The single best term I’ve learned this year. I want to give you the non-technical definition, and as is my […]

Chris Fralic reminded me of this piece I wrote for Ode. Great stories succeed because they are able to capture […]

It happened again. There I was, meeting with someone who I thought had nothing to do with books or publishing, […]

From this week’s Guardian: 1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow […]

I’m serious. Smart people with good ideas worth sharing can get a lot out of this exercise. It’s technically easy […]

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want […]

This is Kevin Kelly’s best riff of the year, and that’s saying an enormous amount. Go read it! Some people […]

Before you hit send on that next email, perhaps you should run down this list, just to be sure: Is […]

This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing. Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need […]

The most important decision-making rule you learn in business school is still largely misunderstood. When making a choice between two […]

Business Development is a mysterious title for a little discussed function or department in most larger companies. It’s also a […]

Here’s my definition: A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a […]

How can I explain the never-ending irrationality of human behavior? We say we want one thing, then we do another. […]

It’s not clear to me why business plans are the way they are, but they’re often misused to obfuscate, bore […]

Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year. Many of those people have seen every […]

That would be you. Even if you’re not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your […]

Amanda Hocking is making a million dollars a year publishing her own work to the Kindle. No publisher. Rebecca Black […]

Making something is work. Let’s define work, for a moment, as something you create that has a lasting value in […]

Long work is what the lawyer who bills 14 hours a day filling in forms does. Hard work is what […]

Perhaps we could endeavor to teach our future the following: How to focus intently on a problem until it’s solved. […]

What is a public library for? First, how we got here: Before Gutenberg, a book cost about as much as […]

A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working […]

No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and […]

There are actually two recessions: The first is the cyclical one, the one that inevitably comes and then inevitably goes. […]

Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper. […]

Those are pretty much the only two choices. Being judged is uncomfortable. Snap judgments, prejudices, misinformation… all of these, combined […]

Impatient… great marketing takes time. Doing it wrong (and rushed) ten times costs much more and takes longer than doing […]

Most amateurs and citizens believe that marketing is the outer circle. Marketing = advertising, it seems. The job of marketing […]

You may have read Matt Fisher’s story about the tragic death of his sister and the response of her insurance […]

Professional farmers don’t begrudge the backyard gardener his tomato harvest. That’s silly. And talented mechanics certainly don’t mind the antics […]

That depends on what you mean by “work” and by “free.” Work is what you do as a professional, when […]

Many marketers work overtime to confuse us about money. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of the time value of […]

There is no more powerful tribal marketing connection than this. More than features, more than benefits, we are driven to […]

A luxury good gets its value from its lack of utility and value. A typical consumer would look at what […]

Deniability–“They decided, created, commanded or blocked. Not my fault.” Helplessness–“My boss won’t let me.” Contempt–“They don’t pay me enough to […]

Starting at the age of nine, I played the clarinet for eight years. Actually, that’s not true. I took clarinet […]

I realized the other day that most people grow up thinking in terms of professional affiliations. “I’m going to be […]

Resist the ad hoc. Announce that this is a project, and that it matters enough to be treated as one. […]

This post announced the most popular ebook I’ve ever published. Millions have shared it and you can read the entire […]

We are always under tight deadlines, because time is our most valuable asset. If you make a promise, set a […]

It’s about scale. Pick a long enough one (or a short enough one) and you can see the edges. In […]

Jobs are finite, specified and something we ‘get’. Doing a job makes us defensive, it limits our thinking. The goal […]

…is that the system can’t hear you. Only people can. And the problem is that people in the system are […]

“I’m not sure what it is, but I’m against it.” It’s a mistake to believe that people know all the […]

Consider a race to the top. How can Lyft possibly compete with Uber? Scale is often the secret to a commodity […]

Day after day, year after year, it’s the interactions we have at home that have the biggest impact on who […]

No one says, “I’m going to be unfair to this person today, brutal in fact, even though they don’t deserve […]

You may be right, but that doesn’t mean that people will care. Or pay attention. Or take action. Just because […]

If you believed what he believes, you’d do precisely what he’s doing. Think about that for a second. People act […]

You’re going to have to fight for every single thing, forever and ever. It’s really unlikely that they will pick […]

The first step is to invent a thing worth making, a story worth telling, a contribution worth talking about. The […]

Throwing tantrums, calling names, not doing the reading, making things up, demonizing the other, impulsivity, egomaniacal narcissism, breaking big promises… […]

If your work has never been criticized, it’s unlikely you have any work. Creating work is the point, though, which […]

The architect refuses to design the big, ugly building that merely maximizes short term revenue. She understands that raising the […]

Somehow, at least in our culture, we find relief when others are anxious too. So we spread our anxiety, stoking […]

Running a business is a lot more important than starting one. Choosing and preparing for the job you’ll do for […]

Okay, you don’t like what your boss did yesterday or last week or last month. But today, right now, sitting […]

Most of us need an external stimulus to do our best work. It helps to have an alarm clock if […]

Sir Kensington’s Ketchup is better ketchup. Most adults who try it agree that it’s more delicious, a better choice. Alas, […]

