In 2021, we added a land acknowledgement to our Coracle Coaching and Consulting website. We decided to do so for a few reasons. We thought we would share with you a bit of our journey in learning about Canada’s relationship with the Indigenous peoples and hopefully give you some reasons to consider including a land acknowledgement on your website as well.

Just as I did 2017, 2018, and 2019, I made it one of my goals in 2020 to read one book a month. I exceeded my goal to reach 20 (the extra time during this COVID year and my digital detox in the summer both helped). Here’s a list of my top 5 books from 2020:

Guest post by Dr. Clement Chan

Clement is a friend of ours and has been our family’s optometrist for the last 5 years. We asked him to share his experience of how COVID-19 forced his small business (Fremont Eye Centre, Doctors of Optometry) to shut down, how he responded, and what it’s been like since they opened up again last week.

All Canadians need to prepare for the scenario where COVID-19 gets worse. Tom & Rita Hanks have it, NBA players Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell have it, and Justin & Sophie Trudeau went into self-isolation because of it (edit: it’s confirmed Sophie Trudeau has COVID-19). In the same way movie star and professional athlete sponsorships help to sell more products, these well-known names will certainly boost COVID-19 awareness and response. Businesses everywhere are impacted. The NBA and NHL have suspended their seasons, cruise lines are suspending operations for 2 months, the stock market is dropping rapidly, and conferences, trade shows, award shows like the Juno’s are being cancelled or postponed. Small businesses will be hit hard, some more than others. In this post, I’m going to focus on how Canadian small businesses can prepare for and minimize the impact of COVID-19.

Just as I did 2017 and 2018, I made it one of my goals in 2019 to read one book a month. It was the first year I exceeded my goal by reading 13 books (partly spurred on by the voracious reading of my wife who read 30 books). Here’s the top 5 books I read from 2019:

If you’re using Google Chrome as your internet browser, you may have noticed a slight change in the past 2 months. Some websites are now labelled “Secure” and some are labelled “Not Secure”. Why is this? Are some websites more secure than others?

Last Tuesday I received an email from a local small business owner inquiring about our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services. We met for coffee 3 days later to discuss her needs (let’s call her Lilo). As I always do, I asked Lilo how she found out about our business. Her answer gave me good insight into 4 simple ways that local businesses can attract new customers.

Earlier this week we had Jason clean the ducts in our house. This is the second time we have hired him. The first time Jason helped us he was friendly, polite, and took the time to explain why duct cleaning is important and what his process was. We liked the guy, so we hired him again. He gave us a “loyal customer” discount of $50 off. Many businesses do this. Other businesses offer coupons and discounts for new customers. This begs the question, “Is it better to offer discounts to new customers or loyal customers?”

I just finished “reading” Steve Case’s new book, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future. I put “read” in quotations because I read half of it and browsed half of it. Some books are worth reading word for word. This one wasn’t. But it did have some very good points, which I’ll share with you today so you don’t have to read the book.

There’s an important difference between marketing strategy and tactics. Many business owners I work with don’t understand the difference. Marketing strategy is big picture. Marketing tactics are the day to day decisions.