Category Archives for "Business Models"

In the early days of the Ottawa Senators, it was all about creating magic in terms of building design and operation/presentation. The Palladium (now Canadian Tire Centre) was designed to model the Roman Coliseum and there was even talk about dressing servers and security personnel in Roman garb 😊 Modern game day entertainment/production in stadiums/arenas […]

Any time someone offers you investments with returns of 1000% per year, you are right to be skeptical, but this is what Australian economist “Mr 1000%” Andrew Firestone has been working on for a number of years now. He reckons he will be able to present how households can add an equivalent of $60,000 to […]

His name is Claudio. He comes to Merida (where there are wealthy tourists) from Oaxaca (gastronomic capital of Mexico) once a year to sell his beautiful handmade cotton/bamboo blankets door-to-door. Besides himself, there are three other people who work with him (both men and women). He comes by car and it takes a day or […]

This silent angel in downtown Merida (aka Centro) offers you one slip of paper to guide your future. For 20 pesos, mine read (in Spanish), “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.” #Excellent message. This young woman dresses up every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday in her angel costume, which she designed and fabbed herself. She […]

Are you familiar with the BBC series From Lark Rise to Candleford? It’s about life in two neighboring places in the late 19th century—one a poor rural village called Lark Rise where life is a struggle, and tother being a more prosperous town called Candleford. They are 8-miles apart with a muddy track the only […]

The smaller the house you build, the more creative you need to be. One of my daughters is moving into her own home that is just 192 sq ft. She’ll live right next door to a small workshop (about 350 sq ft) where she will design and produce high fashion custom clothing for glamorous women […]

At the beginning of this pandemic, folks asked me what I thought would happen to real estate values. I believed office and shopping mall valuations would fall out of bed while industrial and residential would hold their own. The latter because people always need a place to live; the former because I thought nations (including […]

I am optimistic that the global economy will recover but it will be vastly different. Overall, it may not only be a more localized economy but a more productive one too as weaker players get weeded out and some industries fade while others surge. It’s also likely that the surpluses produced by revamped economies will […]

I can’t believe that other landowners/property owners haven’t figured out how to repurpose their retail space to live-work-play-make spaces, all at grade. There is demand for these types of spaces from gigpreneurs who, for example, want to work in a street-facing studio and live behind their store, all on one level (ie, the ground floor). […]

Main Street Makeovers He must have received his law degree in the snail-mail. The guy didn’t know the difference between foreclosure and power-of-sale. Why is this even important? Foreclosure versus Power of Sale Because I advise a number of funds (REITs, MICs, Private Equity Funds, Mortgage Trusts, Mutual Fund Trusts, individual private lenders such as […]

[Excerpt from Gadgets and Gizmos—how to tell if you own a real business or just an expensive hobby  available from, https://brucemfirestone.com/product/gadgets-and-gizmos/] I realize this is a somewhat self-serving headline since I am a real estate investment and business coach and my spouse is a California-based CTI[1]-trained life coach, but don’t take my word for it—listen […]

[Here’s a book review I wrote in 2010 that is still relevant today (circa September 2020), so I’ve now added it to my blog, Prof Bruce] For the first three quarters of my advance copy of the book Delivering Happiness (Hachette Books, June 2010) by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh (pronounced ‘Shay’), I felt like this […]