peterson

Salespeople have many problems.  Even the most successful, when confronted, will admit they could be even better.  Three major problems of salespeople are organization, motivation, and confidence.  The average salesperson works in an atmosphere of failure, tension, and rejection.  They fail from 70 – 90% of the time.  They have a negative-conditioned subconscious mental attitude.

Let’s spend some time together learning more about the only place a sale takes place and the only permanent solution to increase your success. 

Tax Planning for Businesses and Self-Employed Individuals

The Rehmann Group

Albert Einstein once said the hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.  We’ll take the income tax (and all the other taxes that federal, state, and local agencies can throw at us) over the Theory of Relativity any day!

Our seasoned tax professionals will deliver business wisdom to help you understand how taxes impact your personal and business interests.  We will offer information on recent tax law changes, as well as yearend tax planning tips and tricks for you to use as 2008 draws to a close. 

Spicing Up your PowerPoint Presentations using Custom Animation

Learn all you need to know to create powerful presentations using the Custom Animation feature of Microsoft PowerPoint.  Most people who know PowerPoint are familiar with making text appear on the slide upon a click of a mouse button.  In this session, discover how to add more animation to enhance the slideshow and your presentation.

Fight Rising Health Care Costs with Health Savings Accounts

Traverse Tax & Accounting, Inc. and Larkin Insurance Group, Inc.

If winning the battle against endlessly rising healthcare costs seems hopeless, take heart.  Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) could be the break you’re looking for. 

This session will explain the tax and benefit advantages that HSAs have to offer and will answer your questions about setting up an HSA program.  You just might find HSAs to be your greatest ally in the war against rising health care costs. 

Members of high performing teams share a strong sense of purpose and a common set of values. 

Getting your message out is only half the story.  Once you expose prospects to your messaging, you must close the sale. 

We’ll examine every part of the lead conversion process to help you make sure that you turn more of your prospects into paying clients. 

Learn a number of easy and inexpensive ways in which you can ensure that your hiring process is legal and your hiring decisions are foolproof. Find out about opportunities during the hiring process to set the stage with commitments that can remain in place once an applicant is selected for hire.

If termination seems imminent, learn which termination decisions can get you into trouble and which techniques can help ensure your decisions aren’t second-guessed. Also, find out about the benefits of offering a severance agreement.

Training & Research, Northwestern Michigan College

Are you and your co-workers in the office ever frustrated by what seem to be wasteful activities and movements?  Do you ever want to be able to eliminate steps in your processes that don’t add value to your customers?

This presentation will help you identify eight types of waste and apply Lean Enterprise Tools to reduce or remove them.  You will leave with helpful ways to diminish inefficiencies and redundancies in your office processes.