Last year the baseball World Series pitted the Los Angeles Dodgers vs Toronto Blue Jays. The Dodgers were the heavy favourites, yet the Dodgers found themselves in a “battle royal” with the Blue Jays. For those who missed it; the 7th and final game went into extra innings before being decided in the bottom […]
Driving to our cottage each summer we pass through an old mining town. The mine and smelter have long since been shuttered but the mounds of slag, waste from the smelting process, stretch for miles. Today, that waste is being transformed into fire resistant building materials. Most enterprises are sitting on their own pile of […]
I’m sure many of you have heard the joke about how to make a million dollars in the wine industry … you start with 10 million dollars. Lately, the news has been filled with stories of vineyards in Canada, USA and Europe slipping into foreclosure, often featuring an owner who loved their land, believed in […]
A year ago we did a newsletter on Porsche and their North American Passport Program that got younger drivers into their cars. At that time Porsche was the envy of the automotive world commanding premium prices and having a coveted waitlist for their cars. What a difference a year makes! Today Porsche’s operating margins have […]
As 2026 strategic planning kicks off, I’m sure many of you will be evaluating business plans. To assist you here’s a filter used by Sequioa Capital to separate substance from hype. Before you greenlight any initiative, ask: Who cares? (Is the market big enough to matter?) Who needs it? (Is there real customer pain or […]
Read More… from Three Questions (to Cut Through Any Business Plan)
Google the words “sales funnel” and you’ll see that perfect triangle. Awareness at the top, purchase at the bottom. Clean, logical, ubiquitous…and completely misleading. A client had a problem they didn’t know existed. Following a standard playbook their sales team was equally divided amongst all accounts. It didn’t matter if an account bought 3 items […]
Market leaders have the ability to resist competitive challenges by leveraging their superior infrastructure, preying on people’s fear of change, and further entrenching consumer habits. This is the ‘incumbent’s advantage’. To challenge the market leader, “the longest way around is often the shortest way home”1. says Liddell Hart, a 20th century military thinker who postulated […]
When it comes to marketing a feeling can be more important than a fact. In the early 2010s, Coke was faced with plateauing sales mostly due to a declining engagement with Millennials and Gen Z consumers. Research showed that Millennials and Gen Z’s viewed Coca Cola as a generic, mass-market product that had little personal […]
It wasn’t long ago that Intel was the dominant player in the computer chip industry. Computers needed more powerful chips and Intel was the major supplier. Customers demanded more power and the Intel brand delivered, propelling the company to dizzying heights. However, a major shift happened in the market when Blackberry and later Apple and […]
If you’re from the western USA, you’ll recognize “Les Schwab Tire”. The company became the dominant player in their market, earning profit margins three times higher than their competitors. From humble beginnings in 1952, Les Schwab, knowing almost nothing about the tire business, sold his home and life insurance policy to buy a failing tire […]