Articles100
The backlist are the products already in the marketplace. Built earlier, still sold. The frontlist is the new. Restaurants have regulars (backlist) and new patrons. Broadway shows are attended by people who see three to ten shows a year, as well as folks going to their very first production. Supermarkets sell staples (like milk and […]
If you can swap your slogan with a competitor’s without changing the meaning of either brand, then your slogan is meaningless. For example, “You belong here” is not a positioning statement for a college seeking new students. It’s just noise. It also doesn’t help to mix weasel words with more weasel words and then add […]
One of the nicest thing you can do for someone you care about is point them to an idea, a book, a talk or a tool that will amplify their work and help them get to where they’re going. It’s not easy. It means you understand their goals, see them for who they are and […]
They keep getting fancier. But you would benefit from investing in better lighting instead. It’s tempting to upgrade your computer processor, your frying pan or your sneakers as well. The thing is, once the foundational tools are good enough, technique and training outperform hardware. New snow tires are often more effective than a new car […]
Look around the room you’re in. There are dozens of electrically powered devices, each waiting for you to request their assistance. A toaster, six lights, an oven, the ice maker, stereo, TV, microwave… It’s a very long list. Silent and ubiquitous. Of course, electricity didn’t start this way. Using a washing machine to do your […]
Focus groups and informal feedback offer a trap: Asking someone in the target audience if they like something might get you useful feedback. But most of the time, the people you’re asking aren’t actually in the group of early adopters that are going to make your rollout work. They’re not the people who buy work […]
Promotion, activation, and conversation come together when the early adopters have a tool to share a new idea. My new book is out a few months, and it’s a chance to create a share package with swag. There are only 1,000 sets. Each includes 10 first-printing copies of The Knot (with the collectible mini-poster) + […]
I asked Google Gemini about the last decade of Google’s relentless push to make blogs less popular. It wrote: Your timeline is spot on. The systematic destruction of the independent web’s infrastructure didn’t start with modern AI; it began directly with the death of Google Reader in 2013, which fractured the RSS ecosystem that allowed […]
Birthdays are a little overrated. I’ve never met anyone who was more than a passive participant in their birth, but anniversaries represent a choice. Every year, we can commemorate a commitment we made and then decide to recommit. Anniversaries aren’t just romantic. The day you took the job, the day you started the practice, the […]
Thirty years ago, Cory Doctorow did an interview showing primitive inklings of the internet future (music, videos, etc.). At the time, it was easy to dismiss it as an irrelevant toy, and most people in power did just that. Around the same time, I wrote an article for Direct Marketing magazine outlining the future of […]
A 100-foot long boat that’s 99% complete is going to sink before it leaves the dock. That gaping hole is more than enough to do it in. On the other hand, a baked ziti that’s 99% as good as the best baked ziti ever made is exactly good enough to serve in any setting. Mediocrity […]
We have more agency and choice than we know. And sometimes, when the awareness of our freedom arrives, it’s too late to reclaim the opportunities we missed. Some of the walls around us are real—built by people who have no right to build them, who profit from our staying put. And some of the walls […]
[A long riff on book publishing with (perhaps) wide applicability to your work as well.] Publishing is different from writing—it’s the hard work of creating the conditions to help people get in sync, move forward, and get to where they’re headed. The best reason to publish a non-fiction business or how-to book in 2026 is […]
It’s pretty astonishing how far people will go to announce various forms of status: The list has little to do with money spent or money in the bank. Humans care about status and affiliation. We’ve spent our lives being very good at noticing both.
