The Canadian Association of Family Enterprise GTA held its annual Family Business of the Year awards dinner on Thursday. What an inspiring evening of success stories from families who have overcome not only the usual host of market and competitive challenges, but real adversity and often personal tragedy to achieve prosperity and longevity for their companies. It was just the inspiration we all needed on a cold grey night at the end of winter at the end of a recession.

There were three presentations from award nominees (more about this in a future blog) and keynote address from Derek Oland, Executive Chairman and fifth generation owner of Moosehead Breweries Limited.

Last weekend, I finished reading Rod McQueen's "BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion" and thoroughly enjoyed it. It got me thinking about one area devoted relatively little space in the book - the entrepreneur's decision to go public.

Now, in 300 pages recounting the 25 year history of perhaps Canada's most successful technology company, you may figure 20 pages is sufficient to devote to the issue of going public. For the record, Research In Motion (RIM) completed a private placement of $34 million to institutional investors in June 1996 (12 years after Mike Lazaridis had started the company) and then completed a full blown IPO in October 1997.

I was given a lottery ticket as birthday gift at a dinner with friends on the weekend. The condition was that we would all share the pot. It was great value to dream for even a few hours of how life could change with $41 million.

Sudden wealth via the lottery, inheritance or selling a business can be life changing. In our business we see this first hand nearly every day. Unfortunately, for some people, the dream of financial freedom can actually turn into a nightmare.

Search the internet and you'll find story after story of cash windfalls turning into personal downfalls, with some estimates that one third of all lottery winners are in serious financial difficulty or bankruptcy within just five years of winning!

This week, as reported in Investment Executive magazine, the Conference Board of Canada released results of a nationwide survey confirming what entrepreneurs have known for some time: the cost of providing employee benefit programs is rising unsustainably -- 10% in the past year, roughly three to five times the rate of inflation.

What's more, most businesses are wondering if they're getting what they're paying for. While 78% of survey participants said they have well developed benefits strategies, only 14% said they believe their programs are effective at meeting the objectives of the strategies.

CRA announced this week that it will maintain its 1% prescribed rate through to June 30th.

While that news didn't make headlines, from a tax point of view it should have.

After RRSPs and tax deductibility of interest, I think a prescribed rate income splitting loan is the most effective way for wealthy high income earners to reduce their tax bill.

And a 1% interest rate offers an unprecedented window of opportunity.

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about the entrepreneurial thinking of money manager, Tye Bousada in my post, How entrepreneurs -- and smart investors - really succeed. I was inspired by a New Yorker article written by Malcolm Gladwell, entitled The Sure Thing.

The premise of the article being that successful entrepreneurs are not really risk takers, as the conventional view suggests. Rather, an entrepreneur's strength is in "occupying a 'structural hole'", a niche that gives him a unique perspective on a particular market" and acting decisively to take advantage of it.

Here's a related story of a seasoned entrepreneur who stands to profit from this great recession - not in spite of challenging economic times, but rather because of the turmoil and his ability to take advantage of it.

You are to be forgiven if you are having a hard time trying to sort out all the conflicting news about interest rates and inflation. You're not alone. Even the experts frequently disagree.

This is an important issue for entrepreneurs and investors as many of us borrow money - either personally or corporately (likely both!).

Maybe I'm basking in the Olympic glory and caught up in the national optimism, but I thought the federal budget(pdf) provided the right balance of belt tightening, cautious optimism and few tax changes.

The government recognizes the uncertainty of a sustained recovery, especially given the relative weakness in the U.S. The objective of balancing the budget over five years appears to be based on realistic GDP growth estimates. So much is dependent on the re-emergence of the private sector -- as government spending wanes and shifts from bricks and mortar to technological innovation.

Canadian entrepreneurs should welcome a move towards a "tariff-free zone" (the removal of all tariffs on production inputs for manufacturing) designed to bolster productivity although manufacturing would have liked an extension of accelerated tax write-offs on plant and equipment.

An article in the Globe and Mail by Wallace Immen; "Getting serious about succession" discusses the difficulties faced by many businesses in ensuring there is a process in place to groom future leaders of the company.

What about entrepreneurs? It's not that simple when leadership also involves owning the company!

Recently, McKinsey Quarterly published an article, "The five attributes of enduring family businesses"; which describes the succession pitfalls faced, specifically, by family businesses. According to research, "less than 30 percent of family businesses survive into the third generation of family ownership. Those that do, however, tend to perform well over time compared with their corporate peers".

We only just launched our blog and a few questions have come up about how to subscribe and specifically, 'what is RSS'?

If you have yet to discover the power of this nifty way to get updates from your favourite blogs and news sites, RSS in plain English  is a mighty useful 3 minute video.

The video explains, well, in plain English, the utility behind that ubiquitous little orange icon and how to make it work for you.  I got up and running in 4 minutes. Getting feeds from my favourite on-line sites any time there's an update. 

Thanks to the folks at Common Craft for creating the video, and the folks at lexblog for sending it to me, so I could pass it on to you.

But having a clear sense of purpose and awareness about what truly brings you joy can help defend against the notion of becoming 'wealth weary'.  

Only if you stop to smell the roses.

An interesting study by the University of British Columbia, reported in Wency Leung's Globe & Mail article, "If that chocolate tastes 'meh,' you may be too rich", found that wealth can alter one's ability to savour the little things in life.  Things like enjoying a waterfall while on holiday, spending a romantic weekend with a partner, etc.

"Hedonistic adaption - the idea that people get used to whatever they have" is an obstacle to happiness, Leung writes.