Latest posts
You Have Odd Personality Strengths
This past week Gallup gave me an opportunity to download the details of the StrengthsFinder™ test I took several years ago. When I originally completed the test while reading Now, Discover Your Strengths, the test only offered insights into my Top 5 of 34 strengths. I...
The Best Marketing Job in the World
On the latest Rattle and Pedal podcast, Jason Mlicki and I wrapped up a series on “Stupid Sh*t Marketing Should NOT Do” and how professionals could move from checking boxes off that list to, instead, checking boxes off of my list of “Smart Sh*t Marketing Should Do.”...
Your Most Common Misperception
Whether working with a client or hiring a new marketing team member, there is a single question that tells me most of what I need to know to help a client or hire a team member. Before you read any further, write down the answer to these questions: 1. What is the most...
Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda
“This game’s very simple. You block, you tackle, you win. If you don’t, you lose.” —Andy Easton Every Fall at the start of football season, my teammates and I would recount the prior season's team strengths and playoff performance. Inevitably the conversation would...
Does Your Team Have the Right Learning Mindset?
There is a lethal mindset at work in most American companies, schools, teams, and families. Left unaddressed, it allows bad bosses, teachers, and parents to kill more potential than the plague ever did. I call it the Training Mindset— a belief that someone else is...
Virtuous Leadership in Professional Services
“Dr. Martin Luther King dreamed of the day when a man would be judged ‘not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.’” “What is the ‘content of character’? It is virtue, or, more precisely, the set of classical human virtues--above all,...
How to Get Sh*t Done in a BS of PS Culture
I received an email from a talented, self-described Young Turk marketer named Cannon. He was frustrated, exhausted, and struggling to overcome several onerous Sales and Marketing impediments at his firm. His question had multiple parts, but I’ll address just one here:...
Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk
The BS of PS leads to one common and inevitable outcome in all professional services firms--a lot of TALKING. Firms talk about culture. Firms talk about cross-selling. Firms talk about brand. Firms talk about innovation. Firms talk about rewards. Firms talk about...
6. Am I Clear on Who I am Being Called to Become? 10 Questions Prudent Firms Ask Themselves
Question six takes us out of the firm’s mindset and into our own mind and asks us the powerful question: Am I clear on who I am being called to become? Can I become that person in this firm? This is the first and most important question a prudent leader asks him or...
Does Your Marketing Team Have Too Many Strategists?
I often get email questions from my confident readers (i.e. those willing to take the risk of asking) about issues they are facing. The most recent was a great inquiry from Shari, a talented a six-sigma process designer who was asked to get involved in assessing a...
This Blog is NOT Working for Me
After 6 ½ years of writing the Prudent Thinking blog, I’ve reached a point that the blog no longer works for me. I need a change and because I’m the boss changes are coming. That may sound selfish. After all, I write to you, my reader. You’ve faithfully stuck around...
How to Write a Brochure, If You Must
I lament the overuse of marketing brochures as crutches in lieu of purposeful discussions and meaningful client interactions. I simply try to avoid spending marketing time and resources on perfunctory, haughty, worthless marketing collateral.
HOWEVER, if Marketing is going to produce a “brochure,” here is how to write a brochure correctly.