3:03pm
Saint Paul
I kick myself for not getting into online marketing when I was 12.
I laugh at myself for selling my fraction of a bitcoin.
And I still wonder why I didn’t invest more in the stocks of companies that have performed well.
Hindsight, huh.
So when I see these “jump on the AI SaaS bandwagon and get rich!” posts, I wonder…
(more…)2:59pm
Saint Paul
When we married, my wife’s friend gave us a map of the world, with pushpins to mark where we’re going, where we’ve been, and where we’d like to go.
We still use the map, nearly 18 years later.
It’s fun to remember good experiences: The chef who cooked our fresh fish catch. Old-world architecture. Back-of-the-Pepsi-truck hitchhiked rides.
But it’s more memorable, and therefore more fun, when not-fun-in-the-moment things happen…
(more…)3:11pm
Saint Paul
I saw this fascinating fact on LinkedIn, in Feb 2025:
“More than half of job seekers have been on the hunt for six months — if not longer.”
Now, I’m not super active on Social Media. (Connect with me here on X, or here on LinkedIn now!)
But, don’t you think some of this “job hunt” blame goes to LinkedIn?
(more…)2:38pm
Saint Paul
Here’s a 2,171-year-old marketing fact about today, February 5:
Feb 5 was the end of the third Punic war in 146 BC, marking the destruction of the city-state Carthage by the city-state Rome.
Why did Rome destroy Carthage?
And what’s this have to do with marketing?
(more…)3:02pm
Saint Paul
When I spoke at a marketing conference last year, I asked if people were familiar with Dan Kennedy.
Not a single person in my audience raised their hand.
Which only sorta surprised me.
Kennedy is a direct response marketer, through and through. He’s got a ton of business ideas, too–many of which go against the grain of modern business and marketing.
That’s attractive to me.
(more…)1:22pm
Saint Paul, Minn
Yesterday, Jan 30 1982, the first computer virus was created.
Richard Skrenta wrote 400 lines of code and disguised the self-spreading malware as harmless software.
Here’s the thing:
Computer viruses generally aren’t good.
But…
(more…)1:26pm
Saint Paul
Let me ask you:
Which works better as a headline: highlighting a problem, or highlighting a solution?
I ask because I’m reading John Caples’ “Tested Advertising Methods” right now–4th edition, thank you for asking.
(Which, by the way, a few years back I could only find the 4th edition in Canada, and the seller would only ship to Canada. Knowing that the 5th Edition sucks (from my own personal experience), I found myself a Canadian mule…)
Anyway.
In it, Caples says that headlines that highlight the positive tend to out-pull the negative.
Because, he reasons… who wants to read an ad about problems?
And while he has a point…
(more…)2:21pm
Saint Paul
*|FNAME|* I recently again was reminded by a well-meaning marketer:
“People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”
Stupid. And here’s why.
(more…)3:23pm
Saint Paul
“The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.”
—Pope Benedict XVI
Cold showers are especially tough when the water pipes know it’s -15° outside.
So after years of cold showers–both for the possible health benefits and for making myself do things I might not want to do–they’re no longer part of my routine.
But there are other ways I find comfort in discomfort:
(more…)