There are more than a million podcasts. The good news is that it’s easy to start one. The top 1% of all podcasts account for 99% of all downloads. That means that if your goal is reach, the long tail isn’t going to help much. The short head, even in a medium as wide open […]
When tech shows up, it offers a shortcut and convenience. You can use Google Maps to direct you somewhere without paying much attention to the surroundings. You can use Claude to write your marketing copy and get a better-than-mediocre result the first try. You can look for a gift on Amazon, pick the first match, […]
No one cares about it as much as the person who’s planning it. Some folks waited in line for the first iPhone, but not many. It’s tempting to try to bend the curve and put the ‘grand’ into ‘grand’ opening. But that usually creates disappointment. In any population, only a few folks get satisfaction out […]
There have always been trolls. Hecklers, jesters, and class clowns. The troll lives under the bridge and invents nonsense grievances in order to get attention. But, until recently, there wasn’t much of a business model to support this career choice. It’s said that William Randolph Hearst started a war to sell newspapers, but few people […]
Every day, about 16,000,000 hours of tennis are played. The percentage of that devoted to tournament play approaches zero. So why is informal tennis built on a zero-sum model? In a game, every shot is designed to have the opponent fail. The goal is to have your opponent miss the ball, hit it into the […]
When culture pushes us to measure things that don’t matter to us, our values are captured. Once the metrics turn a profit for corporations and those in power, they are amplified, and almost overnight, begin to matter to us, even if they run contrary to what we originally set out to do or become. We’re […]
What’s the structure of your project? Here are three paradigms to consider: Video game development is expensive and risky because you’re on two frontiers at once. The tech frontier, trying to do something with hardware that hasn’t been done before, and the game mechanics frontier, perfecting and polishing new forms of interaction that last. So […]
Steinbeck points out that the stars shine in the sky, regardless of the drama here on Earth. Perspective fools us into believing that our point of view is primary, but it’s not difficult to imagine a more distant (or closer) one that would change everything. The service at table 7 might not matter much to […]
If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it’s not art. Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires participation. Art is a verb. Decoration is important. Beauty matters. But decoration and beauty are insufficient to create art. Music, […]
Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting. Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market. But many people with ‘marketer’ in their title simply go to meetings and do tasks after the real work of marketing is already done. Some tech companies have hundreds of […]
Real artists do all the painting themselves, not like Rembrandt Real artists use brushes, not technology like Cartier-Bresson Real writers write it out by hand, not like Jack Kerouac Real musicians record it live, not like Steely Dan Real singers sing without processing, not like Kanye West and Daft Punk Real directors do the prep […]
Trick title. There are at least three kinds of “marketing” we ought to be teaching: Most organized marketing instruction is about the first or second, with some online courses teaching hustle and hype, which I don’t count as marketing. My best work is about the third kind, the one where it all began. More here.
In simple situations with obvious metrics, transparency earns trust. Voting, for example, benefits from audit trails and inspectability. But transparency can also undermine trust. Walking through the typical restaurant kitchen on the way to dinner probably won’t increase the typical diner’s trust in the experience. The restaurant isn’t hiding anything; it’s just that they know […]
We evolved words on top of our primordial ability to have feelings. Words allow us to be specific, to understand a situation more completely and to teach. Our hunches and feelings still matter, but professionals choose to be able to talk about their work. Learn the words and then make the choice to use them.
Paul McGowan makes stereos. To paraphrase his insight: The musicality isn’t a feature you add to an amplifier. It’s what’s left when you stop ruining it. To expand: Customer delight isn’t something we add to our projects. It’s what’s left if we don’t ruin it. Curiosity isn’t simply what’s left after a complete education. It’s […]
Even if you’re not applying, this thought experiment gives a glimpse into how the world is about to be rewired. The top 10 most selective colleges in the US admit about 5% of those who apply. They’re not selling education as much as a label, a rare chance for someone to slot themselves into a […]
Any gathering of more than two people involves compromise. Embracing this fact actually increases the utility of the event. It’s a trap to commit to making it perfect for everyone–we end up sacrificing what the event could be and creating mediocrity instead. A surprise party might be designed to make the host feel good, or […]
If you’re not sure of the difference, you’re probably just doing your job. Perhaps, if you’re fortunate, your job is in sync with your work. But most of the time, our work is something we have to fight for. It’s not something we’re given, or apply for. It’s what we choose to do. The change […]
If we choose you based on price, please don’t be surprised if we leave the moment someone else uses the same tactic on you. Low price is a temporary refuge for a marketer who has run out of useful ways to improve the experience and deliver more value.
