Making An Argument For Better Marketing

Is your marketing working for or against you? In any case, you are the judge. I recently took a college course on The Art of Debate. It was with a Wake Forest professor named Dr. Jarrod Atchinson. It contains over 24 half-hour lectures and digs deep into the history, purpose, and strategy of debate. In…

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…

Dropping Knowledge Bombs And Hitting Targets

I have mentioned before, I am a fan of Malcolm Gladwell and his podcast, Revisionist History. His last book The Bomber Mafia was about the race to use strategic bombing to end World War II. This was before the Manhattan Project which yielded the first atomic bomb that was built and used to change the…

Tag… You’re In! Segmenting Secrets

I have been listening to an audiobook by music producer Rick Rueben called The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Rick is a little eclectic but highly prolific. He discusses how inspiration is found, cultivated, and acted upon to create art. Art is not just music to him. It is anything that we as humans make.…

Winning with Rightsourcing and Content Creation

I have to brag a bit… I won Board Member of the Quarter for the AMA Triangle. Back in January, I was recruited to join as the VP of Communications, and by April I was recognized as a winner! Now it’s not like I volunteered with any expectations, except that if I was going to…

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…

Engagement… to The Power of 3

Have you ever been in an endless loop or Mobius strip conversation with a toddler? You know… the endless circle of WHY? When a toddler keeps asking “WHY?” in response to everything they hear or see, it’s called the “why stage” or “why phase”. As children grow and develop, they become more aware of their…

How Can a Golf Swing Help You Build a Marketing SYS-TEM?

How often do you find yourself getting ads for something that you just searched for? It can be both creepy and annoying. Since the weather is so much better here in North Carolina than in Chicago, I have been lucky enough to play 20+ rounds of golf since January 1st. The golf here, especially in…

Show Us Your Why

I am sure you probably had a conversation with a toddler at one point in your life. It probably was something like this… Get ready, we’re going to the store Why? Because we need food. Why? Because we are out of milk. I DON’T LIKE MILK ANYMORE! Why? Because it hurts cows. Why? (You get…