Peter Grandich has signed on Atlantic Business Magazine’s newest columnist and blogger.

Who is Peter Grandich? Though he never finished high school, Peter Grandich entered Wall Street in the mid-1980s with no formal education or training and within three years was appointed Vice President of Investment Strategy for a leading New York Stock Exchange member firm. Now an internationally-acclaimed financial expert, he has made a 25- year career out of his knack for uncanny, accurate market predictions.

Labeled the “Wall Street Whiz Kid” by Good Morning America, Grandich gained national notoriety by being among the very few who not only forecasted the 1987 stock market crash just weeks before it happened, but on the very next day predicted that within two years the market would reach a new all-time high.   Proving his ‘87 forecast was no fluke, Mr. Grandich said in January 2000 that the year would go down as the year the great mega bull market of the 80s and 90s came to an end. He also called for the market’s bottom in March 2009, earning him a bevy of national press coverage.  Each time, he was right on target.

His ability to analyze and forecast financial happenings has resulted in hundreds of media interviews including GMA, Neil Cavuto’s Your World on Fox News, The Kudlow Report on CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Financial Post, Globe and Mail, US News & World Report, New York Times, Business Week, MarketWatch, Business News Network and dozens more. He’s spoken at investment conferences around the globe, edited numerous investment newsletters, and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost market strategists.

Grandich is the founder of Grandich.com and Grandich Publications, LLC, and is editor of The Grandich Letter which was first published in 1984. On his internationally-followed blog, he comments daily about the world’s economies and financial markets and posts his views on social and political topics.  He also blogs about a variety of timely subjects of general interest and interweaves his unique brand of humor and every-man “Grandichism” expressions with his experience gained from more than 25 years in and around Wall Street. The result is an insightful and intuitive look at business, finances and the world, set in a vernacular that just about anyone can understand. In his first year, Grandich’s wildly-popular blog had more than one million views.

He is the also the founder of Trinity Financial Sports & Entertainment Management Co. [www.TrinityFSEM.com], a firm with a Christian perspective which he started in 2001 with former NY Giant and two-time Super Bowl champion Lee Rouson.  The firm offers services to celebrities, athletes and average folks.  Grandich also provides a variety of services to publicly-held corporations on a compensation basis.

Peter Grandich is a member of the National Association of Christian Financial Consultants, and a long-standing member of The New York Society of Security Analysts and The Society of Quantitative Analysts.

He resides in New Jersey.

Click HERE to read and follow Peter’s blog.

[I]t’s safe to assume that each negative comment neutralizes from three to ten positives. For example, consider the process you might go through in searching for a dentist when you move to a new town. If you hear one negative comment about a particular dentist from a trusted friend or colleague, how many positive comments will you need to hear before you select that dentist?

Are your organization’s customers Promoters, Passives, or Detractors? These concepts are fully explained in Harvard Business professor Frederick Reichheld’s groundbreaking book, The Ultimate Question[1] in which he demonstrates that organizations such as G.E., Intuit, Dell and Enterprise Rent-a-car use the Net Promoter Index to great advantage both in terms of profitability and customer loyalty.

Promoters are customers who give a company 9 or 10 ratings. They reported the highest repurchase rates by far, and they accounted for more than 80 percent of referrals. 

Passives rate the company 7 or 8.  This group repurchased and referral rates were a lot lower than those standpoint of promoters, often by 50 percent. Motivated more by inertia than by loyalty or enthusiasm, these customers may not defect ─ until somebody offers them a better deal. 

Detractors gave a rating from 0 to 6. This groups accounts for more than 80 percent of negative word-of-mouth comments. Some of these customers may appear profitable from accounting, but their criticisms and attitudes diminish a company’s reputation, discourage new customers, and de-motivate employees. The suck the life out of a firm.

The Net Promoter Index is equal to the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors.

