The Case For Beauty

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The world is as we see it, is as we create it. We experience what we emphasize. We receive what we give. Turn on the news—what do you see? The world is full of criminality, deceit and uncaring self-interest. Yet go to a symphony or a play, watch a beautiful movie, roll down the windows and listen to your favorite song. Suddenly life is an amazing place where anything can happen, where the good guys win and where sunlight streams through the clouds onto a world of hope and Continue Reading

Published on Entrepreneur.com: “You Don’t Create Your Company’s Brand–You Discover It”

This is an excerpt of an article I originally wrote for Entrepreneur.com: Over $500 billion is spent on advertising each year. The average American is exposed to an estimated 3,000 ads per day. Fifteen minutes out of every hour of television programming is devoted to commercials. That’s a lot of marketing. And a lot of marketers. With six million companies in the United States alone, that's a lot of people competing to get their message out. How do you stand out from the crowd? How do Continue Reading

Know Thyself: The Link Between Brand, Business Plan and Marketing

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Let’s talk about the big picture of your life and goals. Let’s talk about high-level strategy for a moment. Forgive me for writing this as a business topic. However, frequently that’s what makes the world go round on Earth at the moment. Commerce, finance and organization are somewhat necessary to get anything done—even in the arts. Thus, my interest in the area. If you want to make a large effect, it’s necessary to form or join a group. When you do this though, you’re instantly committed Continue Reading

Get Infinite.

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We all have limits, or so I’ve heard. When we really take stock of what we’ve done in the past what we’re capable of in the future, a certain reality sets in. It’s a reality that defines us. A reality that shows us the type of person we are and the type of life we’re likely to have. In order to be “realistic,” in order to be happy, we’re told we should embrace this. We should look at who we are and what we’re capable of, then figure out how to live within those limits and be Continue Reading

On The Inevitability of Reaching Out

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Spoken of in hushed tones and shrouded in mystery, it is apparently too powerful to be grasped by the uninitiated. Only with years of work can you truly come to know the secrets of the gurus. Only with years of study can you truly understand…marketing? Yes, unfortunately, marketing. It can seem daunting. With proprietary systems, detailed terminology and competing theories, marketing appears highly complicated. But it’s not. It’s simple. We sometimes get so caught up in the mechanics of Continue Reading

Beautiful Night, Magical Life

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“Drums!” she said in broken two-year-old English. “Drums on the hill!” She looked way up the hill, past the fountain and multiple of sets of stairs, to the pavilion far at the top. From the heights, the warm sound of conga drums wafted down to us and lightly made itself known. Curious. Why would there be drums on a Sunday night, here in the middle of Forest Park? Beyond the ever-changing lights of the fountain, two friends walked and took pictures in the dark. The summer air was now Continue Reading

5 Steps to Marketing That Resonates With Your Prospects

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This is an excerpt from one of my articles published on Entrepreneur.com. You can read the original here. From a marketing standpoint, the internet is a hurricane of competing messages, publicity stunts and celebrity endorsements shouting at everyone who logs on. Really, it’s a problem of “tuning out.” There are so many messages out there that the only way people can cope is by tuning out all the sales chatter. The people you're trying to reach are lumping you in with all the other marketing Continue Reading

Successful Marketing: What’s The Real Bottom Line?

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This post is the last installment of seven-part series called “The Fundamentals of Internet Marketing.” To read earlier posts, visit Part 1: Introduction, Part 2: Definitions, Part 3: Strategy, Part 4: The Tools, Part 5: The Skills or Part 6: Communicate! At the end of the day marketing is about making sales. In the words of advertising genius David Ogilvy, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”  So true. Marketing is about leads. It's about sales. It's about closing. To get serious Continue Reading

Published on Entrepreneur.com

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  It's a trip to scroll through a Twitter feed and see 250 different people talking about an article you wrote--people you've never met from all over the world. There's just something really cool about that. I actually didn't know that Entrepreneur.com had published my article. I found out through Twitter. Someone I didn't know mentioned me and quoted something I'd said. I thought that was odd and checked to see if my article had already been published. Turns out that, not Continue Reading

The Obvious Secret of Marketing: Communicate!

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This post is the sixth section of seven-part series called “The Fundamentals of Internet Marketing.” To read the earlier posts, see Part 1: Introduction, Part 2: Definitions, Part 3: Strategy, Part 4: The Tools or Part 5: The Skills. Marketing is simple. It can seem mysterious and highly technical: Gurus talk a blue streak about the techniques they use. People scream from the rooftops about how you’re doing it wrong. Books upon books and blogs upon blogs make it seem like an immense Continue Reading