Snowshoe Birds, Feb 6, 2020

Dan Kennelly – meeting in Vancouver for TMX related business next week. Mike M will chair. He did note that things are S.L.O.W. while the industry wait to hopefully ramp up. Fabricators are idle and letting a lot of people go. 60-80 people from one fabricator next week. There is STILL economic carnage.

Dan also noted that the Olympic oval will have World Cup Speed Skating tomorrow and Saturday (Feb 7th and 8th). Tickets are available at the Olympic Oval web site: https://oval.ucalgary.ca/.

Paul Boucher – Talked about creating a video ad to do a bit of social media marketing. He used a web site called Animoto to build it, but his 15-year-old digital-native son deserves the credit for putting the 8-9 visual elements in the right order, and for harmonizing the colour palette.
He DID discover though that the average human being, when looking at video online, has an attention span that is less than a Goldfish.

From: the web page at: https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/topics/social-media-strategy/instagram-video-ads/. The average human now has a shorter attention span than a goldfish. Source:  Disruptive Advertising.

Dwayne Vinck – Had his accounting toque on and immediately picked up on the family slave labour theme. He noted how much the rules have changed for sharing revenue. Make sure everything is well documented and can be justified.

He then discussed changes taking place at a company that he’s (essentially) in control of. The company has been doing well, so investors have been paying more attention. It’s an interesting time with improvement in fortunes to attempt an accurate valuation.

Jim Bladon – joined in with an ATB-specific bit on attention spans. There’s internal coaching around the fact that even face-to-face, people have a 10-second attention span. If you don’t get your most important message out in the first 10 seconds, it probably won’t land.

He was also part of very well-attended meetings with many companies involved in the Cannabis industry. 70-75 of them if memory serves. Many producers are struggling for profitability. A big part of the problem is that these companies had very little understanding of their cost structure and what access to the market would cost or look like. Until the licensed, legal outlets figure out cost structure and *actually release good product* , many will simply disappear (in a puff of…oh, never mind). 5 large producers have gone under. 10-20 more lining up for the exit in 2020. Producers are running at about 60% capacity. Even at that, they’re still oversupplying the market with poor products.

Last tip from Jim – he used Trivago to get a rate of $89 at Caribou Lodge in Banff. The actual hotel site’s BEST deal when I checked writing the minutes was for $94 and that was valid for only one night for the rest of February.

Don Doolan – talked about Canadian mattress-in-a-box company Casper listing on the NYSE last week. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/casper-cspr-ipo-stock-starts-trading-on-the-nyse.html. Don noted that Casper is still a money-losing company despite the hype – $81 million last year.

Don also noted that he’s REALLY glad he’s not on any cruise ship quarantining Coronavirus or potential Coronovirus patients. Among other things he figures Yvonne would kill him in a few days after being cooped up in the closet they call accommodations on cruise ships.

Mike Mikkelson – had this headline: BlackBerry phones passing into history in August. The story’s here: https://business.financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/end-of-an-icon-blackberry-manufacturer-to-stop-making-and-selling-handset-in-august.

In other news, Mike was talking to some of the biggest commercial flooring companies and their guys told him that they just lived through the worst December and January in history.

Ian Campbell – Once again looking for audiologists. Not only are they in high demand, but they have to a tendency to be female and young enough to be starting families. As a result, maternity leave comes into play often for his business. His tip was that if we had kids (particularly boys!) who weren’t sure what they wanted to be, they should look at audiology. They’d get work!

LinkedIn has been a valuable resource to help identify prospective new employees and continues to be.

The other problem he’s been running into is that his suppliers also need audiologists. Not only can they offer a bit more money, they are aggressive to the point of almost bullying them into accepting job offers. When one candidate discussed this with Ian his response was pretty direct: If they’re putting this much pressure on you in the hiring process, imagine what it’ll be like WORKING for them.

He was one of a few people to thank JD and Son-Rise Plumbing. In his specific case, it was for help with pipes frozen to the washing machine. (!?)

Ross Mikkelsen – thanks to Dave Hicks for work in the house. Everyone’s happy again.

Ross had some really interesting conversations with his China contacts. One told him a story about traveling in Southern China. The car was stopped, and everyone was forced to have their temperature taken since fever is one of the visible symptoms of Coronavirus.

Of course, it’s the Lunar New Year holiday there. Normally it’s a two week holiday. The government has given everyone an extra week off and ordered employers to pay their employees. How long can that go on before businesses are forced out of business?

Ross’ reflection was that no news outlets in North American have focused yet on what is possibly a looming crisis in MANY parts of the economy. As an example, he noted that while the majority of the barbecues Barbecues Galore sells are assembled in Canada – most of the parts are made in Chin a. No one’s driving to the docks. No one’s working at the docks. No one’s traveling on ships. He figures pretty much every retailer western world is going to run into stock problems. Major delays must be coming because of delays in so many supply chains. 

One last related story – in Hong Kong – where no one has died from the virus yet, apartment buildings are organizing in such a way that ONE person per floor of an apartment building is being sent to get groceries and running other errands. It’s all very dramatic.

George Doherty – In his pharmacist career, he had a couple of opportunities to have a pandemic conversation with experts. One nugget was that deaths become linked to quarantine and lack of motion. It’ll be interesting to see how the various measures around the world being used measure up to the task.