The premise of this blog is that we live in a feedback rich world, but most organizations do not harvest the feedback that exists to help them move from good to great. “One stellar exception is Enterprise Rent-a-car which found that by measuring and consulting with their promoters “has helped Enterprise move to the top of the customer satisfaction by word of mouth rather than expensive advertizing.” 

One of the world’s best examples of a detractor and the damage it can cause is David Carroll who had his guitar smashed by United Airlines. When United decided not to do anything to correct the situation, David Carroll   wrote a song ─ “United Breaks Guitars” ─ which went viral when it was posted on YouTube and covered by every major media including TV, newspapers, radio and magazines. By the way, at last count this video was seen by 8.7 million people. Although this is an extreme example, the Internet has done wonders in giving customers power to rate their vendors ─ both good and bad.   

Another example is when you go to a restaurant, you will invariably be asked how is or how was your meal, ninety-percent of the time, the answer is good or very good.  Not much useful information here.  Smart restaurants will ask their wait staff to ask one additional question and keep track of the answer. That question is: “What one thing could we have done to make you meal even better?”  If the answer is the mashed potatoes could have been warmer, then Bingo, the restaurant can determine if this was a one off problem or something that is more systematic. If it is a one off problem, offer the customer a free dessert, if it is systematic, determine the root cause and fix it. This illustrates the ineffectiveness of a low-yield question, “How was your meal?” to which we almost always receive a good, or very good, vs. a High-yield question, “What is one thing we could do to make it better?”

Exercise:  Think of an example of a low-yield question, such as “How was your meal?” that is asked regarding customer service in your organization and then develop a systematic way to gather pertinent information by asking a high-yield question to improve your customer service. For example, at Enterprise you will be asked the following three short questions when you drop off your car at the end of the rental:

How was our service?

What could we have done to make your experience better?

If there was a problem, what can we do to make it up to you? 

 Fred Reichheld, the author of The Ultimate Question recommends, “Firing people who demonstrate the wrong values can be as important as hiring those with the right values.”( p144) He also recommends that organizations record what their promoters say and “[I]ncorporate this learning directly into marketing messages and advertising copy. It is obviously much more efficient to have promoters write the ad copy than to pay an ad agency; but more important, these customers know the right message to communicate. One final benefit of asking promoters to express what they would tell a friend is that, once they articulate the answer, they are move likely to relay it to a friend just because it’s on the tip of their tongue and the top of their mind.”   

B.M.

F.M.    Leadership is the most important factor in the success of any  project, organization or  social reform. In fact, the  leadership  factor  can almost guarantee success or failure. Therefore, Canada needs an abundant and reliable supply of competent leaders in all sectors ─ now and in the future.  

Currently we are heading into a crisis of demographics. Most  baby boomers will be retired in ten years and the next generation, Generation X is significantly smaller.  Therefore, we have to ramp up leadership and succession planning or we will have a huge leadership deficit. To do this we need a greatly improved leadership infrastructure. Our current leadership infrastructure is extremely hap- hazard. We need to identify the gaps, find a way to fill the gaps and share best practices from across Canada.  

If we do not want to suffer as a country we need to realize that leadership can be effectively developed, just like capacity in hockey and other sports is developed.  In fact, leadership can be developed in 80% of the population, where 60% are  average to good, and 20%  are gifted, and are able to expand their capacity to lead.     

We have to think about the long-term, which is the pipeline. A great example of a pipeline is how we develop hockey players starting with Tim Bits™, which is where children start playing hockey and get coached in playing hockey at a very early age. It takes about a generation to produce results. In the same vein, leadership needs to be imbedded in  the curriculum starting with elementary school. Our children have to be able to practice leadership, get coaching, feedback and continually improve just like they do in sports, in academia and the arts.  

At the other end of the spectrum is a hothouse approach for high potential leaders. These are the people who will be leaders three to five years from now.  Therefore, we need to put all kinds of resources into both the pipeline infrastructure as well as the hothouse infrastructure.     

