Tim Byrne Podcasts

S02E18 – The Avison Young Episode with Steve Ichelson
 I've been looking forward to this one for a long time.  Steve Ichelson is a major player at Avison ...
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PM Expo will never be the same
Watch Tim Byrne Live from the PM Expo - The Building Show. Tim will be live streaming three times daily ...
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S02E17 – Kevin the Goat Live At PM Expo
Tim and Anthony are joined by a very special guest this week.  Our famed mascot Kevin the Goat joins the ...
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S02E16 – The Day After The Election
 Faith Goldy was easily the most controversial candidate in the 2018 Toronto Municipal election.  So it came as a ...
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S02E15 – Close Canada Post FOREVER!
Tim is joined by Anthony Vinzi to talk about a bunch of things affecting Canadians this week.  Canada Post is ...
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S02E14 – Sex, Lies and Videotape
For the first time ever Tim Byrne Almost live is actually live!  We broadcast today's episode on Facebook and Instagram ...
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S02E13 – Season 2 Blooper Special
Yes, it's time once again for my favorite episode of the season.  The blooper special lets you peek behind the ...
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S02E12 – The only mayor worth voting for
Faith Goldy might be the most controversial guest I've ever invited on the podcast.  She is a dark horse candidate ...
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Class is in session for the latest edition of Timology. Today I battle through an early winter head cold to reveal the state of the economy. With interest rates rising and the stock market sputtering there is a lot of concern out there. Rightly so. I think that the chances of a recession in 2019 are very real. A recession is only going to be amplified by the current political environment in the United States. If Trump gets re-elected in 2020 then the recession will be fairly mild. Not because of any great economic skill on Trump’s part. Second term Presidents tend to put their feet up and coast on their accomplishments. If a new guy takes power there inclination will be to cut to the bone. And that could have disastrous consequences for the economy at large. That’s especially true for Canada’s economy which is so dependent on trade with the States. So what can businesses do? Hunker down and get ready for the storm. If you are able to pay off any corporate debt then do so immediately. Rising interest rates will make servicing any debt really difficult. The other thing you can do as a small business person is double down on customer care. Focussing on those personal relationships is so important in a downturn.
Timology 6 – Recession?
Class is in session for the latest edition of Timology.  Today I battle through an early winter head cold to ...
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I always start the show by saying this is your Wednesday night drive home. But tonight that’s particularly accurate. My niece Alex Byrne and I recorded this week’s episode during an interminable four hour post-thanksgiving drive. We’ve edited this episode down to just the most offensive bits so I hope you enjoy it! We start the episode by discussing the big controversy of the day. The Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle had just concluded at the time of this recording. Alex took a somewhat dim view of the accusers. “I felt like there was a lot of hearsay,” she said. I personally think that when someone comes out as an accuser at the height of someone's career it’s pretty suspect. Alex and I then started to talk about the state of the family courts, something both of us have had way too much experience with. Family law is way out of date, in my opinion. Back when my Mom divorced my Dad her biggest fear was how she was going to live. Now that’s completely flipped. It’s especially bad if you’re a business owner because the courts tend to just make up what your net worth is. I really liked this episode even if Alex needs to work on her conversational abilities. (She’d dispute that.) Recording an interview while driving with a microphone in my hand may not be the safest thing I’ve ever done. But it worked out in the end!
S02E11 – The Battle of the Sexes
I always start the show by saying this is your Wednesday night drive home. But tonight that’s particularly accurate. My ...
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Hotels are strange places. They insist on providing all the comforts of home but everything is a little...off. Tiny shampoo bottles, tiny bottles of booze in tiny refrigerators. If your job is anything like mine you’ve probably spent way too much in time in those weird little rooms. After a while they start to feel more like prison cells than a home away from home. That’s why it’s so enraging when you get slapped with a huge bill after a lengthy stay. It just doesn’t seem worth it. That’s why I invited some experts on all things hotel on the show this week. Sara Pezza and Eric Barber both work sales for Realstar Hospitality. The company operates several hotel chains including Days Inn. What does a salesperson do at a hotel company, you ask? They get people into those rooms that what! In Sara and Eric’s case that means working with businesses that need a lot of rooms for a long time. That means oil, paving and construction companies. Eric and Sara deliver the straight goods when it comes to getting a real deal at a hotel. They reveal that most of the online resale companies are owned by Expedia. These so called “white label” sites look like different companies but almost always they are being operated by the online travel giant. The best way to get a dea? Call the actual hotel that you want to stay at. This is especially important if you’re looking for a lot of rooms for your crew. Hotels are more willing to negotiate price than you might think. According to Eric a hotel is much more interested in getting someone into that room. The alternative is that they are going to lose that business to the competition. So don’t be afraid to negotiate! Connect https://ca.linkedin.com/in/sara-pezza-csp-b24a162b https://ca.linkedin.com/in/eric-barber-2612023
S02E10 – Hotel Confidential – Cut costs while travelling for business
Hotels are strange places.  They insist on providing all the comforts of home but everything is a little...off.  Tiny shampoo ...
