Remember the old days when marketing resulted in printed material you could touch and feel? Just 10 years ago, the majority of marketing artifacts included printed brochures, product packaging, magazine advertisements and direct mail letters. Stuff you could hold in...

Imagine a world where people don’t listen to what your business says about your new product: they only listen to what other people say. A world where there are hundreds (or thousands) of choices for almost every product. Where every buyer has free and instant access...

Ambitious entrepreneurs naturally aim to create large companies in large markets. They make their plans, build their newfangled products, assemble scrappy teams and then set out on their holy quests to be big winners. But most startups don’t make it very far — most...

Earlier tonight I presented a five-minute speech to 500 people at the Ignite Phoenix event. The topic of my talk was “Mastering the Pomodoro Technique in 5 Minutes.” The Pomodoro Technique is a very simple method that can help anyone enable concentration and focus...

What’s the biggest difference I see between a $1 million technology company and a $10 million technology company? You might think it's something like the quality of their products or the size of their management team, but it's not. The key difference is that the $10...

You've been working hard to build your new product or launch your service. You're excited because your first potential customers are still interested in buying from you, despite several delays. Now it's time to start chasing more customers by growing your sales team...

Think about it: Who is your customer? What does this customer value? These are two of Peter Drucker’s “Five Most Important Questions” for your organization. I often find myself returning to Drucker's questions in strategic discussions about a business or business...

Successful startup entrepreneurs almost always have impressive skills in two areas: product creation and sales. They find problems in the marketplace and create products or services that satisfy those needs with teams that can deliver the solution with meager...

Outliers is the latest book from best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell. He also wrote The Tipping Point, one of my favorite marketing books. Gladwell is an astute social researcher and a master storyteller. His other books and his columns in The New Yorker magazine are...

Many entrepreneurs and CEOs ask me if they should create a formal Board of Advisors so they can get advice from experienced leaders or well-known figures in their industries. The most common reason to create a formal advisory board is to allow you to promote the...

One of the hardest things for entrepreneurs to tackle is the definition of their core business "positioning." Positioning is known by many names - your focus, your marketing strategy, your elevator pitch, your business description. This description answers these...