Peter Drucker famously said:

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

It is with this statement that I intend to help you, and your company, grow in market-share. There are plenty of patents, great ideas and useful inventions stacked in the dumps, simply because there hasn’t been great marketing to bring those products to the masses who need them. Similarly, for every great invention there is a helpful service that hasn’t been fully leveraged, because of a lack of marketing strategy to profitably bring paying customers to the service provider.

I’ll leave the innovation up to you; that’s what you’re good at. However, if you need to take your idea, your product, or your service to market, you need to be smart. Unemployment sits at an uncomfortably high level, and it’s harder than ever to start your own business. It seems like every week I read about a company in New Orleans going under because of lack of marketing. Their idea was great, but there execution left money on the table. So much money, that if they would have found a better way to acquire customers, they would have been able to be competitive.

There are two types of marketing, glitzy marketing that impresses marketing professionals, and direct response marketing that measurably brings in profits. As a business owner, I whole-hearteldy believe in the latter. What gets us all in trouble is marketing to marketers; hiring a design firm to make a cool logo without measuring its direct impact on sales and customer retention.

If we were to work together, the first questions I would ask you would be about the future you want. Two years forward, what would your business, your personal life, your legacy, look like? Have you even planned that far in advance? If you have, simply enroll me into that future. If not, we’ll work to detail it, with specific numbers and success criteria to know when and how you’ve hit it. Then, we work backwards. If you want to increase product sales by 25% in 2 years, what’s your plan to do so? How will you retain more customers? What is your current lifetime value of your customer? How do you increase it?

I have worksheets I’ve produced to help all sorts of businesses measure their marketing effectivness, figure out how to trim fat, and where to spend more time. The leverage points I identify will help you grow your business in an exponential way.

If you’d like to dig into specifics about your business, I welcome your inquiry. I am available by appointment to meet in the city, however I regularly am flying to visit my clients abroad. As a marketing consultant here in New Orleans, I’d like to help you sell more, serve more, and make our city a better place to live in. You can contact me here.

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What’s frustrating is the fact that an hour long interview was so simply taken out of context. It’s my first time being interviewed in awhile, and I forgot how easy it is to “cherry pick” the facts to make a story compelling. At any rate, I do believe in the value of cryptocurrencies, especially for things outside of the “black market”. The ease of transactions with bitcoins include their simplicity in selling goods to someone in another country, not paying ridiculous credit card processing fees, nor having anyone else be able to track your purchases (within reason). With these things, I think bitcoins will be a worthwhile and useful currency today, tomorrow, and for a long time.

In Pali, the language of the oldest written Buddhist teachings, the belief in some core notion of self is called sakkaya-ditthi; this is sometimes translated as ‘personality belief.’ It’s said to be the most dangerous of all the defilements, more dangerous than greed or even hatred, because these are rooted in this mistaken belief. This wrong view of self is central to how we go about in the world, and all kinds of unskillful actions come out of it. The aim of the practice, central to everything we’re doing, is to free the mind from this misconception.

– Joseph Goldstein, “Everyday Meditation”

* I receive daily emails from Tricycle Magazine, and found this quote to be especially poignant for me. If it makes sense for you, sign up for Tricycle’s free daily emails here.

Class officially finished 2 weeks ago, but in an effort to help the students all be more effective at finding work post-graduation, I offered to take portraits of whomever was interested. About a quarter of the class came out last Thursday to Audubon Park, across from campus. From there, we had fun walking around and seeing if I could snag a few shots that reflected how smart and talented they all are. Below are my favorites from the afternoon.

Yesterday, I received a package with a brand new Sigma 35mm 1.4 lens, and this is the first keeper from that first day. The lens is wonderful, well built, and has a great depth of field. I’m looking forward to taking portraits this afternoon for seven of my students at Tulane, for them to use on their LinkedIn profiles. Enjoy this photo of the neighbor’s boxer mutt puppy, who is about 6 months old. She has a wonderful talent of being able to bounce off any wall, jack your jaw with her forehead, and then sit sweetly, asking you for more attention.