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The single best term I’ve learned this year. I want to give you the non-technical definition, and as is my […]
Chris Fralic reminded me of this piece I wrote for Ode. Great stories succeed because they are able to capture […]
It happened again. There I was, meeting with someone who I thought had nothing to do with books or publishing, […]
From this week’s Guardian: 1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow […]
I’m serious. Smart people with good ideas worth sharing can get a lot out of this exercise. It’s technically easy […]
Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want […]
This is Kevin Kelly’s best riff of the year, and that’s saying an enormous amount. Go read it! Some people […]
Before you hit send on that next email, perhaps you should run down this list, just to be sure: Is […]
This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing. Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need […]
The most important decision-making rule you learn in business school is still largely misunderstood. When making a choice between two […]
Business Development is a mysterious title for a little discussed function or department in most larger companies. It’s also a […]
Here’s my definition: A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a […]
How can I explain the never-ending irrationality of human behavior? We say we want one thing, then we do another. […]
It’s not clear to me why business plans are the way they are, but they’re often misused to obfuscate, bore […]
Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year. Many of those people have seen every […]
That would be you. Even if you’re not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your […]
Amanda Hocking is making a million dollars a year publishing her own work to the Kindle. No publisher. Rebecca Black […]
Making something is work. Let’s define work, for a moment, as something you create that has a lasting value in […]
Long work is what the lawyer who bills 14 hours a day filling in forms does. Hard work is what […]
Perhaps we could endeavor to teach our future the following: How to focus intently on a problem until it’s solved. […]
What is a public library for? First, how we got here: Before Gutenberg, a book cost about as much as […]
A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working […]
No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and […]
There are actually two recessions: The first is the cyclical one, the one that inevitably comes and then inevitably goes. […]
Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper. […]
Those are pretty much the only two choices. Being judged is uncomfortable. Snap judgments, prejudices, misinformation… all of these, combined […]
Impatient… great marketing takes time. Doing it wrong (and rushed) ten times costs much more and takes longer than doing […]
Most amateurs and citizens believe that marketing is the outer circle. Marketing = advertising, it seems. The job of marketing […]
You may have read Matt Fisher’s story about the tragic death of his sister and the response of her insurance […]
Professional farmers don’t begrudge the backyard gardener his tomato harvest. That’s silly. And talented mechanics certainly don’t mind the antics […]
That depends on what you mean by “work” and by “free.” Work is what you do as a professional, when […]
Many marketers work overtime to confuse us about money. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of the time value of […]
There is no more powerful tribal marketing connection than this. More than features, more than benefits, we are driven to […]
A luxury good gets its value from its lack of utility and value. A typical consumer would look at what […]
Deniability–“They decided, created, commanded or blocked. Not my fault.” Helplessness–“My boss won’t let me.” Contempt–“They don’t pay me enough to […]
Starting at the age of nine, I played the clarinet for eight years. Actually, that’s not true. I took clarinet […]
I realized the other day that most people grow up thinking in terms of professional affiliations. “I’m going to be […]