This post was written by IttyBiz columnist Johnny B. Truant.

I was just listening to Chris Garrett talk to Sonia Simone on a seminar about overcoming analysis paralysis, and Chris was talking about the difficulty of eating an entire elephant, and he’s got this Liverpool accent, so it was totally charming and amusing to my American ears, and I was even able to forget that he was talking about butchering elephants. That’s how intriguing it was.

By “trying to eat a whole elephant,” I’m of course talking about “trying to figure out the enormity of the tasks surrounding how the hell I’m going to start or advance my business.” This applies even for non-pachyderm-related lines of work. Read More

Recently, we took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Because we stayed three nights we got discount, and paid about $300 a night. I think the regular price was a little over $400.

Great Wolf Lodge is where it’s at for the under-12 set. Four-story waterpark. Indoor river. Wave pool. Talking trees. Full-sized arcade. Minigolf. Nightly story time complete with cookies and milk. Pajama parties. Cheap gift shop full of child-centric vulgarity.

Most kids would give their non-dominant hand for one night in a regular room. Since I am nothing if not over-the-top, we went for three and got one of the kid cabin suites with camp-themed bunk beds with a fucking Nintendo attached. As far as my sons are concerned, I basically bought them a harem for their birthday.

For the first several hours at Great Wolf Lodge, I was 200% happy. I didn’t realize places like this existed. My mind was blown. Read More

If you’ve been reading in this industry for any longer than the length of time it takes to cook an egg, you will have heard that one of the most important things you can do in marketing is market research. There are lots of kinds of market research but today, we’re only focusing on one kind. We’re talking about asking people questions. Surveys, polls, blink once for yes and twice for no, that sort of thing.

This is considered essential, and it is. What is not often discussed is what it’s essential for. Let’s delve.

Let’s say you have a crafty business. Maybe you sell yarn. Maybe you sell hats made from yarn. Maybe you sell instructional ebooks on cool things you can do with hats made from yarn. Something like that. Read More

First, a story.

Once upon a time, I figured everybody who might ever want to read SEO School had already read it (yes, you can laugh your ass off at me, it’s fine) and decided to take it off the shelves. I try to remember what I was feeling at the time – my real reasons – and I can’t.

(I was accused of doing it to make sales, but that wasn’t really it. I knew I’d sell a few more copies from the Oh My God They’re Going To Take It Away crowd, sure, but, what? Ten? I’m not going to potentially ruin my professional reputation to sell ten copies of an ebook.) I suppose I was doing it because SEO School wasn’t who I was. I wrote it to solve a problem – I was totally broke – and when the problem was solved, I guess I was done with it. Read More

I am not generally in the habit of saying something is exclusive content for my list and then handing it around to all and sundry like cheap wine at a book launch. I sent what follows to my list when I was in Cuba and got a lot of emails from nice people asking me to put it online where people could link to it. Among the askers was GirlPie, and I have made it a professional rule to pretty much do whatever she says. (This includes, but is not limited to, considering writing a goddamn screenplay.)

Basically, blame GirlPie.

***

Today we’re talking about the golden minute. I recently made up this phrase while ranting my face off to the poor, unsuspecting James Chartrand. She thought she was just going to talk about her weekend plans and I hammered her with a marketing rant. (Note: don’t be friends with me. I don’t deserve it.)

What is the golden minute, you ask? I will answer with a story. Read More