It took me thirty years to populate the bookshelf that’s behind me in most of my videos. Most of us don’t have the time or patience to do that. At the same time, the wonky computer-generated background many people use on Zoom calls undermines the impact and authority you might be seeking. I just discovered […]
It’s possible you use social media to grow your business. Or to enhance your career. Or maybe it’s to find delight and joy. When you add up all the tikking, tokking, tweeting and clicking, what’s the return on that investment? Is your vacation more fun when you spend it taking photos for your Instagram followers? […]
Not, “what do you think you can get?” Not, “what you’d be willing to live with…” Instead: If you were willing to be on the hook for the responsibility (if it works out) and the disappointment (if it doesn’t), which one do you actually want? It’s harder to answer than it sounds.
Moore’s Law was stated 60 years ago, but it only became a law once its predictions came true. The reason that your laptop doesn’t cost as much as your house is that computer chips get relentlessly cheaper and more powerful. Just as Gordon Moore predicted. But perhaps it wasn’t a prediction. Perhaps he wasn’t imagining […]
If that’s not happening, it’s possible you’re not being bold enough, generous enough or creative enough. It might be teenagers, competitors or that stranger down the street, but generous creative leadership always creates skeptics.
To quote the great Steve Wozniak, “Actual Intelligence.” The kind we’re born with and can develop if we choose. It’s worth more now than ever before. Alas, it’s rarely taught in school. The difficult work of making choices. The act of curation. The responsibility of putting your name on it. The judgment to ask the […]
If your toaster isn’t working, this is the first place to start. A combination of an easy first step and also the likelihood that it’s the problem. The troubleshooting for things not working in our interactions with others isn’t as obvious, but we can think about it in a similar way. The first question: Is […]
It’s useful and satisfying to have people go along with your wishes and your taste. But hoping that they’ll be delighted to do so and thank you for pointing out their previous errors might be asking for too much. It’s one thing for people to act as if you’re right. It’s a whole other thing […]
We create a job whenever someone with the authority to hire decides the value created is greater than the wages paid. In my lifetime, we’ve invented 7 billion or more jobs, which is great news. Great for the people who were able to earn a living, and productive for everyone who experienced some of the […]
Another unique German word. Umfunktionierung. Functional transformation. Most of us take the tools we’re given and use them as instructed. We follow the manual. We color inside the lines. We accept the functions as defined by those who came before us. But the ruckus maker asks: What if this tool could do something else? Umfunktionierung […]
At 2:30 in the morning, the night clerk at the hotel is a great help if you’ve locked yourself out of your room. But if you want to complain about the hours of the gym, the hotel’s environmental footprint or even their late check-in policy, you’re almost certainly wasting their time. And yours. Every organization […]
On a beautiful Sunday in Central Park, you’ll see thousands of people out for a jog. Each person has exactly the right running style–and none of those styles are the same. Each is wearing what they think of as the right clothes, listening (or not) to the right sort of music, going in precisely the […]
We can search for the perfect option or settle for something better than we have right now. The search for perfect never ends, and it’s a great place to hide. Would you rather wait for the perfect job, or take this new one, which is better than the one you have? The perfect leader is […]
Highlighting the non-existent negative is confusing. “Don’t be late,” isn’t as useful as, “We’re going to leave on time.” “I don’t want to be rude, but…” can easily be replaced by simply saying something that isn’t rude. And of course, “with all due respect…” is often the preface to something said without due respect.
Professionals take their work seriously. Hobbyists can take it personally. We arrive and make a promise. We do it on behalf of the client, and that promise has little to do with what we might want to do–it’s what they need us to do. And so we make our promises carefully, and keep them with […]
A dog gets fed and thinks his person is an omniscient, benevolent being. A cat gets fed and thinks it is. How we see ourselves in this analogy is actually up to each of us, every day. It also tells us a bit about how we think about customers, vendors, and partners.
