Opening Day

About four years ago, I sat at the bar with Scotty and Aric – my two buddies.
That night, for the first time, I said out loud:
“Our son has autism.”
I didn’t break down in tears when I told them. The tears came about an hour later when it occurred to me – there with my guys [...]

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Why I Don’t Take A Percentage Of The Ad Buy

I don’t take a percentage of your ad buy. I don’t accept kickbacks or pocket discounts from media.
If you’re my client, you pay me a one-time upfront fee and then a small monthly salary that’s adjusted annually by the percentage of your growth. That’s it.
Why?
If I suggest you spend more, I want you [...]

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Buying Radio Ads: The Myth of Residual Value

Listen, most of what I know about buying radio I learned from experience and trusting advice found in two of my partner Roy’s books: The Wizard of Ads and Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads.
There are no real secrets here – just solid principles – that I shared with a colleague when his [...]

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Answer Questions As Asked

Last night I was a teacher – dispensing lessons learned to a group of incredibly bright young women from Stephens College.
One sage piece passed on was simply to answer questions as asked.

Simple, right? If someone asks you what time it is, you don’t tell them how to build a watch, you tell them “8:26.” If [...]

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All The Difference

Poor young ladies …
Tonight, a group of students from the venerable Stephens College will get together and listen to a rapidly-graying, slightly-addled, hyphen-loving-father-of-two babble on about the lessons of a misspent youth.
Why would they bother?
They’re being offered free pizza and stuff. And maybe, just maybe, one or two of them might read between the [...]

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Do you have more than one URL?

Over the weekend, I suggested to a client that they purchase an additional URL for a promotion to go to a specific landing page of their site.
“We can have more than one?” she asked.
Yep.
As a small business, one of the cheapest investments you can make (approximately US$10 for a year) would be to purchase an [...]

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Three Meaty Bits to Start Your Week

Hmm … guess these should be three different posts to jack up my page views, but I don’t want to waste your time on a Monday.
1. How I Ran An Ad On Fox News: Way cool, instructive video. I’m sure every media buying company in the world will tell you why you’re not smart enough [...]

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A Weekly Blur

Phew. What a week. How about you?
We spent most of the last week in Illinois visiting mom and dad and celebrating perfect weather for planting corn.
We’re very big on seed time and harvest around these parts.
Want to learn how patience is the greater expression of commitment? Spend a little time with a farmer. Those crops [...]

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Living on the Spectrum

In what could only be described as an historic display of bad judgment, Columbia Home & Lifestyle Magazine asked me for 1000 words about Will and Touchpoint Autism Services.
This is the fancy digital version.
You can either click here or on the image below to open their reader in a new window. It should take you [...]

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Steve Jobs and The Framelined Four

Yesterday, Steve Jobs was back on stage announcing improvements to Apple’s iPhone/iPod/iPad operating system.
You can read about it all over the internet. I just wanted to quickly point out the cool number 4 slide he used at the start of his presentation. So many people would choose something more bland, more predictable.
Put some part of [...]

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