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Category: Personal (Page 1 of 47)

How Do You Know It’s Time to Invest in a New Social Channel?

I was asked an interesting question the other day by a senior marketer. She wantd my opinion on how to decide it’s time for a brand to start a new channel, as well as how I keep up on social trends.

It’s an interesting question, because here we are 20 years into this social media phenomenon, and there’s never been a perfect answer. If you rushed right into MySpace, or even Friendster, back in the day, you had to decide when to leave. Then came all the others, Shoot, remember when Google was trying to make everyone do Circles on Google+?

The good thing about social is that trends don’t go hide under a lot of research. They are literally blasting you in the face to the point you can’t ignore them.

So my opinion is that trends can be monitored constantly, but investment only happens when data shows audience fit, potential ROI, and brand alignment. And tofigure that out, we look at a few things:

  • There is evidence of sustained engagement.
  • Their target audience is adopting it.
  • The trend fits their brand voice, creative strategy, and compliance requirement.

. Social Listening and Real-Time Analytics

“We don’t guess, we measure.”

  • Use of tools like Sprout Social, Brandwatch, or Meltwater to monitor emerging conversations.
  • Real-time trend tracking to watch shifts in memes, language, and platform use.
  • Reddit, TikTok trends, and niche subcultures are early signals.

2. Test-and-Learn Pilots Before Scaling

“Start small. Test fast. Scale what works.”

  • Run experimental content or small-budget campaigns on new platforms.
  • A/B test content types (e.g. short-form video vs. live Q&A).
  • Track performance KPIs before full investment.

3. Follow Creators and Early Adopters

“Influencers are usually 6 months ahead of us.”

  • Study what top creators are doing on emerging platforms.
  • Use creator behavior as a signal for audience migration.
  • DM or partner with creators to test content natively.

4. Cross-Functional Brainstorms and Competitive Intelligence

“We steal smart , and share internally.”

  • Internal Slack groups or war rooms to share cool examples.
  • Monitor what competitors and adjacent industries are trying.
  • Share reports in regular marketing team huddles.

5. Wait for Critical Mass of Your Core Audience

“If Gen Z moves to a new platform, we move , but not until our Gen Z customers are active there.”

  • Watch for demographic adoption curves (e.g., teens to college to working professionals).
  • Monitor engagement, not just account creation.
  • Use customer panels or surveys to validate platform interest.

Most brands don’t need to market to the bleeding edge trendsetters. Being 1st isn’t always best. Let the scrappy start-ups have their day i the sun and collect some temporary eyeballs. Consistency is going to win out eventually.

The Strategist’s Dilemma: When Even Google Says “Just Let Us Run It”

Early in my career, I was a tactician. Email campaigns, SEO, SEM, building landing pages, hacking together A/B tests. Whatever the job needed, I’d figure it out.

Then I got older. Took on bigger roles. Strategy became my thing. I got an MBA, which basically teaches you how to never do real work again. Just make PowerPoints and use fancy terms like “ubiquitous” and “leveraging synergies.” Just kidding. Kind of.

Then I taught at UW. Strategy-heavy, theory-driven. But not much time for learning how to troubleshoot a broken Meta ad pixel or chase down why TikTok didn’t like the file format you uploaded.

Fast-forward to a recent client gig. A small, scrappy brand with big potential. I figured with AI at my side, I could go back to being a full-stack marketer. The headlines promised that AI was like hiring a 12-person team. All I had to do was show up and prompt. Well, that’s what I thought would happen…

Read more: The Strategist’s Dilemma: When Even Google Says “Just Let Us Run It”

To be fair, some of it worked. AI helped me:

  • Learn the market faster than any onboarding doc ever could
  • Code landing pages I wouldn’t have touched otherwise
  • Test language, generate image prompts, draft copy

But some things were harder than I expected. Not because of AI. Because of me.

I wasn’t great at managing $500 social ad budgets with a bunch of audience segments. I’d get excited, generate new copy, then forget which ones were running. I’d have four tools open at once and three dashboards with zero clear answers.

