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The Stupidest Experiment

Me since 2001: Don’t revisit your Van Halen book for a third edition. It’s an endless pit of work that never makes money and invites trolls by the dozens. Me in 2022: Let’s do this thing. As always, I’ll report back with my findings on Substack,

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Why Nerds Win

Are you a good fit for what I write? Here’s one way to know. I’ve been getting a lot questions about my new website theme. It’s still being built out, but how I decided on the theme should tell you everything you need to know about “growth

Why Nerds Win
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You are more interesting than you think.

I’m guessing you’re a generalist, because most people are. But the online content-consumption machine seems to reward those who make their personalities all about one thing. I believe that’s a distracting, unhelpful remnant of the first 29-ish years of the web — minus the first five years. Why

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You’re Doing Email Marketing Wrong

The time and money invested in email is going to the wrong places. Investing for the long-term with relationship and content marketing is the best use of your funds. But short-term-focused marketing emails still represent the vast majority of spending. As long as that’s true, where should that spending

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Be everywhere. But be your best here.

The biggest trend in branding this year appears to be one of the oldest trends — signature models. From shoes to guitars, old-school brands are flooding the market with products stamped with a creator’s personal brand. A “brand” is just a “reputation.” The bigger you get as a company, the

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Ghosting to Improve Relationships

This post is my first on my new host, Ghost. They were kind enough to port my 15+ years worth of blog posts and newsletters over to kick the tires. My former host, Squarespace, was built up by word-of-mouth during the second golden age of blogging, and evangelized by bloggers

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Clarity is Expensive

After many years of writing for big companies, a few universal truths have emerged from hundreds of projects, no matter the budget: * Having a clear audience is critical for creation, promotion, and sales. * Having a clear goal is existential for the project and ultimately the company. * It’s rare that

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The Importance of Giving a Shit

This is usually a lesser rule of being a creator, marketer, or human being. It’s almost implied. I’m bumping its status up a bit now. I’ve spent the past month driving through the eastern and southern US. Like many travelers, I was throwing money at businesses for

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Marketing Maps Vs. Marketing Plans

Both are needed. Both must change on the fly to fully be realized. But it’s the marketing map that stirs the most inspiration. It’s a look inside the brain of a creator — messy but clear on principle. This is Walt Disney’s from 1957 (via George Mack [https:

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Mies van der Rohe Marketing

Have you heard about the latest “trend” in online marketing? It’s not really a trend — good publishers have been doing it all along. But with the recent privacy changes at Apple (and soon many others), online publishers have had to resort to some old-school methods of getting the word