You’re flying over Mount Rainier and a hole opens up in the bottom of your airplane. In that moment, you think hard about what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and what matters. My friend Ty actually had this happen. In that moment, she decided to stop wasting her days on a career that pleased her […]
Long after the fact, these are the best kind. They remind us of how far we’ve come. They’re proof that not giving up was a good idea. They are fuel for the next thing. But, at the time, they’re pretty hard to live with. All we can do is remind ourselves that it’s an unskippable […]
Runaway selection happens when organizations compete with each other far beyond the point where it’s rational to do so. We see this in species as well–peacocks have ungainly and inefficient feather displays because, as Alice’s Red Queen said, “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” In organizations, there’s […]
It requires skill and effort. It can be taught. And it’s worth prioritizing. When we wing it, allocate little time to it or assume it’s a side effect of our work, we diminish the effort and blur our focus. “I wonder what it’s like to be you” is part of what makes us human, but […]
Where did the five-second rule come from? Science makes it clear that if disgusting germs are going to go from the floor to your toast, it’s going to take less than five seconds for that to happen. It might as well be the four-minute rule as far as food safety goes. But it’s compelling and […]
There’s the fast of a drag racer. Purpose-built, difficult to steer, expensive and fragile. There’s the fast of the marathon runner. Beat by a sprinter every time, but able to keep it up for hours. And the fast of a well-integrated team. Communications, clarity, and respect enable them to produce far more in less time. […]
In our dreams, the laws of thermodynamics don’t apply, and gravity works in strange ways. We can jump across a chasm and stick the landing on the other side. This freedom is important. It’s part of what makes a dream, a dream. It’s not just the physics of moving matter, though. It’s the physics of […]
Five short entries a day. It’s easy to imagine that if you do this 200 workdays in a row, your career will advance. And it makes it easier to prepare for your annual review or that next job interview. Like most habits, the hardest part is committing to begin.
Today, using AI is almost always a solo endeavor. From the very start, forty years ago, the internet (inter + network) has amplified the exchange of information. But the first cycles of AI have been just one person at a time. No one joins in your chats, no one sees them. It’s just you and […]
Here’s an interesting thought experiment. Imagine that you would be reincarnated into the soul and body of someone on Earth, 25 years old, at random. You won’t know what you know now, you’ll simply live their life. What year would you choose? Since it’s random, it’s not about picking the best year to be among […]
Pay attention to what’s in front of you. Don’t let fear contaminate your understanding of the situation. Act with commitment. Notice the gap between event and reaction. Embrace the resources that are available to you. Optimism is a belief about possible outcomes, but equanimity adds a bias toward action, regardless of what happens. There’s enough […]
The actor, artist, mathematician, pianist, speaker, leader, tech nerd: Just like me, but talented. I’m not so sure. It might be more accurate to say “just like me, but dedicated.” The first approach lets us off the hook. The second approach opens the door to possibility.
For hundreds of years, nostalgia was seen as a serious disease, with doctors across Europe scrambling for a cure. Hundreds of thousands of people died from it. In the original understanding of the term, it was a sort of homesickness. Soldiers from Switzerland were the first to get the official diagnosis–separated from their friends, family […]
The creators of the Blackberry were sure that customers loved the keyboard. That’s what they heard all day from their users, and it must have been right since they had a huge share of the mobile phone market. When the iPhone came out, it wasn’t seen as a threat because it had no keyboard. Blackberry […]
Multi-tasking is mostly an illusion. What we’re actually doing is slicing our focus, jumping from one thing to another and then back again. All that jumping decreases our productivity and worse, erodes our peace of mind. You’re only doing one thing at a time anyway. Might as well embrace that instead of spending so much […]
I bought a snack food the other day, and was disappointed to discover that the thing inside the container had little in common with the picture on the front. It was pallid, lifeless and drab. The marketer who decided to improve the picture was making a choice, one with consequences. When you choose to disappoint […]