And the real challenge? AI made me want to move too fast. It gave me confidence, not always clarity. I overlooked the years of work the brand had already done. I thought, “Let’s just rebuild it.” Because I could. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.


Not only that, but with all the worry about tactics, I forgot about building an actual strategy. Sure I was fixing things, but why? Why was I spending the time on these ad images and audiences a la carte? Where was the the overall gameplan, which is the thing I’m actually really good at?

And then came the pressure. I’d read stories of brands handing over their entire budget to Meta’s Performance Max or Advantage+ campaigns and watching sales jump 300 percent. Google says the same. Just let the algorithm run it. Trust the machine.

But then the experts, the real paid media folks, all say the opposite. You should never blindly hand over your budget. You need control. You need constraints. You need human judgment layered over the models.

So which is it?


That’s the strategist’s dilemma. You’re smart enough to see the big picture. But now you’re supposed to run the machine, too. You’re supposed to click every box, track every metric, and learn new rules every week. It’s not that you can’t. It’s that if you’re not careful, you’ll burn your whole day trying to beat an algorithm that’s already 10 moves ahead.

And yet… you also can’t sit back. This isn’t a time for marketers to lean only on decks and plans. You have to try things. Publish things. Watch what works. Learn what doesn’t.

Especially if you’re working with a brand built on authenticity. You can’t just let the machine write your voice. You have to start with something human. Something true. Then let AI accelerate, not replace.

That’s what I’d do differently next time. Not give up the strategy. Not fake the tactics. But respect both. Use AI as the intern, not the architect. Build the plan myself, then use the tools to get further, faster, without losing the voice or the vision.

Because in the end, it’s not about chasing trends or automating everything. It’s about making sure the brand stays true, the work gets done, and the results actually matter.

The Caffeine Purge Begins

I drink a lot of coffee. Usually a full pot by the end of the day, and sometimes I throw in three or four Cascade Ice caffeine drinks just to round things out. It’s not that I think I need that much. It’s just what I do. Part habit, part coping mechanism.

But I’ve been feeling the effects lately and I don’t like them. Anxiety, restless sleep, a sense that my nervous system is running slightly off the rails even when nothing’s happening. So I’ve decided to do something about it. Not some dramatic life overhaul. Just one thing: cut back on caffeine with the goal of a total abstinence. Seven to ten days of tapering. Let’s see what happens.

The plan is to mix decaf into my coffee grounds, tart with half and half, then taper it down. That will remove about 1/3 and gives me a few days to fool myself before things get more difficult. Next, drop the Cascade Ice drinks and try to replace them with pure water and electrolytes. That’s 1/2 of the current state so 2/3 total.

Then, it’ll just be cutting down the pot to 1/2, then one cup, then none at all. Sounds easy. I mean, I’ve done much harder things.

Why now? Because I want better sleep. Less edge. More clarity. And I want to see what my face and gut look like without all the hidden water retention and stimulant drag. Ten days without caffeine should be enough to know whether any of that’s real or just a theory I invented while over-caffeinated.

So this is Day 1. No big declarations. Just an experiment. I’ll check back in if things get interesting.

Baseball and Presence

An old lecture from Father Hobbs:

“Baseball is a metaphor for how to practice restraint.You can’t out-hustle the pitcher. You can’t rush the at-bat. You have to wait for the game to come to you. And in that waiting, everything gets quieter.”

Entrepreneurship, marketing, the tech world – they all teach us how to sprint, to go chase the game. But baseball taught me to stop swinging at bad pitches.

Now I use that same mindset to handle distractions, deadlines, and overthinking.

Stay in the box. Watch the ball. Swing when it matters.

Lunching with Legends – Talking Leadership

Episode 2: Culture, Character, and the Cost of Winning

Welcome back to Legends on the Line, our fictional Zoom call to the great beyond, where some of the most legendary college coaches who ever lived drop in for a candid conversation. Our panel today needs no warmup:

  • Pat Summitt, the unshakable builder of Tennessee women’s basketball.
  • John Wooden, architect of the UCLA dynasty and philosopher in sneakers.
  • Eddie Robinson, Grambling State’s longtime coach, educator, and soul of Black college football.

