Since graduating from Ryerson in Toronto, I spent 12 years in management roles with Canadian Johns Manville and American Standard, and 8 years teaching at Humber College in Toronto before founding Harold Taylor Enterprises Ltd., an association management company, in 1967. I had always wanted to start my own business, and the reduced hours of a community college teacher at that time gave me the chance. When I decided to start and grow my own company, I asked myself what I knew better than anything else and could probably make a good living doing. It wasn’t the 12 years in management or the 8 years teaching in industry that led me to choose multiple association management, although I knew the experience would be helpful. It was all the volunteer work I had done for various associations that I had joined.
I learned early in life the benefits of volunteering. If you join an association to learn more about that field of work, get involved as soon as possible, and you will discover much more. For example, I had joined the Canadian Industrial Management Association when I got my first job in industry and took their four-year evening course in Industrial Management at the University of Toronto. When I worked at American-Standard, I joined the Canadian Ceramic Society and took their three-year evening course in Ceramic Technology at McMaster University. It was through a fellow board member in the management association that I got the opportunity to teach at Humber College. At Humber College, I volunteered to start a work awareness program for students during the summers, which earned me a reduction in teaching hours and an opportunity to teach an International Business course in the summer. Additionally, I accompanied students on six-week travel programs in the summers to visit the countries we had studied. And so on.
Volunteering, networking, and learning are essential for success in any field. My work in association management gave me the chance to hire top speakers from Canada and the U.S. during a time when I was becoming interested in speaking myself. But I still felt nervous, even when introducing a speaker, let alone standing alone on stage with hundreds or a thousand people watching me.
So naturally, I joined the National Speakers Association in the U.S. and the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers in Canada and got involved. That was long after I took the Dale Carnegie course so I wouldn’t faint on stage. And I started speaking to our association clients’ members. From the meetings and conventions of the speaker associations, I learned a great deal. For example, choose one topic, develop a presentation or workshop, and do it so well that attendees will tell others about it. Specialize. It’s easier to get a new audience than a new speech. Study others who speak on the same topic and do it differently. And so on. I didn’t charge my association clients when I talked to their members. That became an added service included in the monthly fee.
By the time the 1980s arrived, I had established a division of Taylor Enterprises called The Time Institute. I rented space from my incorporated association management company and was well underway to building a time management business. I started by sending out flyers announcing my free workshops to postal codes with a high concentration of companies. I advertised a 90-minute free seminar from 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. I had an impressive press kit created and developed a reputation for in-house training on a single topic: time management. By then, I had been writing a column on time management in a weekly publication called Toronto Business, which had a controlled circulation. I always invited the press to attend my sessions. Using the articles I had published, I quickly wrote my first book, Making Time Work for You. It was written because I had also learned from the speaker associations that speakers should write a book to gain credibility. As one well-known speaker told me, “People will think you know what you are talking about.” I must admit that it was not that great, but once it was published, it became a Canadian bestseller. The publisher, General Publishing, assigned someone to take a copy of my itinerary, and everywhere I spoke across Canada and the U.S., they set up interviews for me. Of course, I did the same thing myself with my later self-published books. And I recommend that everyone should do the same. Also, save the press clippings and include copies them in your press kit.
That experience of writing a book caused me to fall in love with writing, and I wrote hundreds of articles for magazines and my own monthly newsletter, and when high-tech opened up a whole new world for sales and self-promotion, blog articles on my website, and articles on social media platforms.
Retirement
It was then, in the 1980s, that I started to think about retirement. Life expectancy was 59.7 years in 1934, the year I was born. It had increased considerably to 79.2 in 2024. That’s an extra 20 years for retirement. It may have gained and lost a year or so since. We have a bigger role to play in how long we live than most of us realize.
At that time, I decided against ever retiring since the primary cause of early death seemed to be retirement. Especially if you consider retirement to be the time you stop working and start taking it easy. A sedentary lifestyle is unhealthy, especially if your brain retires at the same time.
