Essays

In his book Profit First, Mike Michalowicz outlines a common scenario that prevents businesses from making a profit. The problem is that most business owners use the following accounting formula: Revenue - expenses = profit When the formula they should be using is: Revenue -

After 40 years in the game, email still outperforms other channels with the highest ROI, at $44 per $1 spent. But for agencies offering email marketing, it's also a force multiplier that complements other marketing channels without much comparative effort—bringing the overall ROI

Oh Twitter. What happened to you. You used to be so fun and interesting, and now all that’s left is fucking content marketing. — John O'Nolan (@JohnONolan) September 26, 2016 You work in content marketing, but you don't ever want your

Years ago, a mentor told me a story about NFL quarterback Joe Montana. He wasn’t the fastest guy on the field and didn’t have the strongest arm, but he saw the field in slow motion. It was his unfair advantage. This mentor

I saw this the other day in a job description and it really depressed me. I won’t call out the company—I’m sure there’s some legalese that requires them to include this. Still, this is more aptly named “health risks” than

"Promotion" and "distribution" are the two most distracting words in content marketing for two important reasons: They put the focus on the business, not the reader. (The truth is that content is useful to far fewer people than your CMO

Analogies are a powerful way to communicate ideas, but they are also a crutch. We need to be able to explain ideas to readers without analogies and cliches. Relying on someone else's words means we don't fully understand the concept we're trying to explain

"Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice." — William Zinsser Intercom's recent post In Praise of Editing has me thinking a lot about how to improve the articles I work on.

Isn't it interesting that the Internet simultaneously makes our work more and less efficient? On one hand, we can video chat with remote coworkers all over the world. On the other, buzzing notifications, Facebook, emails, Slack, Google Docs, Trello, etc. Each helps and hurts

Technology kind of sucks. Seriously, how many tools or software products have actually made your life better recently? I'll bet almost none. In fact, I'll bet at least a few made your life considerably worse. In the 1930s, economist John Maynard Keynes was worried

Work is the process of creating value. Don't mistake sitting at a computer for working. Some of your best work can (and should!) happen with no internet connection at all. Even more importantly, working without a computer can (and should!) happen during normal business