Palmer Blog
October 11, 2012
Sometimes you learn lessons late in life and that certainly applies to my understanding of the sales person’s role. I bought out my partner over 3 years ago. He did a great job looking after our existing accounts but he and I didn’t see eye to eye on our need to add new clients. It was the old farmer/hunter sales scenario and it’s a discussion I still hear tossed about frequently throughout the industry. Buying […]
October 3, 2012
My last blog was in August and I just came up for air now. Where did September go? Pretty easy to get behind these days. It’s time to put some extra effort into catching up and staying caught up. It’s a better way to operate. So you had a game plan and you fell off the wagon, like me? Does that mean the plan was flawed or that you just lacked the discipline to follow […]
August 9, 2012
I just got back from a week and a bit of a holiday. It’s hard to believe how quickly you’re sucked back into the day to day activities of the working man, or woman. I would have to say most of us are losing on the balancing act between work, family, extra activities, health, finances etc. Why is that? My top 10 tips for achieving work life balance: 1/ Quit your job 2/ Divorce your […]
July 12, 2012
In November of last year, I wrote a blog about the folks at Zet’s who took over a Derry Road restaurant, just north of the airport. It was a dubious location, where multiple enterprises have failed over the last decade. After my first visit, my thoughts were “I think they did it right and will be a success. It’s well marketed and manned and I believe their attention to detail will make the difference in […]
June 12, 2012
The first sign that a company is struggling with service issues is when you see a survey from them entitled “How’s our service?” At least that was my recent experience with a prominent Mississauga dealership. I trade cars a lot and I’ve always been partial to sport cars and European styling. Now that my young family and mini-van days are behind me, I’ve spoiled myself over the last few years and currently own a BMW […]
May 11, 2012
We moved to a condo a couple of years back and quite enjoy it. It has an interesting mix of people and the convenience of the condo life is great. The only thing I didn’t count on, were vampires in the elevators. I actually like vampire movies and the new one coming out with Johnny Depp looks like a hoot. On the morning in question, I had just finished watching an installment of Being Human. […]
May 7, 2012
When I started in the marketing business decades ago, PMS was certainly a big deal. It could cause a headache and cramp your style for days at a time. PMS, short for pantone matching system, was the bible for recreating your corporate brand on things as varied as golf balls, business cards, brochures…you name it. Every company had logo standards and PMT sheets and then of course you would have to match those PMS standards […]
I started Palmer Marketing at age 34 in January of 1988. I had 2 kids in diapers and a crazy idea about running my own company. I came from an entrepreneurial family and had no good reason to believe it wasn’t possible and as it happens, it was.
I’m definitely a country girl. I didn’t grow up in an actual town, village or hamlet. It was more like the middle of somewhere along Highway 28, surrounded by trees. Many thanks goes to my high school art teacher, Mr. Edwards, for inspiring me to choose this career path. With the realization that I actually could create art for a living, college lured me away from country life to the big city. Kitchener, to be exact, to study Graphic Design & Advertising at Conestoga College. Talk about beginning an adventure and a culture shock! Not staring at people with purple, green or some other wildly coloured hair was a bit of a challenge. City buses (lol thinking back), who knew they only stopped on the same side of the street as the bus stop sign!? Lesson learnt.
I love my work like I love summer. Why not? Summer is when I get to play my favorite sport—golf! Playing artist is a lot like playing golf. You need to be calm and cool under pressure if you ever hope to keep the ball in play; that’s rare for an artist. My best shots happen when I talk less and concentrate more; that’s not so rare for an artist.
I am the 8th of 9 children raised in Essex County outside of Windsor, Ontario. We lived on a gravel road, no sidewalks and our greatest adventures were in our own backyard. I still have friends I made in grade 1 and continue to stay in touch today. After graduating from the University of Windsor with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, I moved to the big city of Toronto and have worked most of my career in the printing industry. I got to know the folks at Palmer Marketing as a key supplier to them for over a decade.
To say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree would be an understatement in my family; at least when it comes to picking a career path. There isn’t a person in my immediate family that hasn’t at some point or another worked in the IT field. I guess there’s something in our DNA that pulls us towards computers.