Category: Simplifying Your Marketing

The Curse of Knowledge

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11 COMMENTS

I was in Croatia and Slovenia last week, celebrating my 30th wedding anniversary. I have no idea where my wife decided to go. I’m kidding; we were there together. Both are beautiful countries with nice people, quality beer, and lots of silent consonants. We had a terrific time. When we arrived in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana (pronounced: “Las Vegas”), we had to check into our Airbnb. This was more difficult than anticipated. The problem was that while the apartment owner had emailed step-by-step instructions regarding how to find the lockbox, get the key, […] Click to read more…

Too Small to Fail

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12 COMMENTS

A few years ago, my son Evan and a friend started a board game company. It’s grown quite nicely, allowing them both to quit their jobs and do this full time. At some point over the past year, they started outsourcing customer service to a wonderful, perpetually cheerful woman named Sarah. She works virtually and part-time, as needed. Most of her customer service role – all done over email – involves responding to customers whose games were either damaged in transit or never arrived at all. Everything is shipped through third parties (Amazon, […] Click to read more…

Reverse Healing

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34 COMMENTS

Alert readers may recall that I had shoulder surgery recently. In fact, as I write this, it has been exactly six weeks to the day since I went under the knife (not that you bothered to call). How has the recovery been? Well, as the old saying goes, there’s not a lot about it that reminds you of opening presents on Christmas morning. It’s a slow and painful process. And yet, despite all that, I have to say that the human body’s ability to heal is pretty remarkable. Think about it. Somebody […] Click to read more…

Lessons From King Henry

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4 COMMENTS

You know me, I don’t like to brag, but… I just conquered one of the most difficult challenges known to mankind. Peace in the Middle East? Harder. Cure for cancer? Please, you are not thinking big enough. No, my friend, what I did was successfully transition my family of five from one cell phone carrier to another. (Insert loud cheering noise here.) Not only that, but despite the fact that we live in four different states across the country, by the time the dust had settled, we each had new phones in our […] Click to read more…

Coffee Shop Marketing 

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15 COMMENTS

Tell me if this sounds familiar… You’re sitting in a coffee shop with a friend or colleague who utters the following phrase: Can you recommend …  From there, it could be anything. … a tutor for my son? … a financial planner? … a facilitator for our offsite meeting? You close your eyes, give it some thought, and try to come up with the name of someone who might be a match. Congratulations, you have just lived an example of word of mouth. One person with a problem asks another person […] Click to read more…