Fine Tune with Corby Fine

Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an incredible 44.0% year over year. That’s the highest annual U.S. ecommerce growth in 20 years and It’s also nearly triple the 15.1% jump in 2019. With more and more people shopping online, retail media just makes sense.  But what exactly is a retail media network? A retail media network is when retailers set up an advertising...

What is the future of loyalty? Capturing and rewarding consumers for their time, money and thoughts. When Derrick Fung thinks about Drop as a company, ultimately the big vision is to build both the world's most personalized rewards program and the largest transaction data set in market. To get there, one of the the biggest decisions they had to make in the early days of the company was to go direc...

Your customers have so many options, so many different ways that they can relay feedback to you. Sometimes they call you, other times they fill in surveys. If you're like me, sometimes you just go to Twitter and shout it out publicly and hope that the company is monitoring it. The ways in which your customers can provide feedback has never been more complex. Customers are communicating with busine...

Jed Schneiderman is a proven entrepreneur, and executive in the marketing, media and technology space.  When I think of Jed, I think of someone who is known for his thought leadership on topics ranging from marketing and technology, to being an entrepreneur and  building successful businesses in the mobile, streaming, broadcast and internet technology spaces, and in "connecting the dots" having be...

Jeff Greenspoon thinks that the future of agencies is really in driving total customer experience.  He says that this can be accomplished by bringing together the right people at the right time to solve the right problems, while being focused on the need for speed, agility and simplification. He is passionate about being client and idea first, and an agency second. This thought leadership has give...

They say that lightning doesn't strike twice, but this time I think they might just have that wrong. Andrew Chau is a co-founder of SkipTheDishes , the largest food delivery network in Canada which he helped expand to over 110 markets and millions of customers, with over 2,500 employees headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Acquired by Just-Eat in 2016 for $200M and merged with Takeaway (2019) and...

Ghassan Halazon’s entrepreneurial journey started at the age of 25. Over the past decade, companies founded or acquired by Ghassan and his partners have saved Canadians close to $1 billion, hired 350 employees, and raised capital from over 150 global investors.  Earlier in his career, Ghassan had the opportunity to sell one of his first ventures to a large Telecommunications firm, but he chose not...

At The Big Push , Sharon Zohar and team challenge the traditional accelerator model by tapping into a collective of business and technology executives ready to provide hands-on services and support to create actionable and measurable growth plans to help lift women-led companies to new heights. Sharon herself is a serial entrepreneur and investor with more than twenty years experience founding, in...

SkipTheDishes is growing, and FAST! In the third quarter of this year the number of orders rose by 98% to 23.5 million when compared to the same period in 2019. Canadians have long had a legacy of picking up food but pushed by the Covid restrictions and cooling weather, things are changing.  SkipTheDishes was founded in 2012 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and eventually moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba to...

While considered a success in her career, Alyssa Atkins had ended a long term relationship and witnessed some of the people, women in particular, in her life going through challenges with regards to getting pregnant and having kids. What she was witnessing triggered her thoughts and desire to one day have kids, all while not "in the perfect situation" with the right partner, the right job, the rig...

It doesn’t matter whether the drain in your kitchen sink gets clogged, the toilet backs up, or the shower stops working: any plumbing problem brings with it a state of high urgency. For most people, the first course of action is to quickly look up the contact details of their local plumber, assuming of course they can navigate the complexity of choices and options shown with every Google search. T...

The best brands in the world ultimately have a crystallized point of view. They know why they exist, whether you call it purpose or experience, it doesn't really matter. The point is that, whatever you call it, there is consistency. It is recognizable and it is explainable. Inside an organization, somebody has to be the keeper and the ambassador of the brand and to keep it top of mind across all i...

ExecThread isn't a recruiting firm. It is a platform, a community, a marketplace, trying to do something that's paradigm-shifting in the executive recruiting market by using a unique crowdsourced approach to bring much-needed transparency to the ‘hidden job market’. ExecThread has amassed ~15,000 retained executive searches to-date , and made them available on the platform to their members. When J...

Every once in a while I come across  an organization that I had no idea existed, you know, we've all had that experience where we're looking up a stock symbol, we're watching a financial news show, we find out one of our friends or colleagues or neighbors work somewhere. We ask them what they do, and it's like, what the heck is that? I didn't even really know that existed! Well, last year I was in...

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, digital, data, UX, and technology solutions could not be more critical to an organization’s overall strategy, growth, and success. As an executive leader, Shawn Mandel transforms organizations and drives positive, lasting change to position those organizations as both industry and market leaders. A leader at the intersection of business and technolog...

Tony Chapman won a multi-million dollar agency pitch with 40 pictures and a monologue. I was there to witness it, and ever since, have marveled at this marketing guru who is also one of Canada’s leading communication experts and one of the youngest members inducted into the Marketing Hall of Legends (2008).  In this episode, Tony and I discuss the best ways to succeed, whether you are a large mult...

Ivan Pehar is the Country Manager for Spotify Canada. After spending a number of years at another digital goliath, he made the move to conquer one of most people's passions, the music business. In this episode, I talk with Ivan about the Spotify platform, and how it has become such an important and influential player in Canada's digital media and content landscape. It is not just for music creator...

If you are in Canada then you have probably spent a good portion of your grocery, drug and other living expenses at a store owned, operated or franchised by Loblaw. Loblaw Companies Limited is the largest Canadian food retailer operating under 22 different brand banners (including Loblaws), as well as pharmacies, banking and apparel. They are massive. With over 136,000 full-time and part-time empl...

It’s completely natural to be nervous when starting a new job. New people, new office, new commute, new culture... new coffee. But in the age of the pandemic, more and more people are starting their new jobs from home. Alone. With no direct connection to their new team other than through screens. So what happens when your first day is remote? What if many days, weeks and even months after that are...

A recent poll posted to 2,200 Americans by Statistica asked one simple question to try and see the impact of the coronavirus on consumer sentiment about going back to the gym. The results weren't all that surprising. 69% of respondents said they were much less likely to go to the gym and a combined 75% somewhat or much less likely.  That's a pretty scary set of numbers for studio owners. Given tho...

It was 1999 and I was early in my career, VERY early in my career. I had started as a product manager at a "stealthy startup" and found myself working for a really smart and charismatic individual, Michael Tamblyn. Michael was in charge of product and I was there to learn. Flash forward a decade or two, and I now sit at my computer with a microphone and headphones, and in my screen is a slightly m...

I consider myself a "power user" on the LinkedIn platform, having had my profile used in sales pitches by LinkedIn sales representatives over the years. I love the platform, it's power and it's ability to maintain my professional identity. I have used it to get jobs, make meaningful and valuable connections, to help others in their own career endeavours, among many other useful purposes.  I had th...

For fourteen years Erica Ehm has been developing her craft as an entrepreneur and CEO, after spending the first part of her career as an icon in Canadian television and music.  From interviewing rock bands, to informing and educating parents on being their best, Erica has used her skills as a creator, innovator and disruptor to turn all of her endeavours into incredible success stories. In this ep...

I recently posted a single question on Linkedin and Twitter asking a very simple question. What’s your number one tip for staying motivated while working at home? It was a popular post and I wanted to dig in further, so I recruited a panel of 5 executives to discuss the topic and at the same time, answer some fun and embarrassing questions along the way. If you are looking for motivation to get ou...

Small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMEs) which includes startups, now represent just under 90% of employment in North America.  They are hungry for talent but often lack the revenue base to support having highly qualified, experienced employees work for them – especially at the leadership level. Along comes Fractional Employment. So what is fractional employment? The term “ fractional employment ” has...