Spoiler alert: A PDF by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet. There’s an air of gravitas around saying you have a whitepaper. It's more than just a PDF download. A whitepaper is an instrument of thought leadership. You claim your stance in the marketplace of ideas by publishing a whitepaper for anyone to read. [...]
People feel life is meaningless when they don’t have goals, rules, and feedback. (These are the 3 attributes of games, according to Dr Jason Fox, that I describe in-depth in my short ebook Gamify Your Work.) Playing the game of life, and doing work that supports your lifestyle, is only made meaningful if we have goals to achieve, rules for how to play, and feedback on [...]
Your thank-you page is where your website visitors have maximum interest in who you are, and what you do. When you have somebody's full attention, use it. The thank-you page is the only page on your website that has a 100% opt-in rate. Everyone who sees has just subscribed to your email newsletter, or [...]
It’s funny how many published authors I know who have a hard time sending out an email newsletter. They like to feel guilty about it. 'If I could write a whole book,' they reason, 'why is sending out a regular newsletter so difficult?' I’ll tell you why: these are two very different kinds of [...]
I keep a set of juggling balls in my desk (and in my backpack), so I can take a play break whenever I need one. If I have a really intense day, building marketing campaigns for clients, and I know I will have to spend multiple hours in focused work, I make sure to designate [...]
I want to share with you a theory I have about tall poppies. What happens to tall poppies? Tall poppies get … cut down. Tall Poppy Syndrome is a cultural belief in New Zealand, where I now live. There’s a lot of resistance when people see others daring to raise themselves up above the crowd. [...]
Internet advice goes stale, but that doesn't mean it goes away. You could be following advice that worked great 5 years ago, but it's no longer working. This is something I find frequently in my work as a marketer. Because I'm in the trenches, testing tactics, I can see what's failing during a hype cycle. [...]
This week, my friend Charlie Gilkey is launching a new book, Team Habits: How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results. I was a big fan of his first book, Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done. (See my video review here.) Charlie has once again proven his ability to navigate the complex world of productivity, but [...]
In the game of life, how well you play determines your success. Every day is another round, every year is another level, and at the end of the game, it doesn’t matter if you won the high score - all that matters is that you played the game well. There are lots of ways [...]
This week marks the 1-year anniversary of the publication of my first book, Marketing Yourself. Here's the replay of the Launch Party. During this 45-minute video, recorded last year, you can see: the book covers I (almost) used the 4 levels of a Personal Platform the 4 Cornerstones that elevate your platform to the next level [...]