Business Risk Advisor
Gerry Lalonde, CPA, CGA
- Practice founded in 1998
- 40+ years in senior operating and advisory roles
- Two public company journeys: NASDAQ and Canadian Venture Exchange
- 27+ years advising owner-managed businesses
- CPA, CGA
Corporate and executive experience
I trained as a chartered professional accountant, but most of my career has been spent running things rather than reporting on them. I have held the CFO, CTO, COO, and CEO chairs in national and multinational companies, and I have opened operations in several countries.
What taking companies public taught me
Two of the companies I worked with went public, one on NASDAQ and one on the Canadian Venture Exchange. Taking a company public is a particular kind of education. You watch sophisticated buyers and institutional investors decide in public what your business is worth, and you learn quickly that they are not paying for the last five years of results. They are pricing their confidence in the next five, and every uncertainty they cannot resolve comes out of the price.
Once you have seen that happen to a business you helped build, you cannot look at a private company the same way again.
Leaving corporate life
I left the corporate world in 1998 and started my own practice. The central work has stayed consistent ever since: helping business owners improve, grow, transition, and protect the value of what they have built.
The evolution
The language has changed more than the work has. For a long stretch this was described as exit planning, and before that as general management consulting. Neither term describes it well, and both invite the wrong first assumption.
What I actually do is help owners and their advisors see the business the way an outside party would see it, early enough that the risks are still worth addressing. The current framing, business value risk and future wealth outcomes, is the most accurate description I have found.
Why I have kept doing this
I have watched owners achieve a good outcome because someone asked the hard questions early, and I have watched owners get a poor one because nobody did. The difference is rarely intelligence or effort. It is usually timing and information.
In 2026, my wife and I celebrated 51 years together, and Victoria was our nineteenth move together.
Through every career change, business challenge, relocation, and new venture, she has been the constant. That is not a detail I would normally put on a website, except that it explains something about how I approach this work.
Major business decisions are rarely only business decisions. They affect families, futures, retirement plans, employees, and the people quietly counting on the plan to work. I have never been able to treat any of this as a spreadsheet exercise, because I have lived through enough transitions to know what they cost and what they make possible.
What owners have taught me
After nearly three decades working with owner-managed businesses, I have learned that the biggest risks are rarely dramatic at first. They usually build quietly. They become part of the normal way the business works, which is why they are so difficult for the owner to see clearly.
Most owners are not short of effort, intelligence, or commitment. What they often lack is an outside view of which risks matter most, which risks can wait, and which risks could materially affect future options if left unaddressed.
That is why my work has become more diagnostic over time. I am less interested in pushing owners toward a transaction and more interested in helping them understand what could affect value, transferability, and future choice before they are forced to find out under pressure.
After talking with him, you start to see your business a bit differently. Specifically, how it would perform if you weren't right in the middle of everything, which is something most owners don't fully think through until much later.
Current thinking
Most of my current thinking is published on LinkedIn, where I write regularly about business value risk, transferable value, owner readiness, buyer risk, and the advisor's role in helping business-owning clients protect future wealth.
If these topics are relevant to your clients, your business, or your planning conversations, LinkedIn is the best place to follow the ongoing discussion.
Other roles and affiliations
- President, Canadian National Chapter, Success Champion Networking
- Mentor, Futurepreneur Canada
- 8,000+ followers and 35 recommendations on LinkedIn