In sports a great example of a hothouse is “Own the podium” and the pipeline is “Participaction.” A great example of a hothouse in business is New Brunswick’s Wallace McCain Institute. The way the institute works is that every year a small, exceptional group of high potential entrepreneurs are invited to be in a program that challenges them to share insights and experiences with each other and with guest presenters in order to take themselves as leaders and their businesses to the next level.  
In conclusion, we need to offer solutions that are doable,  we need to get more of the right people involved, we have to provide hope  and start moving. 

To find out more about how master Canadian Leaders are inspired by vision and fueled by passion, attend the 1^st Halifax Leadership Symposium on September 28, 2010 at Pier 21 ─ The Future of Leadership in Atlantic Canada: Challenges, Opportunities and Innovative Solutions. Our keynote speakers are Françoise Morissette author of Made in Canada Leadership.  Françoise is the director of a pan Canadian leadership institute to help raise the level of leadership in Canada by sharing leadership best practices from across the country. Cora Tsouflidou, the founder of Cora’s Restaurants, who turned a café in Montreal into 120 restaurants across Canada. Chris Power, president and CEO of Capital Health is talking about the future of health care and Phil Fontaine the former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, is speaking about the type of inclusiveness we need today and will even need more of in the future because the Conference Board of Canada says that by the year 2031 we will have 23 people in Atlantic Canada to do the work that 50 people do today. For more information and to register at the early bird discount rate of $299, visit www.futureofleadership.dal.ca. The book The Seven Strategies of Master Leaders is available at independent bookstores and at Chapters and Chapters online and at www.BradMcRae.com

I stood there speechless.

Simplicity brings clarity. I believe this is why many of the answers we seek tend to evade us. We often over-think and make things much more complex than need be. Too much complexity ‘muddies the water’ and deprives us from seeing things as they truly are. Eliminating complexity and embracing simplicity in everything your business does is THE toughest unspoken challenge you really face as a business owner.

Marketing your business can be simple. Do you believe this or are you willing to keep buying into the b.s. of complexity?

Marketing your business simply requires you to attract and retain your Ideal Brand Customers (IBCs) and surrender your Less Than Ideal customers (LTIs).  

It truly is as easy as that. Here’s good news: 20-30% of your existing customers are already your IBCs!

Therefore, 70-80% of the customers you now have are LTIs. These LTIs are the profit vampires who have been consuming your staff’s time, efforts, energy and sucking the profitability out of your business.

And here’s the rub: you’ve been spending the profit from your IBCs on advertising to attract even more LTIs! Ouch!

The absolute best advice I can give you is to stop advertising until you’ve identified your existing IBCs. Do your detective work and create an initial profile of your IBC. Then do the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do to figure out how to effectively attract more of them: start communicating with them.  

I am very grateful to the thriving retailer who kindly shared his ‘struggle to success’ story with my audience on that awesome June day. He stopped advertising as recommended in his Thrive Marketing Action Plan and started communicating with his IBCs over 12 months ago and in the process increased his annual sales 83%.

Stop advertising. Start communicating. It’s that simple.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level?

Cheers to Your Success!

Bill Jackman

If you take the public universities in Canada and you exclude the private universities in the States, such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, etc., and you compare the public universities in Canada with the public universities in the states, you will find that Canadian universities are funded at 60% of the level of the public universities in the States. This is why our Canadian universities have larger classes and more multiple choice exams. It also shows up in NESS, the National Student Survey of Engagement where the US scores higher than Canada and the ability to teach in Canada is less concentrated because there are more students per professor. The final thing I say when talking to my university friends is that it is instructive to compare UW to MIT and the University of Michigan because we want to be their Canadian equivalents. At the UW the faculty student ratio is 27 to 1, at the University of Michigan it is 10 to 1, and at MIT it is 4 to 1. If you compare dollars from tuition fees, operating grants and private income, the UW is funded at $11,000 per student per year, Michigan gets $27,000 and MIT $100,000. As I tell my friends in business, imagine yourself selling your product or services and your competition has 10 times the resources you do.