I’ll step aside after this quick intro—just a coach’s kid turned marketing guy listening in from the sidelines. These three don’t need moderators.

Let’s listen in.

WOODEN: Thank you for the invitation. It’s always good to be in the company of coaches who understood that the scoreboard was never the whole story.

SUMMITT: Speak for yourself, Coach. I liked the scoreboard—but I liked knowing why we won more.

ROBINSON: That’s the key right there. Anybody can get lucky one Saturday. Sustaining it, year after year? That’s culture. That’s character.

WOODEN: Culture is what happens when no one’s watching. You can’t teach discipline on game day. It has to be woven into how you practice, how you behave, how you treat your teammates.

SUMMITT: It’s also how you talk to your players after a loss. Or when they’re struggling off the court. I wasn’t just raising point guards—I was helping raise women.

ROBINSON: We had players come through Grambling who had never been told they mattered. Coaching them meant teaching them how to carry themselves with dignity, how to walk into any room and belong there.

WOODEN: I used to say: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation.” Your reputation is merely what others think of you. Your character is what you really are.

SUMMITT: That quote made it onto the wall in our locker room, by the way.

ROBINSON: Same.

WOODEN: So let me ask—how do we build character on a team?

SUMMITT: You hold people accountable and you tell the truth. I never sugarcoated anything with my players. I told them, “If you don’t want to hear the truth, you’re in the wrong gym.”

ROBINSON: You also model it. You can’t ask your team to work hard and then come in late or take shortcuts. Coaches forget that players remember everything—especially what you do when the cameras aren’t on.

WOODEN: That’s right. I never once mentioned winning in a pregame talk. But I talked about effort, preparation, self-control. You teach those things and the wins take care of themselves.

SUMMITT: We live in a world where everyone wants results yesterday. But a team’s identity takes time. That’s the real coaching—the part they don’t show in the documentaries.

ROBINSON: Culture is how you respond to adversity. You lose a key player? You’re down 14 in the third? That’s when all the “teamwork” posters on the wall better mean something.

WOODEN: Here’s a thought: The more talented your players, the more important it is to teach unselfishness.

SUMMITT: Amen. At Tennessee, our biggest fights were never about minutes. They were about ego. But we settled those in practice, in film sessions, in long conversations. You can’t just yell “teamwork” and expect magic.

ROBINSON: I had players who wanted to go pro, and I’d say, “Start by being great in this huddle.” You can’t lead 80,000 fans until you can lead 10 of your teammates in the locker room.

WOODEN: “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” That applied to stardom too.

SUMMITT: We put team before talent every year. If you couldn’t buy into that, you didn’t play. Period.

ROBINSON: Can we talk about how you balance toughness and love?

SUMMITT: You mean how to kick their butts and hug them after?

WOODEN: I believe discipline without love is tyranny. But love without discipline is chaos.

ROBINSON: I told my players: “You may not like how I say it, but you’ll understand why when you leave here.”

SUMMITT: Coaching is a long game. It’s what they say about you ten years later that matters. Not what they say when you sit them on the bench.

WOODEN: Let’s get practical. How did each of you create culture, not just talk about it?

SUMMITT: Daily habits. On time. Practice hard. Sit in the first three rows of class. Say thank you. The little things build the big things.

ROBINSON: We ran the program like a family. That didn’t mean it was soft—it meant it was consistent. If you knew what to expect from me, you could relax and play.

WOODEN: I had a Pyramid of Success, but honestly? It came down to teaching players how to be good men. If they became good men, they’d be good teammates.

SUMMITT: Replace “men” with “women,” and I’m with you 100%.

WOODEN: You know what I miss most?

SUMMITT: The players?

WOODEN: That moment when a kid finally gets it. Not the game plan—the lesson.

ROBINSON: Yes. When they figure out who they are. That’s the championship I remember most.

SUMMITT: There’s a reason we call it “coaching.” It’s a journey, and we’re lucky to ride shotgun.

ME (signing back in): I didn’t want to interrupt. But thank you. This was a masterclass in how to build something that lasts.

