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Personality Marketing 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.

Why Simplicity Saved Apple, But Couldn’t Save JCPenney

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Simplicity always wins. If there is one lesson the modern business world teaches us, it is that complexity kills and simplicity wins. Apple, Flip Camera, Twitter, Uber, Walmart — all are examples of companies that owe their success at least in part to their ability to simplify a service or product to an extreme level.  I have written often about…Read More >>

7 Ways Millionaire Self Help Gurus Make More Money Than Social Media Experts

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Last week no one cared what my Twitter name was – and I was thrilled about that.  At dozens of social media centric events, the Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or Pinterest question has become the de facto proof of purchase. People write their Twitter names on their nametags. They try desperately to distill their own social credibility into a…Read More >>

Iron Chef, Truffles and Surviving Clueless Criticism

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Imagine you’re a chef. You have spent the last twenty years learning your craft. Studying ingredients and cooking techniques. Working for sometimes maladjusted and dictatorial restaurant owners or lead chefs. And now you’ve made it. You have your own kitchen that you lead – and you’re recognized. Your food has made it onto the plates of celebrities and maybe even…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 >>

The Script Of Improv – What Is (And Isn’t) Real Time Marketing

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A theater show happens in real time. It’s live on stage and the actors are actually saying the lines as you watch them. And if it’s well done, it can seem spontaneous and real and unscripted. But of course, it is scripted. They are memorizing lines and performing them. Improv, on the other hand is completely UNscripted. It is based…Read More >>

Why Being REAL Matters More Than Being Perfect

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Logically speaking, it shouldn’t really matter whether Dr. Seuss is still alive or he isn’t. But it does. Yesterday my five year old asked me about him. It’s the sort of thing kids always ask. Is this real, or isn’t it? Wondering whether or not something is real is a common occurrence  In fact, it’s a filter that we sometimes use…Read More >>

The Alignment Gap, Concierge Marketing And The Future Of Agencies

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Summary: The story of why I decided to start the world’s first true “Concierge Marketing” service for large and mid-size brands. It all started because I knew the one thing I didn’t want to do. About three months ago I left my role at one of the biggest marketing agencies in the world and the only thing I knew for…Read More >>

Inside the Greatest Online Product Launch Since Gmail

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Looking back, it’s fair to say the launch strategy Google used back in 2004 has become legendary. When the new platform first came out offering an unheard of 1 GB of free storage space, it was only available to an extremely limited group of people. As a result, having a Gmail account became an early adopter badge of honor –…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 >>