The good side of that story is that UW is already the equal to the University of Michigan and MIT in many of our programs. That means that we are being as efficient as possible with what we have. Therefore, even a small incremental investment in us is very appealing because it has a very good ROI (Return on Investment) so every additional dollar spent on higher education would go a long way. 

This excerpt illustrates the types of pertinent questions David Johnson asks, both of himself and others to benchmark the University of Waterloo. He then uses the answers to those questions to develop credibility as a leader and to make a strong case for bringing his vision that Canada should be a world leader in higher education, innovation and research by 2020. 

To find out more about how master Canadian Leaders are inspired by vision and fueled by passion, attend the 1^st Halifax Leadership Symposium on September 28, 2010 at Pier 21 ─ The Future of Leadership in Atlantic Canada: Challenges, Opportunities and Innovative Solutions. Our keynote speakers are Françoise Morissette author of Made in Canada Leadership.  Françoise is the director of a pan Canadian leadership institute to help raise the level of leadership in Canada by sharing leadership best practices from across the country. Cora Tsouflidou, the founder of Cora’s Restaurants, who turned a café in Montreal into 120 restaurants across Canada. Chris Power, president and CEO of Capital Health is talking about the future of health care and Phil Fontaine the former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, is speaking about the type of inclusiveness we need today and will even need more of in the future because the Conference Board of Canada says that by the year 2031 we will have 23 people in Atlantic Canada to do the work that 50 people do today. For more information and to register at the early bird discount rate, visit www.futureofleadership.dal.ca. The book The Seven Strategies of Master Leaders is available at independent bookstores and at Chapters and Chapters online and at www.BradMcRae.com

Editor Dawn Chafe took first place in the Editor’s Column category for “Michael’s Big Fat Fib”, an eloquent and amusing rebuttal to Michael Economides’ anti-green energy presentation at the 2009 NOIA conference. Her award-winning column appeared in the July/August 2009 edition of Atlantic Business Magazine.

Judging comments: “From its headline to the last sentence, this column caught my attention. I thought it was elegantly and intelligently written as well as entertaining. The author made a very persuasive argument to continue the dialogue about alternative energy.”

Contributing Editor Alec Bruce was similarly successful in the Regular Column category. ‘Winner Takes All’ is the title of Bruce’s pithy and intelligent column on competitiveness. In the words of the judges, it’s a must-read element of the publication:

 Judging comments: “A well-written, engaging column. The author uses interesting and punchy text and analogies to drive his point home. If I received this magazine, it would likely be the first article I’d turn to.”

The 2010 Tabbie Awards, an international b2b magazine competition, featured nearly 500 entries, with nominations coming from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., India, New Zealand and South Africa.

Founded in 1989, Atlantic Business Magazine is an independently owned, bi-monthly glossy publication that covers all areas of business within the four Atlantic provinces. As the region’s highest circulation business magazine, it publishes 37,000 copies per issue.

We’ve been asked to do some research in this area, specifically how social technologies are, and will, impact roll-out of the new U.S. health care reform in a couple of different areas.  I came across this graphic which depicts a traditional physician-patient encounter:

Source: http://dvsbot.com/sm2strategic/sm2-experience.asp

The patient, quite naturally, has more than just the outcome on their mind, which creates an “experience” with that physician.  And social technologies mean that patients have ample opportunity to share that experience.  For example, have a look at Rate MDs or Rate My MD to see how patients have been discussing doctors for a few years now.

This concept of ‘experience’ is not new, and was probably best crystallized in the 1999 book The Experience Economy.  Let’s look at a hypothetical retail example: In the real world, more than just the sale is important to the customer, something many retailers are fully aware of.  But look at the new customer:

There is far greater depth to the experience dimension, as a result of social technologies.  And whether your focus is also retail, or attracting/retaining employees, or managing members/volunteers in your non-profit, or creating a new product, the above diagram technique is a simple way to help you explore and define the complete experience you are striving to create.

