My Mantra

Inspiring better marketing to help
your world changing ideas succeed.

Audience: Moms/Women Archive

Get A Free Copy Of My Newest eBook … Always Eat Left Handed: 15 Surprisingly Simple Secrets Of Success

I want to give you a free copy of my new ebook … but I don’t want you to keep it.*

Let me tell you why. On June 4, my newest ebook will be released and I am writing it for an audience that may not include you. Unless of course you happen to be in high school or college, or starting your career right now.

It’s graduation season and there are lots of pieces of advice floating around the Internet these days. Some are going viral – like the video inspired by a forgotten commencement address from late fiction writer David Foster Wallace back in 2005.  About a week ago a small video production agency in LA created a video of his address, titled “This is Water.” In it, Wallace shared some cold hard truths with graduating seniors from Kenyon College about what they would soon face amidst the tedium of daily life. The speech was part warning, part inspiration … but it inspired the video recreation because one of the creators of the project said he heard the talk and couldn’t get it out of his head.  Watch it here:

Great pieces of advice are like that. They stick in your head. They cause you to create videos years later. They inspire. I have continually benefited from advice like that across my career. The nice thing about being a writer and speaker is have many chances to share what I have learned with others in person at many events. For years, I have been planning to do more than that. Now I finally have the chance.

Always Eat Left Handed: 15 Surprisingly Simple Rules Of Success is a book about the unexpected rules of success that have helped me throughout my career … but that I have generally only managed to uncover by mistakes or through extremely insightful advice. Eating left handed is a technique I started using at networking events, to be able to shake hands with confidence – without starving, fumbling plates or glasses, resorting to “elbow bumps” instead of handshakes, or transferring “networking cooties” from person to person. It is a symbol of the type of learned trick that we all use in our daily lives to make the things we need to do a bit easier.

It is also a symbol of the type of little advice that sometimes gets lost in all the big picture guidances we seem to revel in sharing with graduating youth about to face the next stages of their lives. Showing passion, never giving up, or doing what you love are all perfectly reasonable pieces of advice to tell someone just starting their career. Unfortunately, they are not terribly unique or insightful.

Instead, the aim of this ebook is to share 15 non-obvious pieces of advice that you probably haven’t heard before. The book will talk about why learning to play the cello and hating cauliflower are both great career moves. Why leaders never wear sweatpants and why great listeners interrupt in every conversation. Through a combination of stories from my own life and across history, the book will offer real tips on how to stand out in a faceless sea of similarly competent people. It will be a jargon-free guide to being more successful by learning lots of little skills.

If that sounds valuable, use the link below to register for my launch webinar (hosted by my friend Adam Metz and UberConference). Everyone who registers will get an email on June 4th (when the book comes out) with instructions on how to download your free copy!

*PS – You are, of course, welcome to keep your own free copy of the book whether you are graduating or not!  It should offer a few ideas you can use no matter what stage of your career you happen to be in.

Culpa Marketing: How To Win By Publicizing Screw Ups

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There is nothing more powerful than a genuine heartfelt apology. At least, that’s what JCPenney is hoping based on a new ad the brand just released today featuring an apology to customers for recent changes and a promise to start listening more: The ad is a marked departure from the Apple-style “we’ll tell you what you really want” strategy employed…Read More >>

ePatient 2015: A New Research Report On The Connected Patient Of The Future

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The FDA might be accidentally brilliant. Every now and then for the past several years, that thought has crossed my mind. Without context, it may seem like a strange conclusion to make about any government agency. For anyone who was there in DC on November 12, 2009 when the FDA held their first public hearing on social media marketing  - this…Read More >>

How Men Can Change The Business World For Women

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About four years ago I started getting a lot of unsolicited emails from women. My first book, Personality Not Included, had just come out and readers were emailing me with their own stories of how having a personality had made a difference in their own careers. While school often teaches us that we must remove our personality from “professional” communication…Read More >>

7 Magical Marketing Lessons From Disney World

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Disney World isn’t just a magical place for families or kids.  It’s also pretty magical for marketers too.  The Disney Institute has been around for more than two decades teaching business people from any industry how to apply techniques that have been honed at Disney Parks over years and years.  Last week as I took a theme park adventure with…Read More >>

5 Things For Marketers To Love About The New Myspace

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Myspace is back, and you’re probably already thinking about the best jokes you can share about its return. It’s hard to remember a brand launched with such dramatically low expectations as MySpace – but if my first experience using the new site is any indication, the new Myspace may be more important for brand marketers in 2013 than you think….Read More >>

2013 Trend – Hyper-Local Commerce

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What’s the Trend? New services and technology makes it easier for anyone to invest in local businesses and buy from local merchants. The consumer desire to “shop local” will have plenty of help in the coming year from a suite of online tools, innovations and personalization technology that help anyone in any location around the world to identify local vendors…Read More >>

2013 Trend – Powered by Women

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What’s the Trend? Business leaders, pop culture and ground-breaking new research intersect to prove that our ideal future will be led by women. We can finally put the old debate to rest … men and women are not equal: women are better. In the coming year, a combination of highly successful female role models, pioneering startups and pop culture references…Read More >>

5 World Changing Ways To Avoid BS And Be More Believable

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I was on a short flight from NY back to DC yesterday and opened a copy of the NY Times to find a full page ad with the simple declaration “Marketing is BS.” Beneath that attention-grabbing headline, Adobe called this “Myth #1″ as part of their campaign to speak to marketers and business people about how to measure results more…Read More >>

The Best And Worst Of London 2012 Olympic Marketing Roundup

The Best And Worst Of London 2012 Olympic Marketing Roundup

NOTE – To see a full visual roundup of the best and worst marketing, visit my London 2012 Olympic Marketing – Best & Worst Pinterest Board. As the world turn its attention to the Games in London today, I'll have to indulge my Olympic passion from afar this time around.  I've been a lover of the Olympics since I was in college…Read More >>