My sister and her family came to visit from Ohio. They’re Catholics and very right wing. They live on a farm and have guns and shoot varmints.
They home-school their children and have a goat share where they sell shares of a goat in exchange for a certain amount of goat milk each month. They do this to get around a law prohibiting the sale of unpasturized milk.
My sister tells me with grim seriousness “Oh you don’t understand…Obama is a bad bad man…he’s not who you think he is. He’s not …

Jim Rohn talked about the difference between those who are successful and those who are not as being not great. A series of small steps in one direction or the other will set us on our course either to failure or success.
I’ve witnessed this truth many times among friends, family and myself.  We fail to do the right thing and our lives suffer. Failing to do the right thing doesn’t always mean doing glaringly wrong things like cheating on your spouse, committing fraud, or not paying your taxes.
Failing to do …

Information - can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
An interesting book came out a few years back by a guy named Andrew Keen called the Cult of the Amateur “How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture.” While I didn’t agree with everything in Keen’s biting critique of what he considered the “Cult of the Amateur,” I found the book thought provoking.
Ever read forums? I sometimes read marketing and copywriting related forums. Often I can see Keen’s ideas played out -  amateurs distributing information second or third hand without stopping …

Effective communications strategy…do you have one?
In my former life as creative director we would always start with the defining project document known as the “Creative Brief.”
This document also known as a “Design Brief” , “Project Brief” , or “Marketing Brief” is crucial. It is the bare minimum requirement for any creative project and will always come in handy.
Here’s why a creative brief is important. The brief outlines the communications strategy and should be used as a beacon to direct company wide communications doctrine and critical to your brand.
Some of you …

This is a question I have been hearing a lot lately. How can I get more people to respond to my website? This is a good question and one I’m sure I’ll keep hearing until the internet goes away or I croak.
Much of it depends on the website. Take this site for instance. It’s like pulling teeth to get any of you readers to do anything. Why am I saying that? I’ll tell you.
About three or four posts ago I had a challenge (which is still open here) where I …

I was someone who struggled with math growing-up. I liked math and wanted to do well  but had horrible test anxiety. My college math experience was so bad. One day I went to my instructor and plead with him to pass me through my final math class. I had already taken the class and dropped it two or three times.  I was doing okay on the homework but I was bombing the tests. Much to my terror my pleading didn’t work. My instructor told me the worst thing possible. “Hmm…Well…let’s …

You probably already know there are only three ways to grow your business.

Get more customers
Increase the per sale profit margin
Increase the purchase frequency of existing customers

Getting new customers is always a challenge. Increasing profit margins can be done any number of ways with upsells, point of purchase displays, extended warranties, coupons, discounts, etc…
Increasing the purchase frequency is something can be handled with frequent mailings of new and exciting offerings, scheduling followup services in advance, memberships, cross promotions etc…
But how do you get new customers? Here are five ideas to add …