Tom Deans

Tom Deans is the President of Détente Financial Press, which specializes in teaching business wealth protection strategies to advisors and business owners. By combining humour and his experience as president of a family-owned multi-national corporation for almost a decade, Deans has shown thousands of business owners how to protect the retained earnings in their businesses. His unique experience leading a significant family business and selling it -- something three generations of his family has done -- offers a compelling new approach to protecting wealth and family relationships.

Deans is the author of the internationally best-selling book, Every Family's Business. The book reveals 12 questions that have guided the financial fortunes of his family who have founded, operated and sold their businesses for a combined value exceeding $100 million.

Previously, Deans has worked in banking and in government relations, has been the president of a railway, holds patents and has chaired a federal government committee on tax credits. Deans has been featured in numerous magazines and journals including Profit, Money Sense and Investment Executive. A frequent guest on CBC, MoneyLine and BNN, Deans is a highly sought after international public speaker on succession planning, wealth management and philanthropic giving.

Deans earned a BA from Mount Allison University, a MA from McMaster University and a Ph.D. from the University of Warwick (England).

His speeches aren't about just money and clever tax plans. They're about bringing into focus the importance of family and passing a love of commerce and philanthropy to the next generation. With his entertaining style, Deans has touched the hearts and minds of billionaires and small business owners around the world.

• 1. Associations

  Associations are being confronted with declining membership as aging business owners struggle to plan their retirement. Deans makes a compelling case that associations have never been more important and indispensable when it comes to helping owners with their business succession planning. Strong industry sectors and the very wealth of our nation depends on business owners relying on their association to help plan their last and most difficult deal.

• 2. Wealth Management/Financial Advisors

  Why succession planning is key to tapping $10 trillion of new client capital.
  
  Deans assists financial professionals in understanding the unique role they can play in helping family business clients safeguard their business assets.

• 3. Accountants

  When do business owners turn to their accountants for therapy?
  
  Deans provides business owners with the tools to protect generational wealth. Too many business owners have no succession plan – Deans assists accounting professionals in using his 12 questions to craft a sustainable tax efficient succession plan.

• 4. Business Owners

  Your business: the beginning, the middle, and the end.
  
  Deans provides business with the tools to educate themselves and their families about succession planning. He outlines the most difficult, yet crucial questions every family business owner MUST ask in order to preserve relationships and generational wealth.

• 5. Lawyers

  Welcome to the family: when lawyers make family business planning succession work.
  
  When a family is in transition, the business often suffers. Deans shows how lawyers can act as a guide during turbulent times and ease the process for themselves and their clients. Lawyers learn how to grow their practice by becoming a resource to a business owner's entire family.

• 6. Insurance

  A family's true legacy: talking to aging business owners about succession planning.
  
  Deans seminar demonstrates how knowledge and communication are fundamental to continuing a family's legacy – and provides the tools to get the conversation started. He shows how facilitating a family's business succession planning is the first step to placing the right kind of insurance.

• 7. Mergers and Acquisition Firms/Business Brokers/Private Equity Firms

  Gifting family businesses destroys wealth and families with dizzying speed.
  
  How your firm can offer families peace, order and good retirement. Deans offers a compelling argument that gifting a business is the greatest mistake a family can make. Instead, he lays out a straightforward process for a business to probe its sale, if not to family, then to the market.

• “Instead of the usual theme about how to hand off the family business to the next generation, Tom's book and speech offers a refreshing perspective encouraging family business owners to review all of their succession planning options, to challenge themselves by asking tough questions, and to focus on preserving their family wealth.”
  The Succession Fund, Argosy Partners, Ltd.
• “Tom's presentation is enlightening, engaging and entertaining....exactly what we expected following the book. He was prepared and open to discussing his perspective and experience as they relate to the complex topic of family business.”
  Canadian Association of Family Enterprise
• “Deans convinces his audience that businesses are temporary economic organizations always moving towards obsolescence – that the key to preserving generational wealth means abandoning the longevity of a business as a fundamental goal. With his entertaining style, he leaves you questioning everything you thought you knew about succession planning.”
  MacKenzie Financial

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