You have to choose
Leaders imagine deep impact while running a business on "wide" actions. Margins are consumed. Prospects are confused.
You can't be both broad and deep without spending ungodly amounts of usually someone else's money. It's time to decide.
Gratitude is magic
2025 Week 5: Headlines, Hubris, and Happy Places
💡Upcoming Opportunity: If there is one place where firms need to check
What's the best advice you gave this week?
Most founders/CEOs convince themselves that if not for them, the entire growth enterprise would collapse into itself, but the truth is, the executive suite is the primary reason why content operations fail and why brands underperform. Good news is, they can fix it.
Finding your client in a house of mirrors
The Internet is shattered, leaving nearly every adult human dangerously dependent on accessing what to buy, where to buy it, what to think, and who to trust, through portals with no allegiance to truth or value, only to the highest bidder.
Mapping Distrust
Your success depends on trust. And we are in a post-trust society. The post-trust society snuck up on us slowly and is now urgently here. Wherever the business of trust is in play, pivots will be required.
The Good List 2024
FWD 114: Things I loved in the year that was
One of the things you loved--most viewed, most commented, most
2025: Love is for the ones who love the work
Leading in 2025 will be the product of passion, of vulnerability, of joy. It will belong to those who still believe in something worth making. Growth is a required feature of 2025. This is where we think you'll find it.
Weaponized nostalgia: Four things I finally learned in 2024
The fundamental culture that produces reliable business growth has dramatically changed. And it means we've got to learn lessons we've been avoiding for years. These were my hard lessons in 2024.
Better boats in a bigger storm -OR- what 2024 taught us about trust
The fantasy that you could just podcast-SEO-blog-social media your way to a community of happy customers has ended. But the storm is just beginning.
🧐 You can have whatever internet you want, just not that one
The internet's platforms are either fading into the background, only to be used for AI fodder or being designed to create echo chambers.
Your future customers are cozy in their custom digital spaces, designed to keep you, your podcast, social media posts, and ads out. So time for a Plan B.
The apocalypse collapse
You have permission to stop doing it the way it's been done. To stop selling with all of the bad habits of the last decade. You can invite your prospects back into their aspirations, their best beliefs about themselves, and all the possibilities that make them Americans.
Postponing your potential.
Leaders under-index the impact of their own decisions while over-indexing the impact of national or global headlines. So while your category is on its heels (trust us, it is), it's time to get aggressive.
