Mike McCarron

Thanking government for anything is just not in my DNA. So speaking on behalf of my email inbox, I’d like to give kudos to the Canadian government for the anti-spam legislation it put into effect on July 1. You’ve probably heard about the Canadian Anti-Spam Law. It applies to commercial electronic messages sent to or from computers and devices in Canada.

I’m convinced that Nat King Cole moonlighted in sales.  There is no other way to explain how he could write a song that describes the mind-set of the sales department come July 1.  That’s the day “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer” kick into gear.

It’s like clockwork.  Whenever someone calls me about selling their company, they respond to my spiel with the exact same question: “What’s my business worth?” My answer is always the same but never the one they expect: “It depends.”

 The need to fill the widening social media pipeline with “content” has everyone writing studies.  As a regular columnist, my inbox is inundated with white papers, surveys, and reports from consultants that almost never get read.  During a recent email purge, however,  I came across two studies written almost 10 years apart that reveal a lot about transportation pricing.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer surprised people when she recently decreed that the tech company’s employees would no longer be allowed to work from home. Never one to miss a chance to grab a headline, Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, reacted by calling her decision “old school thinking.”

It didn’t hit me until my bride and I were going through customs in France, excited about our much-needed European getaway. After scrutinizing my passport, the agent raised his head and asked what I did for a living. I whispered, “Unemployed.”

Yes, in October, my partners and I sold the freight-brokerage/trucking hybrid we started 22 years ago in Toronto with a phone and a fax machine. I was no longer in sales management; no longer had a paycheck.

The day you become a parent is the day a trip to Disney gets automatically added to the family bucket list. These days, it’s almost mandatory that every kid feels the “Magic” and parties once with Mickey, Goofy, and the rest of the gang. As a parent, you stand zero chance of competing against one of the world’s strongest brands and the apparent guilt that goes with not taking the chickadees to the Magic Kingdom.