Events

 

Difficult people seem to crop up regularly in every business.  They may be on the team – or they may be customers, suppliers or some other stakeholders.  These people can either suck up a disproportionate amount of your time, energy and money – or you can deal with the situation decisively.

For this Business Owners Forum event, we will assemble a  varied panel of three who have overcome significant challenges in this area – and who will discuss this topic from three different perspectives.  Full details including the three panellists will be posted here in the next couple of days.

This event will be held at the BNZ Partners facility on Constellation Drive, North Harbour at 5:30pm on Thursday 1 May 2014 – and will run through to 7:30pm on the night.

As always for Business Owners Forum events, this session will be free of charge and completely free of sales pitches from the supporters or the panelists.  And there will be pizza, beer and wine to lubricate quality discussion.

Business Owners Forums are held monthly – alternating between Whangarei, Albany and Newmarket venues.  This event will be repeated in Newmarket on Wednesday 21 May.

If you’d like to attend this event, email Fraser Hurrell before this event fills up.  And if you’d like to be included on the invite list for future events, just add your contact details in the box to the right.

Back in 1897, three English Lords made a name for themselves by ruling that a company was indeed a separate legal entity from its shareholders.  The case was Salomon v Salomon, and the unanimous ruling was that the creditors of a company could not sue the shareholders to pay the company’s debts.

Thus the principle of limited liability for company shareholders was cast in stone – and this case continues to provide a precedent over a century later.

But when does the limited liability of shareholders become unlimited liability for the company’s debts?  Under what circumstances can you as shareholder or director find yourself personally liable for company debts?  Is this potentially a problem for you?  What can you do to protect yourself against this happening?  And conversely, what opportunities might be available to attack the shareholders and directors of a company that owes you money?

Our panel will address these questions on the day.

This event will be held at the Elevate CA Limited office, level 4, 35 Robert Street, Whangarei at 5:30pm on Thursday 13 March 2014 – and will run through to 7:30pm on the night.

As always for Business Owners Forum events, this session will be free of charge and completely free of sales pitches from the supporters or the panelists.  And there will be pizza, beer and wine to lubricate quality discussion.

Business Owners Forums are held monthly – alternating between Whangarei, Albany and Newmarket venues.

If you’d like to attend this event, email Fraser Hurrell before this event fills up.  And if you’d like to be included on the invite list for future events, just add your contact details in the box to the right.

 

Becoming director of a company is easy.  All you need is to be appointed by the shareholders, to accept that appointment – and to not be a person disqualified from being a director under the Companies Act.  Simple.  But with that appointment comes significant duties and obligations – enforceable by significant penalties including the possibility of imprisonment under various Acts.

 

Here is our star panel for this event:

Bruce Sheppard – a non-politically correct agent provocateur, founder of the New Zealand Shareholders’ Association and director of several New Zealand companies.

Damien Grant – insolvency practitioner, director of Waterstone Insolvency Limited and a party to numerous court cases that have addressed the questions of director’s duties and liabilities.

Mark Wynne – a professional investor and director – and veteran of Fonterra in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore leading Fonterra’s charge in the Asean region.

This event will be held at the BNZ Partners facility on Constellation Drive, North Harbour at 5:30pm on Thursday 20 February 2014 – and will run through to 7:30pm on the night.

As always for Business Owners Forum events, this session will be free of charge and completely free of sales pitches from the supporters or the panelists.  And there will be pizza, beer and wine to lubricate quality discussion.

Business Owners Forums are held monthly – alternating between Whangarei, Albany and Newmarket venues.  This event will be repeated in Newmarket on Wednesday 19 March.

If you’d like to attend this event, email Fraser Hurrell before this event fills up.  And if you’d like to be included on the invite list for future events, just add your contact details in the box to the right.

 

 

This will be the final BOF event for 2013 – and a repeat of the 17 October event in Albany:

Moving to the cloud seems to be the buzz phrase of the year.  Applications and services are hosted from the cloud, data is stored in the cloud – and servers are moving to the cloud.  Everyone from your accountant to your graphic designer is likely to be using the cloud for some or all of these business processes.  So does your business need to become more cloud oriented?  What does that mean for you?  What are the benefits and what are the potential pitfalls?

Proponents wax lyrical about access from any device, reduced reliance on on-site IT management and cost savings.  But what about the time and effort to transition to the cloud?  And how about the risk of reliance on your internet service to operate your business?  And can you trust your cloud provider with the security and privacy of your data?

How do you consider the tradeoffs between cost, security, ease of management, vulnerability to far-away providers and ease of access?  Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

For this event we have assembled a quality panel comprising two business owners who have tackled this issue in their own business – and an expert who has seen the issues as they unfold from a professional point of view:

 

Mark Greenslade:  Mark is General Manager of Family Law Results, whose servers, data and key business processes have been operating in the cloud for some three years.  Mark will share some of the roadblocks and successes in their journey to the cloud from the perspective of a management team who were not IT professionals when they took their first steps in a direction that was largely uncharted in the legal industry.

Philip Adamson:  Philip is a director of OutSource IT, who deliver outsourced IT support to SMEs.  Philip and his team have done quite a number of successful cloud migrations, but they are also now seeing businesses coming back OUT of the cloud in various areas because they went in without the proper information and preparation. Philip believes the media has a lot to answer for in regards the benefits and expectations around the cloud.  Philip will share some of his experiences as an IT professional in this space.

Danielle Butler:  Danielle is owner of Medical Uniforms New Zealand, whose staff operate entirely in the cloud using Unleashed, Xero and Zoho – as well as free cloud based services like MailChimp.  Danielle likes to challenge the status quo of how a business should look – and she “has her head in the cloud”.  If you’re curious about Cloud technology and finding ways of utilising it to make your business better, come and hear what Danielle has to share.

 

This event will be held at the ATEED Central office, level 8, 139 Quay Street, Auckland at 5:30pm on Wednesday 20 November 2013 – and will run through to 7:30pm on the night.  There is plenty of parking across the road at the Downtown Carpark.

As always for Business Owners Forum events, this session will be free of charge and completely free of sales pitches from the supporters or the panelists.  And there will be pizza, beer and wine to lubricate quality discussion.

Business Owners Forums are held monthly – alternating between Whangarei, Albany and Newmarket venues.

If you’d like to attend this event, email Fraser Hurrell before this event fills up.  And if you’d like to be included on the invite list for future events, just add your contact details in the box to the right.