You don’t make things for your living. Instead, you make it providing something: a service. You are in service marketing. How do you sell that? To understand how, first compare your task to your car salesperson’s. The person didn’t have to do much, no? You felt the smooth finish and the soothing comfort of the [...]
Just watch everyone and anyone all day long. Before work each day, most men read the news about play: the sports page. (Most younger men read it online the night before.) Well before lunch, over 20 million people recheck the performance of their fantasy teams–an obsession which has has transformed fantasy football into a billion [...]
View PostA young friend spotted me sipping a coffee and almost bounced over to me. “Just a few months into business,” she told me, “I have made my first big discovery about business. There’s a simple way to get all of the business you can handle.” What’s that? I asked. “Charge almost nothing.” She’s right. [...]
View PostA Nashville man was suffering a persistent problem with his kitchen floor: it squeaked like a peeved mouse. No matter what he tried, nothing worked. Hearing of the man’s plight, a friend told him, “Call my friend. He’s a carpenter and a true craftsman.” That afternoon the craftsman arrived at the poor fellow’s house, walked [...]
View Post how to price your service, pricing services, Selling the Invisible, the carpenter corollary, the picasso principle, tips on pricingWhat is your talent and skill worth–and why is some worth so much? What can you reasonably charge? Good questions. But before you answer them, consider this story about Pablo Picasso. A visiting American woman was strolling along a street in Paris when she spotted Picasso sketching at a sidewalk café. Not wanting to [...]
View PostHow can you help your group make better decisions? Here are seven key thoughts, gleaned from over 30 years of strategic planning. 1. Enter with two objectives: To learn a lot and produce a road map. There is every chance that you will alter the plan, perhaps significantly, as events unfold. That doesn’t dilute what [...]
View Post business plan tips, decision making. Gore Vidal, group dynamics, group think, Harvard Business Review, how to make a business plan, Jay Chiat, Larry Ellison and God, leadership, Mental health, Michael Maccoby, strategic thinking, why plans fail, wisdom of crowdsThis is the second excerpt from the upcoming book called Passion. The interviewers questions appear in bold italic. What were the big obstacles you faced in becoming a marketing strategist and writer? The first is the one that faces us all: Experience. I started on my own after six years with an ad agency. I [...]
View PostIt came on midnight, August 1, 1998, but we need to go back. From computing’s early days–the first Altair, introduced to the world in Popular Mechanics in 1974–we called a computer a “box.” It seemed fitting. Everything was straight lines and sharp edges. When Apple entered the computer market in July 1976, it created boxes, [...]
View PostOver the next three weeks, I will be posting excerpts from my interview for the upcoming book, Passion. It’s a subject about which have written at length and with passion before. What is passion to you? How would you define it from your your experience? An intense love. Beyond that, it’s a mystery, which probably [...]
View PostRobert Morris: For those who have not as yet read Unthinking, you cite dozens of exemplars – both individuals and organizations– which understand “our love of play.” In your opinion, which best exemplifies that? We take play for granted because it’s so ubiquitous and old, but advertisers’ use of contests and games clearly plays into our love [...]
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