Daryl Hatton's
Growing Pains

It is bloody amazing what can happen when I just let go of expectations and trust it will all work out. We were told on Wednesday, November 21st we had to be out of our office at 321 Water Street by the end of December. Short notice rescinding a previous promise to let us stay until June on a month to month. Grrr… Starting looking – hit despair quickly – most available properties were crap. We really want to stay in Gastown in a place similar to what we have now: brick, glass, wood beams, view… The “feel” of our …

Here are a few pieces of advice I offered to a new start-up company in Vancouver in response to some questions they had about taking on outside investment. I thought it was worth sharing… 1)      Regardless of whether we went with a debt (based on future earnings) model or an equity model, would we need to create an official board of directors, or can we just have an advisory board? We’d prefer the latter, so we can avoid all the governance issues.  As a private incorporated company, you are required to have a Board. Not having one doesn’t avoid governance …

Apparently the economists and other experts who, as a group, failed to predict the biggest recession in decades now feel qualified to predict it will last a long time. They were wrong before and they are probably wrong again. We need to avoid the trap of believing them, holding back our businesses and our lives and causing the recession to deepen and lengthen. We can control what will happen if we play “our game”, not “theirs”. Let’s ignore all the negative news, maintain our optimism and continue to run our businesses and live our lives with gusto. Tell everyone you know that you’ve heard there is a recession but you’ve decided not to participate. Share your stories of positive, anti-recessionary things happening in your business and in …