When there is motion, it creates an impact of the environment. First, the path is barely noticeable. But then, others see the hint of a path and walk on it, making it more clear. Finally, the path becomes the route. Sometimes there’s a small rut. But a rut shifts gravity and wheels or feet land […]
In terms of cost, serving a small ramekin of toasted pistachio nuts is a tiny portion of what an airline spends in transporting someone first class. In fact, it’s such a relatively small expense that it’s easy to simply avoid it. Send the money to the bottom line and focus on the parts that are […]
The expression “bad money crowds out the good” refers to Gresham’s Law. It means that once lesser-quality and counterfeit currency begins to be traded, people hoard the good stuff and only trade the poor substitutes. Social media platforms fall into a trap like this when they seek to grow. For example, at the beginning, Substack […]
[Off topic, but I hope it might be useful] Mindfulness can improve your life. So can stillness and spiritual grounding. This is not a post about that. Breathing is an architectural challenge and a chemical necessity. We breathe about 20 pounds of air a day (and if you’ve ever tried to weigh air, you can […]
There are more available excuses now than ever before. In just two letters, “AI” is a simple, brand-new, all-purpose excuse for laying people off, averaging things down, closing things up and generally finding an easier/quicker path. Courage, on the other hand, is the commitment to take risks and work hard to make something better than […]
New technology often upends the careers of experienced professionals. When the Mac offered typesetting to the masses, typographers were incensed. They had grown up with lead or photo composition, they understood why it was called a ‘case’ and they knew how to kern. The typographers warned us that we’d soon be inundated by ugly, careless […]
Technology changes things. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. When a powerful new technology arrives, it offers us wishes. Too often, we waste them, asking it to take on simple chores or offer us trivial conveniences. We’re in the biggest moment of technical change of our lifetimes. What are you using your wishes for?
If we remove impediments that are in the way of where our customers seek to go, they support us. But when we remove the friction that gives people traction on their journey, they flounder. Remove the hassles that people don’t care about, but celebrate the hassles that make it worth the effort.
Sometimes, back pain is felt in the thighs or even the ankles. But treating the part that hurts does nothing to address the real problem. Most business challenges have a similar pattern–it might feel like the problem is your customer’s attitude or how busy a location is–but it’s probably a different problem, something more systemic, […]
80 years ago, the most important person in the music business was James Petrillo. It’s difficult to imagine the head of the musician’s union on the cover of Time magazine, but there he was. Petrillo saw how technology was changing an industry and pushed for changes in the flow of credit and royalties. The story […]
“Wait a second.” That’s difficult advice. In a world that moves faster with each cycle, where urgencies are prioritized and last-minute saves are celebrated, it’s not always welcome advice. And so we’ve ended up concerned. Fretting. Worried. Looking for the next thing to drop everything for. The book of concern is more than a conceptual […]
What do your supporters tell their friends? That’s the unseen force behind every successful brand, movement or idea. Most people don’t care about you. They’re not listening to you, not wondering what you’re up to, and certainly not taking the time to seek you out. All you have is a small circle, your supporters. And […]
That’s the appeal of it, of course. There isn’t a definitive study. There can’t be. Even if we created a forty-year-long, double-blind twin study, there’d be room for someone to ask “what about?…” It doesn’t matter that the peer-reviewed and consistent results we have are clear to those who read them with an open mind. […]
What does it mean for us to own something? If we own a piece of land and the rain washes the topsoil downstream, do we go and get the topsoil back? Do we own our reputation? We have influence over it, but some of it was gifted to us without our knowledge, and other parts […]
Some vegans don’t eat avocados. They’re concerned that the bees that are trucked in to pollinate the trees are mistreated, and so they choose to not support this practice. But we live in community, and someone running a vegan restaurant or serving a meal to vegan friends, concerned that they might offend, doesn’t serve avocado. […]
Sometimes it pays to accept and celebrate what we get. And sometimes, we only get something because we settled for it. It helps to be able to discern the difference between the two.