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The race to become Toronto’s next mayor is grinding towards it’s inevitable conclusion on October 22nd. The race started with dozens of candidates. That number has been whittled down to just just four viable candidates. One of the more unexpected survivors in this political deathmatch is an unassuming house mom named Sarah Climenhaga. Sarah doesn’t have the usual political credentials of most candidates. That’s what made her so interesting to Tim who invited her onto this week’s episode. Sarah is a community volunteer who is busy raising her three kids. She worked previously with the World Wildlife Fund but wasn’t particularly political. She decided to enter the race because she was unhappy with John Tory’s absentee governance of the city. She is a strong believer in collaboration and doesn’t subscribe to any particular party platform. “I agree with fair wages which is an NDP focus but I also believe in wisely spending tax money which is a Conservative principal,” she says. Sarah’s down the middle approach flies in the face of Tim’s more libertarian ideas. Tim is a strong proponent in reducing the size of government. He also thinks Toronto business is overtaxed, a proposition that Sarah doesn’t necessarily agree with. She does say that the pace of decision making is far too slow at city hall. They say that it takes as much as $2 million to run for city hall in Toronto. Sarah is running a campaign with far less money than that. She says her biggest strength is her ability to connect with regular voters and to actually work with people of wildly different political ideas. We’ll find out if her platform will succeed Oct 22nd.
S02E09 – Tim vs. Sarah – Toronto Votes 2018
 The race to become Toronto’s next mayor is grinding towards it’s inevitable conclusion on October 22nd.  The race started ...
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Tim continues his election coverage this week by travelling to Markham, Ontario. He’s invited young up and comer Abdul Malik to join him this week. Abdul is just 30 years old and that’s why Tim wanted to sit down with him. The pair don’t always see eye to eye politically. But they didn’t stop them from having a lively debate. The hot topic in Ontario these days is Doug Ford’s decision to chop the size of Toronto city council in half. Tim loves this idea. He thinks that government is too slow and unresponsive. It sometime takes years to get a decision that should only take months. Abdul is less excited about the proposal. He think that democracy requires more voices to be heard. Reducing the number of councillors might speed things up but it will also reduce the number of people who have a real say in city government. Abdul has lived in Markham since 1999. During that time, he says, there has been an incredibly low number of new facilities built for the quickly growing community. Community centres and other public facilities are just taking way too long to be built. He has put growth at the center of his campaign. Connect http://abdulmalik.ca/
S02E08 – Markham has a mayor (just not sure who)
Tim continues his election coverage this week by travelling to Markham, Ontario.  He’s invited young up and comer Abdul Malik ...
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These are exciting times in Ontario. Towns and cities across our fair province will be hiring new mayors in October. The political landscape has changed a lot over the last four years. Donald Trump has really shook things up. I don’t like everything that Trump does but he has made every stand-up and have an opinion. I think there’s a real benefit to that. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be speaking with several mayoral candidates. I want find out where they stand on the issues that I’m really passionate about - namely small business, taxes and PC culture. Today, I’ve invited Toronto mayoral candidate Gautam Nath to join me in the studio. This is the first time Gautam has ever run for elected office. It’s expensive to enter politics and Nath has depended on volunteers to help his candidacy. Nath worked in finance for big multinationals for years and wants to bring that expertise to local government. “The mayor is in the best position to make sure things happen for the people of Toronto,” he says. One of Tim’s biggest complaints about the Wynne government was her decision to raise the minimum wage. He thinks that if you give someone a handout it diminishes their incentive to work. Gautam thinks there is an analogy to the way Canada’s economy has operated for years. For too long, he says, Canadians depended on exports to the US. The 2008 recession made us realize that we have to diversify our markets. It made us work harder to compete in a global market. So what about John Tory? He’s been everywhere over the last few weeks but, in Nath’s eyes, totally absent for the previous four years. Tory was elected on the promise of creating the SmartTrack. “We’re still waiting to see where the smart starts and where the track begins,” Nath says. Nath believes it’s time for a change and voters are hungry for something that’s real. We’ll find out when Torontonians go to the polls on Oct 22. Connect https://gn4mayor-to.ca/
S02E07 – Who’s your mayor?
These are exciting times in Ontario.  Towns and cities across our fair province will be hiring new mayors in October ...
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In the second part of Tim’s visit to the good folks at Curb Signs he takes questions from a thoroughly overwhelmed audience. Tim’s truth bombs had left the group somewhat shaken but they were still in good spirits when the first brave member of the audience raised his hand. “What do you do if you have a client that obviously doesn’t like you,” they ask. Tim loves this question because it’s one of the most common problems a salesperson has to deal with. Tim refers to the book The Speed of Trust which he loves because it speaks directly to this issue. People will not like. There’s no fixing it. Period. The best thing to do? Phone your competitor and give them a heads up that there is some business for them at this company. Your competitor will be flabbergasted but Tim believes strongly that you need to do as well with your competitors as you do with your clients. The most important asset you have as a business is the level of trust you have in the industry. The next question is about branding. Years ago Tim advocated that Stadia change all their branding to pink. They drive Pink trucks and wear pink camo shirts. Tim did this for a couple of reasons. The first is that the colour stands out. But more importantly it makes Stadia’s workers more vulnerable in front of their clients. Building intimacy with your clients is really hard and Tim believes the pink shirts are a simple way of doing that. The one lesson Tim really wanted to impart to the crew at Curb Signs is that becoming a great salesperson is a lot like working out. To get results you have to be consistent everyday. You have to setup a process that includes cold calls, appointments and social functions. Set daily goals that will become a daily routine that will end up making shitpile of money for everyone!
S02E06 – Kicked to the Curb and Still Naked
In the second part of Tim’s visit to the good folks at Curb Signs he takes questions from a thoroughly ...
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