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If your business isn’t thriving it might be because you’re too professional.  Yeah, you can be too professional and not human enough.  Listen to the post below and you’ll hear what I mean.


1. Humans use names, businesses don’t.
2. Humans can be trusted, businesses are too large to be trusted.
3. Humans can make mistakes and people will forgive, when you’re a business people want their money back.
4. Humans build long term relationships that aren’t based on price alone.
5. Humans connect on an emotional level, businesses don’t have emotions.


Do you agree with my five reasons to be human? Do you have any examples of this being true in your experience in business?  Tell me in the comments section below  so I know if I’m crazy or right.

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Last night my wife and I spent some time talking with some friends who are raising support so they can be full-time missionaries. We really do want to support these friends but as they finished their presentation I was left asking myself and eventually them, this question. What are you best at?

When I go to a store or a buy the services of a business I want their best. There is a sandwich shop in town called the Pickle Barrel that I believe has the best sandwiches in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I’ve never heard them specifically say they were the best but they do say that they’re very good and they’re right. They don’t try to sell pizza and they don’t try to market how cheap their sodas are. They don’t even talk about the free pickle you get with every sandwich (and you get to grab it out of a pickle barrel, which is kinda cool). They know what they’re best and that’s what they talk about in their ads and on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

My encouragement to you is to stop talking about things that everyone else is equally good at and focus on what you’re best at. If its fries then talk about your fries. If it’s roofs then talk about your roofing. Customers support businesses who say they’re the best and then deliver on that claim.
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This picture took 34 months to make.  It’s not a serious of pictures though.  It’s one picture.  You’re actually seeing the destruction and construction of a building as taken by Michael Wesely in 2001.  A snapshot is forgettable.  An image taken over three years is memorable and remarkable.  So here’s the question, “Is your marketing plan forgettable or remarkable?”

Old Spice had a marketing campaign a few weeks ago and the critics are already saying that it wasn’t a success because Old Spice hasn’t seen an immediate jump in sales.  Were they really expecting people to run to the drug store and buy Old Spice?  I think they’re trying to build something remarkable and they’re off to a great start (see the videos here).  Instead of looking at your social media plan or your web traffic as a 3 month or one year campaign why not look at it from a different perspective.  Will is be perceived as remarkable?

Remarkable is hard work and most people actually think social media marketing is less work than traditional marketing.  In fact social media marketing is more difficult because it requires transparency in a way that traditional ads do not.  No one ever expected the Ronald McDonald to create personal videos for kids and post them on the internet.  It’s easier to just create a packaged message and let it run.  Old Spice created something remarkable b/c they took part in conversations with real people. Read the rest… »

This week I sat down to talk about my journey with my good friend Kevin Miller, founder of the Free Agent Academy. It’s not every day that someone asks me to talk about how I’ve found success advising companies on how to use social media to grow their customer base and deliver better service.  It was perhaps my favorite interview of all time and at the same time a very humbling experience.  In the first 60 seconds of the interview I tell Kevin what percentage of my success I am responsible for.  Hint: it’s a small percentage.



If you’d like to hear some strong opinions then hit play. If you have disagreements or questions about stuff I’ve said then this is the place to voice them (in the comments below). I welcome the opportunity. Thanks for listening.

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Right click to download Andy’s Story with Kevin Miller

He was going to pay me thousands of dollars and I was going to take it. He wanted to pay me to help him promote a legitimate product to a demographic that really did need it. There was a problem though. He bought a list of email addresses but didn’t really know who they were.

I asked him if it was a list of people that had asked to get information from him specifically. He said that they had all opted in at some point. “Opted in to what?” I thought but didn’t ask.

If there’s on thing I’ve learned from reading 4,648 Seth Godin blog posts it’s that permission based marketing is the most powerful way to gain allegiance and build a business. For more than a few thousand dollars I thought I could let it slide. It would be about Read the rest… »