Have you noticed that authors often happily recommend books by other authors (even though an MBA might call them competitors)? […]

When we’re sure it’s not going to work, when we can’t figure out where to turn, when we don’t know […]

To watch people at work, it seems like we never have enough: We need more social media likes We want […]

A million things happened to you today. The second bite of your lunch. The red light on the third block […]

The best way to build a brand that matters, a story that spreads, an impact that we remember, is to […]

In his day job, The Wizard of Oz sold hokum. Patent medicines guaranteed to cure what ailed you. And none […]

About twenty years ago, Permission Marketing was getting ready to go to the publisher. We sent a copy to Jack Trout, co-author […]

Just published, a three-minute TED talk from 2014:   It follows on the ideas in this TEDx talk from a […]

The bestselling novel of 1961 was Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent. Millions of people read this 690-page political novel. In 2016, the […]

It’s not forced on us, it’s something we choose. And we rarely benefit from that choice. That emergency surgery, the one […]

The arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward access. Twelve years ago, Acumen made a modest […]

(at something). Which makes it imperative that you connect and ask for help. At the same time that we encounter […]

Freelancers, writers, designers, photographers–there’s always an opportunity to work for free. There are countless websites and causes and clients that […]

Perhaps she wants to be heard instead. Or find something better, or unique. Or perhaps customer service, flexibility and speed […]

It’s not “less.” If we care enough, the opposite of more is better.

Fear runs deep. Fear used to keep our ancestors alive. Fear keeps you from taunting a saber tooth tiger. The […]

Get smarter. Hurry. Learn something new and difficult and valuable. Learn it today and continue learning it tomorrow. Solve interesting […]

People talk about bike riding when they want to remind us that some things, once learned, are not forgotten. What […]

Sort by price is the dominant way that shopping online now happens. The cheapest airline ticket or widget or freelancer […]

Are there any other options for people who seek to innovate?

You might need help to turn an idea into a project. Most of the time, though, project developers walk up […]

You’ve been wronged. The service was terrible. You went unseen, disrespected and abused. You didn’t get your money’s worth. The […]

Every time Ford increased the productivity of car production (in one three-year period, he lowered labor costs by 66% per […]

That’s the labor most of us do now. The work of doing what we don’t necessarily feel like doing, the […]

The work is difficult. Overcoming obstacles, facing rejection, exploring the unknown–many of us need a narrative to fuel our forward motion, […]

Drink enough water and you will cease to be thirsty. And yet, a doubting person can be drowning in facts, but […]

Don’t expect much from a drowning man. He’s not going to offer you a candy bar or ask how your […]

Nearly fifty years ago, Milton Friedman published a polemic, an article that altered the way many people think about corporations […]

I did an interview with a leading Turkish vlogger. He sent me his work (in Turkish) and of course, the […]

It’s well known that the team that wins an Olympic relay isn’t the fastest at running or swimming—it’s the team […]

Highlights from an annotated list of 17 rules for the new world of work: You are more powerful than you […]

Of course everyone wants to reach the maximum audience. To be seen by millions, to maximize return on investment, to […]

Almost everyone does it. I’m not sure why. After the fact (or even during it) all the blame, second-guessing and […]

A $30,000 software package is actually $3,000 worth of software plus $27,000 worth of meetings. And most clients are bad […]

For me, it’s not “do what you feel like doing,” because that’s unlikely to be useful. You might feel like […]

If you have a safe place to sleep, reasonable health and food in the fridge, you’re probably living with surplus. […]

A friend asked me for some ways to make money. (All direct quotes). “Can I do okay taking those surveys […]

When you’re cooking breakfast and the school bus is coming in just a few minutes, it’s tempting (and apparently efficient) […]

The first is quite common. Learn to play the notes as written. Move asymptotically toward perfection. Practice your technique and […]

Don’t hide your work Offer help Ask for help Tell the truth Upgrade your tools Don’t hide your mistakes Add […]

What you say is not nearly as important as what we hear. Which means that the words matter, and so […]

This is much better than, “start big, start later.” One advantage is that you don’t have to start perfect. You […]

The volatility of bitcoin turns the people who own it into addicts. At any given moment, it’s up $100 or […]

The creation of worthwhile work is a duet. The creator has to do her part, but so does the customer. […]

Charisma doesn’t permit us to lead. Leading gives us charisma.

Merely beginning. With inadequate preparation, because you will never be fully prepared. With imperfect odds of success, because the odds […]

Editor, publisher, instigator. The instigator is the author, the dreamer, the writer. She creates a screenplay, founds a non-profit, says […]

There’s confusion between tactics and strategy. It’s easy to get tied up in semantic knots as you work to figure […]

Give a four-minute presentation and take your time. The alternative is to try to give a six or seven-minute long […]

You don’t apply. You don’t get a salary. No one picks you. Bragging about how much money you’ve raised or […]

A note to the customer who just had a meltdown. To the groom without a perfect wedding, to the rental […]

Civilization depends on the apology. When humans interact and something goes wrong, the apology builds a bridge that enables us […]