When I initially incorporated my time management training company in 1981, it focused on providing time management consulting, keynotes, and workshops, primarily directed at managers. I sold a chunk of my original association management company every year by selling shares to my key employee, who paid me out of her share of the profits. Not sure how it works in the U.S., but in Canada, everyone is entitled to a lifetime capital gains exemption. So, you don’t pay taxes on money received by selling shares in your company. The limit has increased over the years, and it is now likely to exceed $800,000. Receiving tax-free cash by selling shares is great. A CPA can help determine the price of a share.
Besides consulting and workshops, I expanded my public speaking business by registering with speaker bureaus and began creating information products for back-of-the-room sales. The seminars and public speaking engagements required me to travel extensively. However, the products generated passive income, enabling me to maintain my current salary even after I took active retirement. I never considered retiring in the traditional sense. I enjoyed my work and planned to continue as long as I could.
Everyone knows by now that life happens while you’re making other plans. When my wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I sold my time management company and became her primary caregiver once she needed full-time care. I did repurchase the assets two years after her death, but the experience changed the direction of my life. It convinced me that the greatest time management strategy was not what I had been teaching. It was to live a longer, healthier, and happier life. That would allow anyone to accomplish just as much or more at a slower, less stressful pace, with the added advantage of freeing up more time for family and friends and enjoying whatever life has to offer. Since then, I have been taking what I call a more holistic approach to time management, which prompted me to self-publish the book, “How to Grow Older without Growing Old.”
My son, Jason, continues to assist me in the business, even though he lives in Mexico. We had downsized long before the sale by farming out the shipping of products to a fulfillment house in Florida. (Most of our long-term customers were in the U.S.) At that time, we stopped selling all but the most profitable products, except for the Taylor Planner, which had been experiencing declining sales. When I took over the company the second time, I closed the incorporated company and set up a partnership with my son Jason, and later, a sole proprietorship under Taylorintime for my semi-retirement years. The website now involves practically no shipping, but allows instant downloading and directs people to where they can buy my books. My son still sends out our time management newsletters to our 2000-plus subscribers and maintains the website, and I continue to write articles for my blog. They are the building blocks for future books. Writing is now my number one priority as far as business is concerned. It generates enough royalties to support the same salary I have been receiving from the company since 1981.
I wrote a book , Slowing Down the Speed of Life, two years before my wife passed away, and two years later, one called “How to Grow Older Without Growing Old.” At that time, in 2016, I relocated from Toronto, a city in Ontario, to Sussex, a small town in New Brunswick, Canada. I focus on writing, volunteering, and maintaining an active lifestyle. I continue writing eBooks for a publisher in Denmark (44 to date), which now assures me that I won’t run out of money before I run out of life. Plus, a couple of other full-length books, God-Centered Time Management, and more recently, Making Writing Work for You.
These books aren’t meant to be very profitable, but they do a lot to keep my brain active. (I firmly believe in the body-brain relationship and that you can take advantage of neuroplasticity to improve more than just your health and longevity.) God-centered time management surprisingly won an award from Toronto-based Word Guild for the best book in the education category. The latter one, Making Writing Work for You, was edited and given that title by the same editor who edited my first book, published in 1981. It was a great pleasure to be reunited with him after all these years. He calls it the bookend to my first book, Making Time Work for You, although I have already written a later one – my first devotional book, Timely Devotions for Time-Conscious People.
I believe one should spend the last third of their adult life primarily giving, not getting. My current volunteering involves serving as a deacon at a local church, coordinating a seniors’ ministry for the area involving free bi-monthly luncheons, and writing devotionals that are sent to our church members. I am vice president of the Sussex Seniors’ Centre, chair a writers’ group that I helped start at the local library, and serve at a local friendship club. I also offer a few free workshops on various topics to local non-profit organizations.
This may seem like a whirlwind life, but I am simply coasting with few deadlines or stressful events. An upcoming presentation on October 23rd for my peers is probably the most stressful activity in quite a while. At 91, I’m starting to experience dementia, which provides an opportunity to practice the memory techniques from one of my older books. I still have a zest for living while I’m here on earth. And although much of what I have outlined may sound like work, removing the fee structure and the obligation to do it becomes a joy as well as therapy. And I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this year’s conference. For those who have not yet experienced retirement, you may want to attend. You can register online at Professional Organizers in Canada. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
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