Who is More Useful to Your Business? A CMO or a CRO?

I think I can safely say that you don’t go into business to lose money… unless you intentionally do so for a tax write-off. Yet making money is not as easy as it’s often characterized. It takes a great idea mixed with execution. It takes hard work mixed with luck. And, it takes money mixed…

What Does BACON Have To Do with POOP?

I was excited and honored to be the keynote speaker at a national conference where the words… CRAP, SH!T, and POOP are in every presenter’s speech and are spoken openly and frequently in almost every conversation had with attendees. It was the 2023 APAWS National Conference in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. APAWS is the Association…

Seconds… Chance Interactions

If you manage your own or other business websites, I imagine you are using Google Analytics or another data manager to explore the traffic to your website. The beauty of using Google Analytics is that you have a baseline to judge your traffic against other similar websites. I know this because I manage over 100…

Making Connections… Where are the Wires?

CONNECTIONS I grew up with wires, LOTS OF WIRES. Being a musician and an audio-video and computer geek, I still have bins filled with wires. Audio cables with RCA, XLR, TRS, TOSLINK, MIDI, and banana clip connectors. Video cables with BNC, VGA, DVI, S-VIDEO, and HDMI connectors. Computer cables with SCSI, Ethernet, USB, Thunderbolt, Firewire,…

Focusing on the 5 A-Holes of Marketing

A salesman and a marketing guy walk into a bar… This really happened. Well, the bar was at a country club. I had the pleasure of spending a Fore-Hour Nature Meeting with Larry Long Jr 🎤 where we spent hours trying to hit a little white ball into a hole. I love this kind of…

Fad, Fame, Or Fortune… It’s About Business (and Time)

Test of Time Back in 2015, I talked about my concept of the Marketing Trifecta. I will explain what that is in a bit, but there has been a lot of buzz over the last 8 years about new tools that will revolutionize marketing. I have seen so many of them try and fail, come…

Influence vs. Inspiration… It Takes Emotional Intelligence

It’s been years since I have been a conference attendee. Normally, I am at a conference to speak or support the organization. At a conference, you meet and interact with so many interesting people, from so many places, with so many agendas, and so many different levels of experience, knowledge, and stature. The latest conference…

The Dollars Are In The Data

What Gets Measured… Gets Done? There is a famous saying, “What gets measured gets managed”, or “What gets measured, gets done”. It’s often attributed to Peter Drucker (but his organizations said it was not him initially). Other sources say it was coined by William Thomson, the Scottish physicist also known as Lord Kelvin. That dude…

The Distraction Attraction

I have no idea how old you are, but I am this old… Do you remember TV Magic Cards? Marshall Brodine was a famous magician (and he was the clown Wizzo on the Bozo Circus Show) who lived in Geneva, Illinois (close to where we lived in Aurora). I was enamored with those cards and…

Marketing and Sales = Poison or Antidote

I want you to imagine that you have just ingested some poison. After the initial shock of realizing the impending doom, you hear the doorbell ring. At that very moment, an antidote salesman is standing at the door and says, “I have what you need. I can give you the recipe for free or you…