The 2025 production season is fast approaching! Applications Now Open – Apply Today
Join a group of like-minded entrepreneurs as you work towards a milestone in your own business. This program is designed to incorporate the wealth of knowledge from our Subject Matter Experts as well as provide a connection for networking with businesses that are going through the same growth stage as yourself.
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The 2025 production season is fast approaching!
Did you know there are many opportunities to find and keep employees for your farms, even in an environment of upward wage pressures?
This winter, a significant portfolio of wage subsidies, post-secondary co-op placement, apprenticeships, and other support programs for farmers and food producers will be available.
Now is the time to plan to staff your food enterprise for the 2025 production season.
This 6-week series of recorded workshops and biweekly working groups will help you prepare for upcoming recruitment opportunities and staff onboarding.
Level up your hiring plan for the 2025 production season. In this webinar, you will learn the basics of getting your farm ready to find the people who will make your season great.
Learn about:
Writing appealing job descriptions for agriculture
How to pitch your farm as an attractive place to work
Safety and compliance for agriculture businesses
Employment regulations for on and off-the-farm
Wage planning and budgets
Recruiting suitable candidates is critical to success on the farm. This session will outline where and how you can find the superstars who you want on your team this year.
Learn about:
Where to advertise so candidates can find you
Different types of wage support programs and recruiting support
Various employment models that are available to you, such as Co-op students and retraining programs
Employee retention is a product of effective hiring plans that include a well thought out interview and onboarding plan.
Learn about:
The ins and outs of conducting interviews (i.e. choosing an appropriate format, setting and duration)
Drafting effective and appropriate interview questions
Laying out job expectations (including those for seasonal workers)
Involving the right people in the screening process
Training and mentoring new employees
Calling all food producers looking to get into the wholesale business or those planning a visit to a trade show this year! The Distribution Bootcamp is a three-part series where you will work with our Advisors to prepare your product and pitch for wholesale buyers and distributors alongside other producers in your region.
Registration is now closed.
Topic 1: Being a Good Supplier
Date: September 26, 2023
Topic 2: What to Prepare for Your Pitch Meeting
Date: October 3, 2023
Date: October 3, 2023
Date: October 10 , 2023
Topic 3: Prepare for Food Expos and Trade Shows
Date: October 17, 2023
Date: October 24, 2023
Food growers need to know how to price their products to make their farms sustainable and increase revenue. Understanding pricing fundamentals allows us to improve efficiency and reduce expenses. This series is for food growers who want to improve pricing models to make a profit in 2024. During this 8-week series of workshops and working groups, we will learn how to calculate production costs for effective planning and product pricing, and we will dive into using margins to plan for cost of production, revenue, and staffing.
Registration has now ended. Please check back later for the On-Demand version.
Learn about:
Why farmers should know how much it costs to grow a unit of product
How to calculate the cost of production for sustainability, growth and profit
Learn about:
How to use financial statements to calculate operating costs (i.e. growing and packaging) and fixed costs (i.e. mortgage/lease) to price our products
How to use your unit cost data to understand production intensity and harvest intervals for what you grow
Learn about:
How to plan for profit before you put anything in the ground or in the barn
How to use break-even analysis to calculate how many units you need in a given production area to produce enough to exceed your operating costs
Learn about:
Why data and gut feelings can sometimes give you different answers
How to use break-even analysis to make data-driven decisions; for example, how much labour will be required, how much shrink to account for, how to think about potential risk, how to plan future harvests, how to consider future land opportunities
Learn to leverage your financial reporting to make better business decisions.
One of the best tools business owners can use is their financial reporting!
During this 10 week series of recorded workshops and live working groups, you will learn the fundamentals of these influential reports and how to use them to make data-driven decisions. You will know what the information tells you about your business, what changes to make to get more accurate data and key ratios to analyze your business’s health.
Registration is now closed.
Commit to 10 weeks of learning to leverage your financial reporting to make better business decisions.
One of the best tools business owners can use is their financial reporting. Join us for this multi-week series of recorded workshops and live working groups to learn the fundamentals of these influential reports and how to use them to make data-driven decisions. Learn what the information tells you about your business, what changes to make to get more accurate data and key ratios to analyze your company’s financial health.
Qualification Requirements:
Space is limited, and specific business requirements are required. Once you apply, a BBA Program Representative will contact you.
Annual Profit and Loss (P&L) Statement; Trailing 12-month (TTM) Profit and Loss
We all know that the Annual Profit and Loss (P & L) Statement is useful to report taxable income for the government. But does it give us enough information to manage a business effectively? Adjusting financial reporting processes can optimize a business.
