Hiding from the truth will not serve you well, especially during a health and economic crisis like a pandemic.
Your business is always at risk. Maybe the threat is not immediate.
However, markets change. Products become obsolete. Often, a new competitor emerges. Tastes change. Often change is gradual. Sometimes it is relatively sudden. At times it is local in nature, and sometimes it is a global phenomenon.
Surprises happen. A squirrel shorts […]
A little over 19 years ago, my two business partners and I set off on the entrepreneurial journey that became Sunwapta Solutions. Over the years, we’ve had some successes, made some (costly) mistakes, and sometimes learned a few things.
People typically don’t learn much from easy success, aside from a false sense of security and overconfidence. Nor do they believe they will make the same mistakes you did – until they do.
I can’t prevent you from making any mistakes. Nor […]
There are two main camps in online marketing: business is business and business is personal. The first camp paints itself as impersonal, professional, and aloof. The second acknowledges that people do business with people. When done right, letting your humanity shine through your marketing messages increases social media engagement – without losing the professional touch.
If you are considering any of the companies in the Virgin Group, you will probably find the personality of […]
Arsheen Dhalla is busy doing remarkable work in Zanzibar through the Daraja Foundation. Daraja means bridge in Swahili. During one of her infrequent visits to Calgary, I had the pleasure to sit down with her and listen to her story. There are many stories to tell. For this first video in the series, we decided to focus on the development of life and business skills.
Initially when Arsheen traveled to Zanzibar in this capacity, her work primarily centered on an orphanage and a local […]
The past is gone. It is only an illusion that we can get it back. Good men must make the future great instead.
—
Have you ever had one of those experiences with other people where the moment was spontaneous, fun, and memorable? Then you try to make it happen the next year again, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as good? There is only one first time. The older you get, the more you are likely to want to hold onto the […]
—
What happens when you are building an expensive new polar research vessel, and you want to generate some visibility for the project? Why of course, you hold a public naming contest on the Internet.
This is exactly what the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) did.
◊♦◊
The new ship, […]
—
Alberta wasn’t always landlocked. Anywhere from 600 million years ago until 85 million years ago, give or take some rounding errors, the salt water of the ocean covered Alberta by varying degrees.
Then for 2 million years, Alberta went through about 80 glacial cycles. The last ice age finished about 10,000 years ago, bringing us to relatively modern times.
The federal government got elected […]
—
People buy Apple products, because Apple has a powerful brand that connects to their ideal customer.
Consumers can see the connection to the iPhone in their hand or the MacBook Pro in their lap along with the company itself.
It doesn’t matter if the products are manufactured offshore by companies and people they don’t know exist. It doesn’t matter if the components in the phones are fabricated by other companies most of us have never heard of. […]
You don’t have to make people lose to win. In fact, it is usually a bad long-term strategy.
—
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.“ ~ Zig Ziglar
If you have been watching Donald Trump in the news lately, you are probably quite aware that he embraces an overt and aggressive bullying technique when dealing with any opposition.
Most recently, this included attacking the credibility of a disabled New York Times reporter […]
—
Some people have access to more data, but unless you’ve invented the time machine, your guess about the future might be just as good as theirs.
(Update: Since this article was originally published in December 2015, the price of oil has dropped below $30 US per barrel and the royalty review results have been announced. Those […]