If your business feels stagnant, listen to Shunryu Suzuki: "In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few." Experience is valuable. But it also builds invisible blind spots. Experts often reject ideas too quickly. Innovation comes

Social media content ≠ Marketing campaigns Marketing campaigns: polished, occasional, high effort. Social media content: raw, continuous, personal, familiar. The goal of marketing campaigns is to convert. The goal of social media content is to build trust. Companies need

Biz owner: "Jake, I want to do marketing." Me: "Why do you want to do marketing?" Biz owner: "Because I want to grow." Me: "Do you have the resources needed to grow?" Biz owner: "Resources to grow? What do you mean?" Me: "Almost everything on this planet needs resources to

Marketing is about understanding people. If you want to understand people: Talk to people. Listen to people. Build relationships with people. It's not rocket science.

Buyers buy on their timeline, not yours. They follow their own journey. That journey rarely looks like a clean funnel. If anything, it behaves more like an accordion. And for years you've been told that the buyer's journey resembles a funnel. What this actually means for

Henry Ford wants you to remember this: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Customers describe solutions they know, not the breakthroughs they can’t imagine yet. Observe your customers. Listen to the requests, but pay attention to the

You can't outsource what you never built: Founders, CEOs, and business owners hire marketing agencies and ask for results. But too often, the agency is expected to invent: brand, positioning, GTM, and other strategies from scratch. The company didn’t define them. The company

If you work in marketing, this one’s for you:

Founders and CEOs are playing the wrong game: Are you optimizing your business for traffic or for relationships? If your business depends on traffic: You need an audience. An audience is a function of traffic. Content is the fuel of traffic. You need lots of content. You

Marketing is a discipline. It sits somewhere between art and science. What is essential is invisible to the eye. But the heart can see rightly. Some of the most important effects of marketing take time to show. Not everything that counts can or should be counted. Some

WILL YOUR BUSINESS DIE LIKE KODAK? Cases like Kodak, where they had to radically shift or die, are not common. People tell those stories because they are sensational. Sensationalism = hyperbole = views The latest trend is rarely the solution. More often: • It distracts

Stop looking for a viral hit. Build a boring funnel. Think in systems, not shooting stars. Start talking about marketing as an equation, not an art project. Marketing sits between art and science. It's a discipline. But too many companies treat it as art only. That’s why

How to make marketing easier: It turns out that when you know who values what you have to offer the most and you focus on talking to them, marketing becomes much simpler and easier. Too many businesses don't know who exactly they want to serve and how.

GoDaddy just embarrassed most B2B marketing teams. A lot of B2B marketing uses vague, impressive-sounding language instead of a clear promise and proof. Examples of typical “buzzword” talk: • “AI-powered end-to-end solutions” • “unlock growth” • “transform your business”

McDonald’s had to remove an AI-generated Christmas ad in the Netherlands after backlash: It was released in December, 2025 and removed in 3 days. The ad reframed December as "the most terrible time of the year": chaotic holiday mishaps, gloomy parody song, then "hide out in

How to choose ONE marketing channel without guessing: Most companies don’t have a channel strategy. They have a channel mood. They post on LinkedIn this week, try ads next week, start a podcast, then abandon everything because "it didn’t work." A channel works when you can

eos won the "most effective campaign in the world" by doing something most brands avoid: telling the truth. In April 2025, Effie named eos’ brand campaign the Iridium Effie (the single most effective marketing effort in the world). Here’s what most founders and CEOs should

Most founders and CEOs don’t have a positioning problem. They have a rejection problem. If your positioning is basically: We help everyone. You’re not positioned. You’re a commodity. I think you already know this. But the consequences of being a commodity are worse than

How to run a CLEAN marketing test: So you actually learn. Step 1: Write the hypothesis in one line If we do X, for Y audience, we will get Z result. Step 2: Freeze the other variables No new offer. No new positioning. No new website. No new channel. Step 3: Pick one success

Purpose is the ultimate compass, flashlight, and alarm clock.