• 4:1 return on investment in incentive travel
• 40%: Prospects converted to new customers
• 28%: Current business that would be lost without face-to-face meetings
• 17%: Profit average company would lose if it eliminated all business travel
• 95% Percentage of Harvard Business Review surveys that saw face-to-face meetings as key to success for long-term client relationships
• 89 % of those respondents considered meetings “essential for “sealing the deal”; 82% for negotiating important contracts; 81 % for interviewing senior staff for key positions and 81% for understanding and listening to important customers.
• 80%: Percentage of executives who said incentive travel has significant impact on morale and job satisfaction

 Economic Impacts of Face-to-Face Meetings on Canada (2008)

• 673,400 meetings
• 69.8-million participants
• $23.- billion in spending
• 552,300 full-year jobs
• $14.2-billion in tax revenues (local, provincial and federal)

Future Trends Predicted by Event Managers

• Greater focus on value, quality and competitive pricing
• Larger share of meetings closer to home
• Stronger demand for educational content
• Increased demand for experiential activities outside conference, e.g. whale watching
• Continuing shift toward virtual and web-based technologies, e.g. email marketing, online payments, website registration, blogs
• Increased emphasis on corporate social responsibility, e.g. sponsorship activities
• New interactive formats like Open Space, World Cafe
• Increased use of built-in metrics to measure return on investment
• More hybrid meeting formats that combine live and virtual options, e.g. teleconferences and webcasts

 Sources: MPI Foundation, Oxford Economics, Harvard Business Review, Forbes Insights, Future Watch 2010, Plan Ahead Events, Confederation Centre of the Arts, Destination St. John’s, Limelight Communications Group.

Cox & Palmer: 10 locations, 170+ lawyers

Areas of expertise: administrative; alternative dispute resolution; commercial litigation; construction; corporate & commercial; corporate services; criminal; environmental; estates & trust; family; financial services, banking & insolvency; fisheries & marine; health; immigration; insurance litigation; insurance property & technology; labour & employment; municipal; natural resources & energy; privacy; real estate; securities & corporate finance; small & medium size enterprises; tax.

 McInnes Cooper: 7 locations, 200+ lawyers

Areas of expertise: administrative; agribusiness; bankruptcy & insolvency; business disputes; charitable gift planning; class actions; competition law; construction industry; corporate & business; corporate finance & securities; cross-border law; defamation & media; energy & natural resources; environmental; family law (PEI only); forestry; franchise; insurance; labour & employment; litigation; maritime law; mediation & arbitration; municipal; oil & gas – upstream; owner managed enterprises; P3 & infrastructure; pensions & benefits; public law; real estate; regulation of professions; securities litigation; shareholder agreements & plans; small & medium size enterprises; tax; tax litigation; tax shelters; technology & intellectual property; trusts & estate planning.

Stewart McKelvey: 6 locations, 220+ lawyers

Areas of expertise: aboriginal law; alternative dispute resolution; asset based lending; asset securitization; asset/equipment finance & leasing; aviation; banking; biotechnology; charities & not for profit; class actions; commodity tax/customs; competition; construction; copyright; corporate/commercial; corporate restructuring & insolvency; corporate tax; directors & officers liability; employment; energy; energy & natural resources; entertainment & media; environmental; estate planning & litigation; family; financial services; forestry; franchising; government regulations; government regulated industries; health, immigration law, insurance; intellectual property & technology; international commercial arbitration; investment funds & asset management; labour & employment; labour relations; life & disability; litigation; marine; medical negligence; mergers & acquisitions; mining; occupational health & safety; owner managed businesses; pensions & employee benefits; personal injury; personal services; privacy; product liability; professional liability; project finance; property & real estate development; public-private partnerships; securities/corporate finance; statutory offences; tax; telecommunications; trademark; transportation; workers’ compensation; workplace human rights.