There’s a difference between telling someone their work can become better and saying it can become even better. When we say even better, we lock in a foundation — we’re affirming that something good already exists — at the same time we create the conditions for improvement. Ennui and disappointment, on the other hand, are […]
If you’re hoping for this meeting or this performance or this engagement to produce something extraordinary, why are you setting it up as if it’s ordinary? The hard work of a brainstorming session, a pitch collaboration or a negotiation happens long before most people begin. We hire architects to design expensive buildings, but we design […]
The door-to-door salesperson had no leverage. If he was at your door, he wasn’t at anyone else’s door. Every minute you spent with him was a minute he had to spend with you. While it was a tough gig, no one doubted that something was motivating this person enough to put at least as much […]
Three of my friends got hacked this week. You get an ecard and click. It asks you to log in to your email. Boom, done. It hacks your email account, steals all of your contacts and then sends itself to the whole address book. And while they’re at it, they could be scraping and misusing […]
Engineers, scientists, and most of all, businesses are looking for the right answer. It’s such a common quest that we take it for granted, but it’s new, and it continues to cause stress. The right answer is productive. It’s resilient. And it’s a powerful ranking tool. The right play wins the game, the right production […]
Every writer has all of them. 26 in most Western languages. But no writer knows all the words. That’s the gap where creativity, effort and possibility lie–between the universal letters and the unlimited words. This is an analogy for arenas as diverse as sports and commerce. Sometimes, we work on a project where our competitors […]
If it’s just the right amount of necessary kindness, it’s not really kindness. It’s pleasantness. If the people in our circle begin to experience behavior that’s kinder than necessary, the expectations for what’s necessary will ratchet forward, making everything more pleasant. And… being kind is a lovely way to spend your day. [Compare this to […]
If you want to drink more herbal tea, get a hot water dispenser that keeps it handy and on tap. On the other hand, if you want to watch less television, disconnect the TV after every viewing session. Convenience leads to consumption.
We all make them from time to time. You might not know what you need to know. This is where experience is created. You might have an identity that pushes you to make those choices. If you’re determined to act like the person you have assumed you are, the choices come with the role. Or, […]
TINA! This is what Margaret Thatcher said about her draconian free market policies. It’s an easy thing to tell ourselves about compliance to any dominant system. But it’s incomplete. The complete sentence is, “There is no alternative unless we’re prepared to endure short-term discomfort as we push back against the dominant system.” So the real […]
It’s a question so rarely asked it almost feels silly to ask it. Some situations and some jobs work to eliminate our freedom of choice. Prison, medical school, 8th grade–there are settings where time, tools, and options are severely limited. But even in these settings, we have more choice than we realize. And for the […]
Word salad is actually nutritious when consumed in small amounts. Placebos are real, they’re effective and they often help us find solace or perhaps to heal. If they do no harm, there’s no problem. “Placebo” isn’t an insult. It’s a category, one to live up to and improve. Here’s one to consider: VAEL SOMA A […]
Most of us would like to live with wonder, grace and optimism. Perhaps it pays to practice this in advance. When considering any given moment, is there a glimmer of good worth focusing on, even making a comment about? Our narrative of reality often becomes our reality.
If it’s important, don’t ask the team to try harder. Instead, create the conditions for ordinary effort to produce redundant outputs that reduce crises. If quality is a problem, look at the system, not the people.
“The odds of winning the lottery are the same whether you buy a ticket or not.” This seems nonsensical at first. Obviously, there are lottery winners. Therefore, the odds aren’t the same. Except we’re not mathematicians doing a math problem (at least most of us). Odds are how we navigate the world. When they’re sufficiently […]
Joseph Brandlin is a scofflaw. After months of fighting to get the city council to put a stop sign on the corner of the dangerous intersection near his home, he simply did it himself. A first-rate, professional job that cost more than $1,000. As he was finishing the job at 1:30 am, he was arrested […]
It’s often mislabeled. Sometimes the contents can make us ill, especially if we drink too much. Status is easy to sell. But despite how often people buy the promise, it rarely delivers.
You can be fashionable without reading Vogue. You can be informed without watching the nightly news. You can be smart about science without going to MIT. It’s possible to be a great chef without buying a cookbook. In fact, you can probably thrive without reading this blog. There are millions of songs on Spotify that […]