What are you doing to innovate how you market and sell your products and services? If you are trying to survive and even thrive at today’s oil prices, these two functions are the key to competing and staying profitable.
If you are unprepared or desperate, entering a new market can kill your business. Deep pockets won’t always save you either.
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Remember Target expanding into Canada back in 2013? They had deep pockets and resources. Then after a series of missteps, they pulled out roughly two years later, incurring financial losses in the billions.
Target Canada made a lot of mistakes starting with […]
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Many men have lost their place in the bigger story. We bought into one narrative that has not worked out and are now struggling to find a new one as the world rapidly shifts underneath us. Some are looking for a hero, and some are seeking to become one again. We […]
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I don’t usually mention this, but I initially studied to be an engineer before circumstances sent me off on a different path. Maybe that training causes me to notice things or maybe seeing patterns is just a part of me.
Quite a few years ago, I observed something about Calgary road designs. It seems like every major intersection project was an […]
When times are tough it is tempting to play a safe game. You might want to reconsider that strategy to win in business.
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In tough times, it is tempting to tighten the belt and keep doing what you do.
Our natural inclination is to reduce the bigger risk by taking fewer risks at all; to seemingly play it safe. If you are the sole breadwinner it feels like every business mistake is taking food out of your family’s mouth.
So we get paralyzed with […]
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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.
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The new ship, […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
Chances are you are making one or more of these mistakes in your marketing. Knowing what they are can make all the difference.
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Over the last few 15 years in business, I’ve seen a lot of good and bad. I’ve attended a lot of learning events, lead workshops, consulted and spoken at numerous events. I’ve had the opportunity to observe what others say and do.
Maybe you’ve got it together all of the time, but from my view, pretty much everyone blunders at […]
It is autumn and change is in the air. Not just the seasons but all around us.
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about change lately.
Not just the stuff that directly impacts me, but the stuff that is impacting our business and even more importantly, our client’s businesses.
I’ve talked to business owners directly impacted by some of the macro trends: oil prices, the dollar, globalization, innovation, technology and the competitive landscape.
For many people, this change generates fear or resistance.
Fear and resistance lead to an attempt at maintaining the status […]