Break The Gumball Machine
In the world of marketing, especially when targeting small businesses and home services companies, it is crucial to differentiate between brand building and sales activation. Both play significant …
Branding, Like Cattle
Time for a history and economics lesson that’s going to be uncomfortable for any vegans who happen to have picked up this book. Far removed as most of us are from the messy details of daily food …
Entering The Wizard’s Castle
Funny how the Universe works; how it to strives to point us in surprising and unexpected directions toward our greater good. In 2004, I was stranded, in a way, in Tulsa. I had taken a leap of faith in …
Leading The Bull
It makes sense that Ferruccio Lamborghini was a Taurus. Say what you want about how much stock to put into astrological signs and what they say about people, but every Taurus I’ve ever known has …
Learning The ‘Yes, And…’ Rule
There’s a whole lot we can learn by studying comedians, and that’s before you get into the socio-political wisdom of the greats like George Carlin and Bill Hicks. From the art of constructing an …
Personality Or Procedure?
Where’s the balance between hair-on-fire creative genius and rinse/wash/repeat regularity? The good news for business owners is it’s never an either/or scenario when it comes to leveraging …
Skipping The Super Bowl
Like clockwork, every January, as the National Football League season winds down and anticipation builds for the next Super Bowl, there will be a news story about the latest eye-gouging and frankly …
Time Is The Great Validator
“A river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but its persistence.” – Jim Watkins Consider the Grand Canyon. Without the help of Doc Brown, his trusty flux capacitor and a spare …
Scatterbrain Synesthesia
It’s 4:23 in the morning and I’m sweating up a frenzy on the stairstepper. It’s all about the serotonin. I’ve got a thing for it. Overloaded from sensory input from the eight …
Nuclear Family Business Problems
For more insights into the dynamics of running a family-owned business, check out my Nuclear Family Business podcast. I need a hypothetical business for this chapter and since I’m a Texan who …
The Main Thing
I traveled all day and all night to meet that guy. I was jittery from too much caffeine, road-weary, and dumped into parts unknown where they measured distance in kilometers and temperature in …
When To Kill Your Idols
Apart from opposable thumbs and self-awareness, scientists are generally in agreement that one of the biggest traits that separate homo sapiens from all other animal life is the ability to tell …