Palmer Blog
March 20, 2012
If you think of all the choices you’ve made and all the different roads you might have gone down, does it ever make you wonder about the decisions you’ve made and the ones you’re about to make? I came to Toronto in the early eighties. I was a full time musician at that point in my life and against the advice of pretty much everyone I knew, I came to Toronto to give my music career […]
February 17, 2012
We had our new Yellow Pages delivered this morning. Hooray! Apparently 550 million of them were delivered in the USA as recently as last year. The half dozen copies we received, weighing in at 30 lbs, will go directly into our recycle bin. Last fall there were hundreds delivered to the mail room at our 25 story condo in Toronto. I never saw anyone pick them up and I believe the majority were recycled as well. […]
January 30, 2012
My last blog of 2011 was about turning over the captain’s chair to my staff while I took a 3 week vacation. A real vacation at that, not glued to my e-mail or solving problems from afar. I let them sail the ship and I relaxed. It was a welcome change. If you have an experienced team, the captain is only needed when you hit rough water. Steering the ship through a crisis is a […]
December 21, 2011
As we approach the holiday season I am currently 1 week through a 3 week vacation. Along with it being my first extended holiday in the last 24 years, it is really the first time I’ve let my team fully run the ship without at least some guidance from afar. The timing was right. They all have confidence in their abilities and so do I. It is a necessary step in the sustainability of my […]
November 28, 2011
I got into sales when my company started, decided it wasn’t my strength and got out until a few years ago. I read a book called “Truth and Lies in Advertising” and it mentioned the creative director (what I do at my company) needs to be the strongest sales person in the company. So I made an attempt and had some success. I focus on the business, providing the right solution and that seems to […]
November 8, 2011
Everyone has heard how important location is in creating a successful enterprise, especially in the restaurant business. We now have a chance to see if a well established product, great reputation and professional execution can offset a location with a long history of failure. For folks like me (that have worked in proximity to the Toronto airport for most of my career), a once popular location has been revitalized. Pepi’s was a fast food joint […]
October 20, 2011
If you take a survey of top executives in the transportation industry, how many would say that marketing their company is important? I think most would agree that it is required. I would also suggest that most don’t make the budgets or time available to make it happen. Typically, a sales and marketing VP has their hands full managing reps and their share of major accounts. They may have a flair for marketing but probably very […]
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.