(Time to read this Blog is about 2.5 minutes)
Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:
- My Biz Quote of the week:
“Brands are built on stories. Stories that become ‘brand legends’. What are your powerful, memorable and relatable Brand Stories that ‘grab’ your target customers, clearly differentiate you from your competitors…and make you famous?”
…Donald Cooper.
- Quick Biz Tip:
It’s time for a mid-year business check-up:
As we’re now in the 2nd half of 2024, have you done a check-up on your business? Are you on track with sales, profitability, staffing, training, product development, customer service commitments, environmental commitments, systems and process improvement, commitments to your Team, inventory management, marketing and promotion?
Whatever it is that needed to get done in the first six months, did it happen? If not…why not? Who or what is holding you back…and what are you doing to fix that?
There are only 5 months left in 2024. Will you achieve your commitments by the end of the year, or will you end up on December 31st making excuses for what didn’t happen?
- Tomato Fun Facts: This is the beginning of tomato season here in Canada, so here are some ‘Tomato Fun Facts’.
– Today’s tomatoes began as wild plants in the Andes, growing in parts of Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
– Tomatoes are the world’s most cultivated fruit. “Yes”, tomatoes are, technically, a fruit.
– There are over 10 thousand varieties of tomatoes.
– China is the largest producer of tomatoes.
- Which country has the most glaciers? You might think Greenland, Chile or Nepal, but the country with the most glaciers is Pakistan with 7,243 glaciers. Note: Antarctica has over 200,000 glaciers, but it’s not a country.
- Shocking update on Canada’s Medical System. It’s estimated that 6.5 million Canadians are without a family doctor. With a current population of 40 million, that’s about one in 6 people without a doctor. And we wonder why our Hospital Emergency Departments are so crowded.
Now, to this week’s important topic:
Who’s guarding the integrity of your business?
As business leaders and managers, one of our most important responsibilities is to maintain the integrity of our organization.
Loblaws (Canada’s largest grocery chain) and parent George Weston Ltd has just agreed to pay $500 million in a Class Action lawsuit resulting from a 14-year conspiracy to fix the price of packaged bread between 2001 and 2015. Loblaws self-reported the conspiracy in 2015 and implicated other grocery chains, all of whom deny any involvement. In 2023 Canada Bread, Canada’s largest bread producer, pled guilty to being a part of the price fixing and was fined $50 million.
Who will get all this money? It seems a bit difficult to go back and calculate how many loaves of over-priced bread each Canadian family purchased during this 14-year period and then to compensate them fairly and efficiently.
So, I propose that, first, some of the money should go to pay the legal fees wracked up to investigate and prosecute these cases so that that huge legal bill doesn’t have to paid by Canadian taxpayers .
Then, the balance of the money should be given to Canada’s Food Banks to help with the huge food insecurity problem facing millions of Canadians today. If you’re one of my thousands of Canadian readers and you agree, please contact your local Member of Parliament. Tell them to send the money to our hard-working Food Banks.
To contact your Member of Parliament go to https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/search Type in your postal code, then click on the name that comes up and the ‘Contact’ tab.
In the meantime, who’s guarding the integrity of your business? Who’s saying, “Not on my watch!” Who’s making sure that a culture of integrity and fairness is deeply rooted throughout the organization…and is reinforced in everything you do?
That’s it for this week…
Stay safe…live brilliantly!
Donald Cooper