He then told us about how his brother’s son is a curator. Of late he’s been doing some work for Contemporary Calgary (gallery) housed in the old planetarium building. Part of the process of bringing the building up to snuff was a large scale (and expen$ive) asbestos remediation. It opened to the public last week and there are some good exhibits. You can see for yourself for $10 per entry – OR buy an annual membership for $20. There’s more information here. https://www.contemporarycalgary.com/

Brad Pachal – Brad’s wife works with the federal government in a capacity assisting newcomers to Canada. Our economy has led to a cut of 80-90 seats in the part of the program that teaches English to the new arrivals. It’s partly a result of fewer people coming, but also a reflection of the lower level of activity in general in Calgary regarding immigration and in-migration.

Regarding social media marketing – a guy who’s very well known for his extraordinary tabletops has been making a killing on Instagram. He’s now teaching entrepreneurs is Brad’s domain how to use the various platforms, but Instagram in particular to get business.

Brad then wondered out loud about what the difference in conversations might be between entrepreneurs now vs 42 years ago. A few people chimed in that it’s still about who you know – and collecting MORE people that you know and that social media is just another tool to do it.

Dave Hicks – had thanks to Brad, Ian, and Ross for work in town. He has a special appreciation for the work in town since he and his crew have been busy out along the Athabasca Glacier/Columbia Ice Fields. They’re headed back out there soon. He mentioned getting his son out there on snowshoes. Fun!

Dave also mentioned that for a month now he’s been trying intermittent fasting. He’s combining that with a bit of focused exercise and finds that he’s had more energy, but he’s also sleeping better. So, he’ll keep at it for a while and keep us in the loop. In his case. it’s more about good health, not so much about losing weight – but it’s helped with that too. I went hunting for information on the practice and found this:   https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/the-benefits-and-risks-of-intermittent-fasting-1.4979530.

Tony Fisher – Knows a Philippine gal, who unsurprisingly, is having trouble traveling to Asia. Tony’s note about the Coronavirus is that he’s read that China and others are worried about the virus striking in Vietnam on any scale since they do NOT have the infrastructure to handle it. Ditto India.

One more virus-related note concerned the Calgary airport. They’ve REALLY noticed a travel cutback to and from Asia and a drop in overall passenger traffic as a result.

Mel Gibson – spoke about new WOOD FRAME 12 story condos being built. Firefighters are naturally not amused. They could be a real problem despite being 100% “sprinklered” per the building code. and firefighters with wood frames. Real problem. That might not be enough to prevent loss of life.

Switching gears he mentioned that as part of the industry’s mandate for them to retain their license to sell insurance, they have to engage in 15 hours of continuing education every year. Of all things, he found a course on 3D printing. They certainly discussed the marvels that 3D printing can bring about, but they’re also exploring it from a possible liability perspective. All this micro-manufacturing with very few controls could be problematic. That could a fascinating evolving area for the insurance industry! Maybe not in a good way.

From Mel talking about 3D printing to Michael McLennan evangelizing about it. He had a terrific article on precision cutting tools being printed/manufactured and a terrific article from the UK division of Guhring doing it. We ran short of time and he’ll bring the article back – but if you’re interested in reading more, please click on the caption below the image and it will lead you to a PDf version of the article.

Despite all the excitement around 3D printing and its future, the present still involves selling a lot of copiers to keep the doors open and support growth. They ARE finding that there’s a LOT of “like-new” used office equipment being sold as shops close around the city and the province.

One of the places Michael is capitalizing on the buzz around the technology is on LinkedIn. He prospects on LinkedIn, essentially proposes to connect in the event that 3D printers might come into play in that prospect’s business. He literally makes connections all day long every week. The connections come from all over Western Canada, but many are local.

A final note from Michael: he recently put his Toyota Tundra truck up for sale on Kijiji. It took 1 1/2 minutes to sell to a buyer who paid a fair price.

JD MacDonald – relating that after the hectic pace of the cold snap for their business, things slowed down this week.

He passed on that one thing he’s re-discovering is how much more effective presenting in estimates in person is rather than sending them via email.

JD and Phyllis also wanted to pass on how much they enjoyed Allora Italian restaurant in Aspen Landing recently. It was a little pricey but delicious, and a nice experience.  https://allorarestaurant.com/

Bob Wiggins – once again advised to read your insurance policy. Bob’s no fan of Manulife which is particularly egregious when it comes to denying claims. This story had a twist to it though.

The widow of a Canadian citizen was denied the death benefit accorded to her by a lower-level court. The reason? Her husband had been, a bit, um, circumspect when NOT describing his history before arriving in Canada. To be fair, there were no questions on the original questionnaire about any of those things. He paid premiums from 1987 until his death on a $75K policy. However , he neglected to mention that he’d been a member of the PLO.

Manulife essentially argued that it was an undeclared risk that could have materially affected their decision to grant the policy in the first place. You can kind of see both sides in this one (unusual when talking about an insurance company denying a claim), but the rest of the story is available by clicking on the word Manulife .

After that light diversion into insurance territory, Bob again mentioned a book that is a damning indictment of large swaths of the insurance industry. The book Delay, Deny, Defend on insurance. It’s available on Amazon.