What You Should Be Reading: Lindsay Polson

Back in the day when I was first starting my home business blog and was terrified no-one would want to read it (yes, that day was about three weeks ago) a very nice man from Australia named Lindsay Polson wrote a highly complimentary post about my blog. I showed it to my mother, my mother-in-law, the nanny. I basically whored this post out so much it was demanding a raise. Things have been kind of crazy in IttyBiz world, what with all the How To Run A Business Without Killing Yourself posts and all, but I wanted to take some time to show you the absolute rockingness that is Lindsay.

He runs a few blogs. One, Stuff4Restaurants, is about, well, stuff for restaurants. Now, I would be arrested if I ever tried to run a restaurant because I am completely incapable of making nachos. However, I used to waitress at a number of them, and most of them sucked. If they had been reading Lindsay’s site, however, they wouldn’t have sucked nearly as much. (Okay, they probably would still have treated their wait staff like crap, but that wouldn’t have been Lindsay’s fault.)

Anyway, he has a lot of great things to say about restaurants and their associated, um, stuff, but one thing you should read right now is the eBook. It’s about signs. Good ones.

“But I don’t give a crap about signs”, you whine.

Well, you do now. Go read it. Scroll down a bit and click on the red thing that says “Where the hell are you?” If you have a brain in your head at all, you will realize that this is brilliant marketing advice that with a teensy bit of extrapolation can be applied to pretty much any business in the universe. Go. Since Lindsay is a pretty prolific poster and I don’t want you to miss the gems, also check out Business Plans Are BORING, But Bankruptcy Is Not Exactly a Barrel of Laughs Either. More truth is spoken in jest, people.

Moving on, he’s got Stuff4Business. Odds are, you can guess what that one’s about. Best stuff to be had there? Hard to choose, but I dig Do You Have A Billion Dollar Idea Hiding In Your Business? With all the stupidity floating around the blogosphere right now (”Oh my God! My PageRank dropped! How will I ever annoy my nine readers with ugly ass advertising again?”) his ideas for finding ideas are as refreshing as nine consecutive mojitos on Canada Day weekend. (That’s in July, by the way. Three days before Independence Day. It’s usually hot. Never mind. It’s not even funny anymore. Forget it.)

He shows real live pictures of mind-blowing marketing techniques in action, including this one about urinals. You’ll never look at a bathroom the same way again. (Where does he FIND this stuff? You know what? I don’t want to know.) Also, check out the Brothel in Pimlico post. Yes, I said “brothel”. If you don’t read it, you’re only hurting yourself.

Lastly (for now, God only knows what else he has up his sleeve), there’s his art. When he’s not traipsing all around the continent finding cool stuff for me to read, he does art. Really good art. I offered him one of my children in exchange for one of his pieces but he was elusive in his reply. Some of his stuff doesn’t seem to be for sale, I don’t know, but you really, really need to check it out.

Dude has so many pies, he’s going to need more thumbs. Plus he looks like Jay Leno, which is cool. He is so passionate about advertising and promotion, it’s kind of scary.

***

Want a small business marketing coach of your very own? Click here to get started.

By Naomi Dunford