Be nice to those you meet on the way up because you will meet them on the way down This lifetime rule of thumb, adapted to real life situations, requires some thick skin when you realize you weren’t nice all the time on the way up.  But rather than beat yourself up over it, ...

List building is the key to growing a business…so says every online marketing guru who knows what they are talking about. Those gurus often take it a step further–by offering a “list building secrets” bonus as one of the key add-ons that accompanies their latest software or technique (where their deliverable is a program ...

Thinking back on Thanksgiving’s past (don’t worry, this is not a Scrooge flashback!), I recalled the “post-Thanksgiving/before Christmas period” during my  freshman year in college—when I was thinking about my first set of final exams followed by an entire month of vacation. Unfortunately that led me to that same period after my senior year when I ...

Two years ago on Thanksgiving (it feels like 10 years after this past 2020!), I was sitting at my dining room table with 20+ relatives.  The guests included my Mom (who was a spry 93 and is now a spryer 95), my wife and kids, siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces. There might have been ...

Stephen King said “…writing is telepathy…” and more specifically: “…It’s amusing when you stop to think about it—for years people have argued about whether or not such a thing exists—and all the time it’s been right there, lying out in the open… All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe ...

Email open rates are important…I will not argue that…but there are other metrics that may be far more important than looking at whether your online family is simply opening your emails.  In fact, I maintain that if you built that family in all the right ways–by delivering value, useful information and relevant sales messages consistently ...

I was having multiple conversations this week about how much we can learn from gangsters (and not because they are O.G.’s or “Original Gangsters”). And not because they are “gangstas” either. I’m talking about the most notorious bad guys ever…REAL gangsters. Black hats of the highest order. Guys who you would never want to break ...

A lot of people are on Facebook. Obviously. And they are on it a lot, sharing their most recent meal, offering up advice (whether you want it or not), showing before and after pictures of their incredible weight loss or how they achieved shiny new 6-pack abs in 6 weeks…or just ranting about something you may agree ...

There are many ways to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing messages…and while it is sacrilegious for a serial direct marketer to put marketing material (sales letters, email, display ads, Facebook ads) out into the marketplace simply “hoping and praying for responses,” without measurement, it happens all the time. Sometimes it’s due to irresponsibility. ...

I’ve got a 10 minute video to share with you this week which I delivered two years ago…and it’s still very timely today. Actually it will be timely forever.  I’ll explain. Fundamental marketing principles haven’t changed much over the past two years, despite what you might hear from your “friendly funnelers” or “pandemic pivoters.” ...

I was sent an article by a friend this week written by Joseph Epstein, one of the world’s great essayists and author of 31 books, so I thought it had some merit. The premise of his essay is: Every superior writer I have known, or known about, was a slow reader. That’s an intriguing ...

The B.Y.O.B. session If we held Titans Mastermind while I was in college (I don’t know how that would have ever happened!), I guess I would make it a “B.Y.O.B.” event (“Bring Your Own Beer”)…but we are far more civilized now that we have graduated, for the most part, into adulthood. First of all, when we ...

Is it live or is it Memorex? OK…I dated myself…but I can’t resist. Some of you might remember before there was real digital technology—and most music lived on cassette tapes or vinyl—there was a series of famous commercials for Memorex recording tape. They answered the question above by playing a recording on a Memorex tape that was able to ...

I did an interview for the I Love Marketing podcast/portal with Joe Polish over five years ago. I hadn’t thought about it (maybe because I thought it was “old news”) but I was reminded of it for a couple of reasons this week. First, because of the title: Everyone is going right, time to go left ...

The world’s smartest people do not necessarily provide the best answers. Instead, they focus on asking the right questions.  -Ted Nicholas, April 2005 I’ve often said that one of the most important characteristics of a top copywriter is to be a world class interviewer. Of course having superior writing chops helps once you suck ...

One of the most instructional pieces of research a marketer or copywriter can do is to study 5-star and 1-star reviews on Amazon for the books their core audience is reading. It’s one of the best ways (in addition to joining forums and groups where your customers and prospects hang out) to get into ...

How did we advertise in the “good old days” when there was no email, internet, product launches, VSL’s, Facebook and a myriad of other media? And if you were a small Mom and Pop retail or service company, how would you know how to advertise if you never read a Dan Kennedy book or ...

While I am not a huge heavy metal fan, Metallica’s Enter Sandmanis one of my favorite songs because it always reminds me of one of my heroes, baseball pitcher Mariano Rivera. And it’s also a great tune to put on “repeat” 8 times to get through 45 minutes on the treadmill. 🙂 The song was played ...

I’m sitting in a hotel lobby in New Jersey thinking about my “champagne problems” and feeling bad that my town got hit hard by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Isaias. It looks like my electricity–and more importantly WiFi! (and even cell service)–will be out for the next week. And various trees missed my house by an eyelash ...

If you were asked, “What is the top priority in your business,” how would you answer? I’m sure you would say things like: Keeping my clients/customers/students happy Getting new business from new people (new customer acquisition) Creating new products or services (innovation) Commitment to positive cash flow and profit margin Fulfilling on your mission I know ...