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Fresh from the Sea

Europeans with a hankering for fresh Atlantic lobster now have an alternative to the expense of flying the crustacean across the ocean. It’s an option that will see the delicacy delivered fresh from the sea.

Halifax-based Aqualife North America is working with the Maersk shipping company to carry live lobsters from Halifax to Rotterdam, Holland, using a new technology patented by Aqualife A/S and A.P. Møller-Maersk group.

Aqualife president Gordon Neal says that the company has been developing this technology since 2004, and has been working with partners such as Maersk and the Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. The technology aerates the water while reducing the temperature to one or two degrees Celsius, which causes the lobsters to go dormant for the 12-day journey to Europe.

Neal says that the technology will reduce the carbon footprint created by flying lobsters via air freight, and that this is attractive to European consumers. “We’re hoping that will expand to lower grade products,” said Neal, suggesting that the technology could be adapted to species such as mussels, oysters, clams, and snow crabs.

Neal says that about 12 containers were successfully shipped from Halifax to Rotterdam during the development phase. Aqualife is setting up one ‘aquaport’ in Halifax and one in Holland to collect lobsters for distribution. Maersk ships started making stops in Halifax in May, transporting up to four containers of lobsters per week to ship to Rotterdam. By Shaina Luck

That’s a Wrap

PolyCello, an Atlantic Canada-based flexible packaging company, has received two Excellence in Flexography awards from the Flexographic Technical Association’s (FTA) gala awards banquet in Las Vegas, NV. PolyCello was named the Silver award winner in the line, film and the process, film categories in the wide web class for 2010. In this competition, the FTA was looking for images that “pop off the substrate.” 

“We are honored to be selected as the silver recipient for these two entries,” said Stephen Emmerson, president and CEO, PolyCello. “Our high quality print capabilities are gathering attention because PolyCello is always testing the limits of what flexographic printing can do.”

PolyCello received the awards for its advanced print capabilities (10 colour, 175 line screen technology) and the expertise of its employees. This is the third year in a row PolyCello has been honoured at the Excellence in Flexography awards.

Flavour to Savour

With an eclectic dish featuring PEI bar clams, pork, hot house tomatoes, melted organic shiitake mushrooms and green garlic, Chef John Pritchard of John Pritchard Cuisine in Charlottetown has laid claim to the inaugural PEI Flavours Local Food Award.

“With increased consumer demand for local products, more and more restaurants are featuring PEI food on the menu,” states Jeff McCourt, chair of the PEI Culinary Alliance.  “(This) award helps recognize those chefs who are highlighting and being creative with local products.”

The PEI Flavours Local Food Award is an initiative of the PEI Culinary Alliance. Menu items were presented to a panel of media and chef judges.  The winning dish was selected based on presentation, taste, recipe/cooking method, and the creative use of local products.  Each dish was required to feature PEI food as the main ingredient with a total of 60 per cent local products contained in the recipe.

Lose your Job, Keep your House

Two Nova Scotia companies are working together to offer Canadian home buyers job loss insurance coverage on their mortgages. Propel Insure, a marketing consulting company, worked with benefits consulting firm Fraser& Hoyt to develop the product and make it available to Canadian home buyers via the mortgage broker network.

“We saw the need (for this product) first hand in working with home buyers who were asking if there was any protection for their mortgage in the event of job loss.  A review of the Canadian market at the time showed there was no option for Canadian home buyers at the banks or from mortgage brokers,” said David Young, president of Propel Insure. “Default on mortgages remains very low in Canada and this was not the primary reason for the product being developed and made available to Canadian home buyers. It was designed to give potential and first time buyers confidence and reassurance to make a home purchase knowing they have protection available to them in case of involuntary unemployment.”