Ever feel like everyone is clicking around on stuff, but no one is actually learning anything?

I threw this out on Twitter last week, “Imagine if you asked a surgeon, ‘What are the 5 best tips for operating on this patient?’ Why do we spend all day online doing equivalent?”

Really. Stop and think about this for a moment. We’re all just clicking, reading, clicking, reading, sharing, clicking, and reading. But, are we really learning anything? Continue Reading;

If you are one of the 3.1 million and counting people who have seen the viral video du jour, Caine’s Arcade, you were probably both touched by the story and inspired at the ingenuity of the 9-year old boy who’s eponymous cardboard arcade showcased true talent, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism.

But embedded in this heart-warming tale are the real lessons that may have gotten missed amongst the emotion.  First up is that even if you are clever, hard-working and entrepreneurial, if nobody knows that you exist, you don’t have a business.

In the beginning of the short film, Caine showed off his prowess in creating and assembling games from cardboard boxes and even generating an insanely clever method for checking the validity of a “fun pass” to allow you to play the games 500 times.  But, despite his fabulous offerings and insane value with the fun pass, Caine had no customers.

It wasn’t until good fortune happened upon him in the name of Nirvan Mullick, a filmmaker who took an interest in what Caine was doing. Continue Reading;

We live in a time of business tactics.  Companies and individuals get so caught up in a project, idea or tool, that they forget about strategy.

Strategy tests purpose and goals and also thinks through opportunities and pitfalls.  When you put into place tactics without strategy, you open yourself up to a debacle.

Take the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA basketball team, for example.  For their home playoff game this past Saturday (which they won at the last second in a very exciting fashion), they gave every attendee a team shirt.  They beautifully displayed the shirts on each attendee’s chair:

Photo by Sarah Phipps, The Oklahoman

This seemed like a fabulous marketing gesture to create a stadium filled with OKC supporters.  However, the shirts, given out at the Thunder’s home stadium, weren’t the color of the Thunder’s home uniforms (which were primarily white).  However, they were pretty much the exact color of the Dallas Mavericks’ away uniforms, which they were wearing to play that day.  Continue Reading;

No one has to tell the average business person that things are now different. Radical economic factors and technological changes have altered the very course of our society. As a result, business is now forced to play be a different set of rules.

Through the Internet, every customer can now talk directly to each other. It’s similar to living in a small town where every customer knew every other and your company lived or died by what they said! People listen now more to what customers say about your company than your mass advertising. The human voice in business is valued over big corporate mission statements. People online are banding together in small communities with common interests. Given a choice, consumers would rather buy their products locally than abroad.  Continue Reading;

There’s a big white elephant in the room (or sometimes a tiny white elephant in the room) and that is size. You keep hearing people say that size doesn’t matter- in business, in social media, sometime in boxer briefs- but let’s call it like it is- it’s not really true. When you get to the debate of quantity vs. quality, the real answer is that both matter.

Anyone who purely says that size doesn’t matter is lying or gravely misinformed.

Typically, if you look at the people who say that size doesn’t matter, they usually fall into one of two categories
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Sales and marketing spend too much time fighting. Even though sales reps are anti-marketers in some respects, they can still teach marketers invaluable lessons.

1. Ask for the order. Any sales rep worth his or her salt asks for the order, not tentatively, but directly and boldly.

Marketers: Websites, email blasts and landing pages must include calls to action that are clear and compelling. Subtlety sucks on the web, where people are sizing up your message in a matter of seconds. Never force them to figure out what you want them to do.  Continue Reading;

In the past few years, the publishing industry has changed from an industry guarded by the gatekeepers (traditional publishers) to an industry that no longer needs or wants those guardians of books. Nowadays, you no longer need an agent or a publisher (gatekeeper) to get a book published. Physical bookstores are on the way out and digital books are on the rise. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has said that for every 100 print books they sell, 180 digital books are sold. Imagine what that stat is going to be in one, two, or three years from now? Wow.  Continue Reading;

I like to share inquiries of individuals so that others can learn. Here’s another recent question that I received (edited for the background).

“…what I can do better as a beginning blogger trying to create a community?”

Here was my response:

Who is your target community?  Where do those people spend their time?  Figure out other bloggers or media venues that reach those communities.  Start with those and become part of the community.  Comment on those blogs. Share them and have a dialogue with other community members on social media.  Start building up relationships with not only the influencers, but the other community members that you want to reach with your message. Continue Reading;

When I wrote my book, The Entrepreneur Equation, I was blessed to have tons of wonderful people who I had built up relationships with help me in varying degrees to promote the book and spread my important messages about approaching entrepreneurship.   But even with the fabulously connected folks that I had in my network, one person stood out above all else in helping me market my book—my dad.

Now, if you haven’t heard about my dad before, let me give you some insights.  He’s 75 and highly uneducated (that wasn’t a typo).  He did not graduate from college, was a union electrician for 40 years and cannot spell the word banana (seriously).  So, this isn’t some wealthy high-flyer we are talking about here.  Continue Reading;

Every week, I get prospects that ask me about the latest and greatest tool, and then ask if I can do that for them.

A typical conversation goes something like this:

Prospect: “Phil – have you heard about Pinterest? Can you get my business set up on there?”

Me: “Yes, I can. But I have one question before I do: Why?”  Continue Reading;