In this session, we explore:
– adding detail to a profit and loss statement for better business management overall
– increasing frequency of financial reporting for access to relevant, up-to-date information throughout the year
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS); Gross Margins (GM); Chart of Accounts (COA)
A detailed Chart of Accounts (COA) allows for tracking where money comes in and goes out within a given reporting period. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and Gross Margin (GM) play a key role in financial reporting.
In this session, we explore:
– What is COGS and why is it important to include in a P & L statement?
– Why is Gross Margin one of the most important numbers to have on a P & L statement?
– How and why do we lay out revenue centres to correlate with COGS?
– How do we lay out Point of Sale (POS) for the Chart of Accounts (COA)?
In-Depth P&L: Sales Channel Analysis; Gross Margin by Revenue Channel; Gross Margin Calculations
Often when we look at a Profit and Loss Statement, we focus on the revenue listed at the top and the profit listed at the bottom. But what about the data in between? To make data-driven decisions for a business, we need to pay close attention to Gross Margin and Gross Margin per revenue channel.
In this session, we will explore:
– Why calculating Gross Margin per revenue channel matters
– Sales channel analysis (calculating Gross Margin by revenue channel)
– Decisions that can (and should) be made with this data
Margins and Ratios: Pro Forma vs TTM and Break-Even Analysis
The TTM is an invaluable accounting tool that allows us to look back and spot trends over time. But to scale a business up or down through any market condition and survive, we need to look forward and plan accordingly. A Pro Forma, also generated monthly, allows us to forecast how the business is likely to perform in the future by projecting the potential financial impact of hypothetical strategies. A Pro Forma empowers us to justify decisions we make in our business.
In this session, we will explore:
– Using a Pro Forma to numerically test potential strategies in the service industry vs in the manufacturing industry
– How to calculate break even
– The role of break-even analysis in decision-making
Gross Margin and Profit Margin Consistency; Three Ways to Affect Profitability; Using the Break-Even Formula
To create a reliable Pro Forma, the TTM needs to be solid first so we can see trends over time. To do this, we must understand that the profit margin is the result of the intersection between factors we can control: revenue, gross margin, and expenses.
In this session, we explore:
– How and why to keep the Gross Margin and monthly expenses consistent
– How the break-even analysis formula can help a business reach profitability
– Three ways to affect profitability
– Monthly financial routines
Do you want to elevate your leadership acumen and implement a toolset that will propel your business forward?
Effective leaders are good engineers! This 12-week online series of workshops and working groups will illustrate the structure, process and tools of effective leadership. You will learn how to implement a reliable blueprint in your business that will proactively guide your team to achieve predictable and elevated business results.
Registration has now ended. Please check back later for the On-Demand version.
If you don’t lead your team, you will get what you are given – not what you want.
In this session, you will learn about:
If your team is not focused, you are like a rudderless ship being blown in the wind.
In this session, you will learn the processes required to:
When making a plan, it is crucial that you are clear on your vision, mission and values.
In this session, you will learn:
When everyone is accountable, no one is accountable.
Clear communication creates accountability and provides a framework for success.
In this session, you will learn how to create clarity for your team and empower them through:
Leadership involves not only a framework but also someone to implement that framework. That is what it means to be a leader; you are the only one who can do it.
In this session, you will learn how to use structure, process and tools to empower your team to execute a plan while:
The world does not stand still, and neither does your business. If you don’t continue to revisit your plans, learn from mistakes and adjust, you will not optimize and/or be able to scale your business.
In this session, you will learn to:
A company needs a stable foundation to thrive. The Growth Learning Pathway will give you a fundamental understanding of the key components to develop a successful growth strategy.
During this 10-week series of live online workshops and working groups, BBA Advisors will guide you through the essential fundamentals and teach you how to strategically position your company for growth and expansion.
Applications are closed.
Course Description: A company needs a stable foundation to thrive. The Growth Learning Pathway will guide you through the essential fundamentals, teaching you how to strategically position your company for growth and expansion.
Course Objective: This pathway will help you understand the key components to develop a successful growth strategy.
Qualification Requirements:
Space is limited, and specific business requirements are required.
Once you apply, a BBA Program Representative will contact you.
What is growth, and what are the key components of a growth strategy?
Course Outcome
Defining your Business Model – Building a reliable result machine.
Who are your customers, and how do you leverage them?
How to develop and implement a Marketing Strategy.
How to Develop a Repeatable Sales Process