Palmer Blog
June 22, 2011
As I went through the busy drive-through at Sherway Gardens this morning, I marvelled at what a success this franchise based business has become. I tried to remember the first time I went to Tim Horton’s and couldn’t. Can you? I did some quick research and discovered the chain has been around since 1964. The first franchise opened in Hamilton, Ontario. Along with their brand of coffee, their unique offering was the apple fritter and dutchie. They […]
June 16, 2011
I had a client meeting that took the whole morning and I stopped off at a local fish and chip place for lunch. It was a small spot and a pretty casual atmosphere. A well dressed chap, in his mid-forties, came in and I noticed he was wearing a tie clip. I can’t remember the last time I wore one or even saw somebody with one on. I passed that comment on to him and […]
June 7, 2011
I have mentioned in previous blogs, that I was a full time musician in my twenties and after a long time away, got back into it about a year ago. I have a house gig at Nattie’s in Port Credit every Saturday from 2- 6 PM with my band www.treeoh.com. Sorry, couldn’t help but put in a little plug. The reason I’m referencing this, is I had a little reboot on what’s really important to […]
June 1, 2011
At the recent Transportation Workshop (Hosted by Dan Goodwill & Associates and Motortruck Fleet Executive) we, along with the other participants couldn’t get enough from the two shipper panels featured there. When it came to the topic of rate increases, the shippers were all singing the same tune. Somewhat paraphrased the comments were, “Don’t come to me with a rate increase. Come to me as a partner, who can work with me to cut my […]
May 25, 2011
Excellence is about the details, regardless of the business you’re in. I mentioned in a previous blog post about the introduction of Tim Horton’s “hello my name is… campaign”. When I was in the U.S. last month, I went to a Target store and they had a help button in the bicycle department that had a message something like “if you need assistance press this button and a representative will be here in 30 seconds to […]
May 16, 2011
When I heard of Wallace McCain’s passing, I thought back to my venture out to Vancouver as a young man. I was 19 and working at a division of McCain Foods in Burnaby, BC called Fresh Pak. My dad, who worked for the McCain brothers most of his career, had asked Wallace to check in on me. Wallace did so, offered me a job in Australia and gave me a little pep talk. I remember […]
May 11, 2011
For those of us who’ve been around for a while, Willie Nelson’s classic song, “Ain’t it funny how time slips away” still rings true. I had occasion to recall my first boardroom meeting the other day. I was a pricing assistant for an international forwarder and had an idea for a courier style envelope that was perforated in the middle, so you could have 2 different size products in one. I actually interrupted the VP laden meeting […]
April 29, 2011
It has been my observation that the highly creative mind tends to stay in a divergent thinking pattern until a hard deadline is imposed. Instead of honing in on one idea they do what I call the “creative bounce” and go from one great idea to the next in reckless abandon. I heard Canadian songwriter Eddie Schwartz tell the story of how he was commissioned to write a song for Pat Benatar early in her career. […]
April 25, 2011
It’s April 18th and I’m flying to Florida to enjoy a holiday. I typically take time off in late December as we shut down between Xmas and New Year’s anyway. This is something new… Turning the ship over to your co-pilots is a necessary evolution in developing your company’s management team. They may stumble or even fall but life and business does go on without you. I tried it a week last fall during our […]
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.