I am thrilled to share a professional profile written for What’s Up Wyoming, a community news source from the small suburb of Wyoming, Ohio, near Cincinnati, where I have called home to both work and family for 12+ years. The profile is…

Love It Or Leave It No matter what, at the end of the project, you have to love what is created. Maybe "love" is too strong a word. You need to believe in the final thing that is created. The…

Realistic Timing The graphic above is one that gets shared a few hundred-thousand times among creative professionals every year. I'm not kidding. I see this posted on social media, sent in email, shared in groups, etc. more than any other…

Ask The Right People This one is touchy because once it happens, it’s a diplomatic tightrope for professional creatives to walk: As we create, we need feedback to measure effectiveness. Whom we get feedback from is equally important as getting…

Know Thyself “I'll know it when I see it” is a phrase creatives hear a lot, and it’s a phrase we can usually resonate with quite well. Sometimes we don’t know, specifically, what we are about to create. We just…

More Info, Less Direction If there’s one thing professional creative teams loathe, it’s being hired for a gig, then being directed, step-by-step, how something should look or function. At best, it sends contradictory messages. You’re paying professionals who live and breathe…

Whether you have hired an agency, or are working with an in-house department, there are ways to get the best work from your creative team. You have expectations of getting ideas brought to life for the betterment and profitability of…

Brand development is an exercise of examining what the brand is and is not, and then codifying the discoveries in a way that the brand owner(s) and stakeholder(s) can easily leverage to grow the brand. Here are what I know…

Brand development is an exercise of examining what the brand is and is not, and then codifying the discoveries in a way that the brand owner(s) and stakeholder(s) can easily leverage to grow the brand. Here are what I know…

Brand development is an exercise of examining what the brand is and is not, and then codifying the discoveries in a way that the brand owner(s) and stakeholder(s) can easily leverage to grow the brand. Here are what I know…

Brand development is an exercise of examining what the brand is and is not, and then codifying the discoveries in a way that the brand owner(s) and stakeholder(s) can easily leverage to grow the brand. Here are what I know…

Brand development is an exercise of examining what the brand is and is not, and then codifying the discoveries in a way that the brand owner(s) and stakeholder(s) can easily leverage to grow the brand. Here are what I know…

Can your brand's stakeholders quickly and unanimously cite its ideal customer(s)? This should be top-of-mind to ownership, managers, and key players who help grow your brand. If everyone doesn't know precisely who the ideal customer is and be able to do…

"Does the branding suck?" This is something you at least suspect, otherwise, why click to see what's on this page, right? Allow me to perhaps confirm your suspicions. If you suspect your branding sucks, it's because there's a metric that's not…

I am the latest guest on the Fail To Learn podcast. Be sure to consider subscribing and leaving a review for this outstanding show. Visit Fail To Learn's show page for tons of extras, and a free worksheet based on…

I have observed that there are 3 old-fashioned business practices that need to be revived. These 3 practices seem to have died of neglect, and not of malicious intent, so I can't blame a singular person or event for their demise.…

I am a former obese man. Having struggled with nutrition and being overweight as a young man, I found myself  looking down at a scale in 2002 that was climbing past 325 lbs. I couldn't look at what that final…

It seems we can't go a full week without reading a headline about a website security breach. Usually the story is about a big corporation because in headline news, the old adage "if it bleeds, it leads" is still applicable…

Google sees that we search for content on mobile devices with increasing frequency, and they are making big changes to adapt to our changing search habits. As of April 21, 2015, Google will rank mobile-friendly website higher than those that are…

Those of us who create websites for a living have a lot of foundational agreement on how great WordPress is as a platform. Yet there is topic area that I cannot agree on with my peers: The idea that pros don't use themes for WordPress;…