Before we close the Zoom tab on the sky, mind if I ask what each of you is doing this weekend?

WOODEN: I’ve got a pickup game with some old Bruins and a long walk planned with Abraham Lincoln. We talk about leadership.

SUMMITT: I’m hosting a chalk talk with Billie Jean King and Maya Angelou. We’re comparing playbooks.

ROBINSON: I’ll be on the sideline at a sandlot game down here. Same spot every weekend. I cheer loud.

Imagery for Focus

Research in psychology and psychiatry suggests that certain types of images or visual stimuli can help individuals improve focus and reduce distractions. These images often leverage principles of attention regulation, mindfulness, and environmental design. Here are a few scientifically-backed approaches:

1. Nature Scenes

  • Why it works: Studies show that exposure to nature or even viewing images of natural environments can restore attention and reduce mental fatigue. This is based on the concept of Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which suggests that natural environments engage our attention in a gentle, involuntary way, allowing the directed attention system to rest.
  • Example Images: Forests, flowing water, mountains, and greenery.
  • Best Use: Displaying posters, screensavers, or paintings with calming natural scenes.

2. Abstract Art with Low Complexity

  • Why it works: Complex or cluttered images can overstimulate individuals with ADHD, while simple, abstract designs or patterns can create a calming effect and reduce distractions.
  • Example Images: Geometric patterns, smooth color gradients, or minimalist art with soft tones.
  • Best Use: Use as background art in workspaces or as phone wallpapers.

3. Mandala Patterns

  • Why it works: Mandalas and other symmetrical designs can promote mindfulness and focus through their repetitive and orderly structure. Some ADHD therapies include coloring mandalas to improve focus and reduce hyperactivity.
  • Best Use: Use as interactive exercises (e.g., coloring apps) or as visual elements for meditation breaks.

4. Images with Blue and Green Hues

  • Why it works: Blue and green are associated with calmness and focus. Research has shown that these colors can help regulate mood and improve attention span.
  • Example Images: Ocean waves, clear skies, green fields.
  • Best Use: Backgrounds for work environments or calming breaks.

5. Goal-Oriented Visuals

  • Why it works: Visuals that represent goals, steps of a task, or progress can help individuals with ADHD stay task-oriented. Seeing a visual roadmap of their objectives can reduce the cognitive load and prevent distractions.
  • Example Images: Infographics, step-by-step diagrams, or progress trackers.
  • Best Use: Incorporate into task planning or to-do lists.

6. Soft Animated Visuals

  • Why it works: Slow, non-distracting animations (like a gentle ocean wave or a flame flickering) can serve as a grounding point for focus. These animations are particularly useful for reducing anxiety and helping individuals stay engaged without overstimulation.
  • Best Use: Display on digital devices or monitors as a background focus tool.

7. Visual Reminders of Break Spaces

  • Why it works: Seeing a calming visual associated with a planned break (e.g., a peaceful garden or quiet reading corner) can create a mental cue for focused work until the break arrives.
  • Example Images: Personalized images of a favorite relaxation spot or a digital timer with an image of the break area.
  • Best Use: Use as desktop backgrounds or on task management tools.

How Vin Scully Would Describe Parenting a 3 Year Old

I have to admit to a silly little hobby I’ve developed. I like taking topics relevant to my life, things I may have actually journaled about myself, and then seeing how some of the wordsmiths I admire might describe it. Here’s an example of ChatGPT suggesting how the legendary Vin Scully may have regaled us with the joys and pains of managing a toddler.

“Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats. The game of parenting a 3-year-old is about to begin. Imagine, if you will, a ballpark not filled with fans, but with toys scattered across the outfield, sippy cups perched precariously on the infield, and a mound that’s just the right height for a tiny pitcher who doesn’t so much throw fastballs as toss Cheerios with wild abandon.

Read more: How Vin Scully Would Describe Parenting a 3 Year Old

Ah, the three-year-old, a true double threat! They’re as curious as a rookie stepping onto the diamond for the first time, and as unpredictable as a knuckleball on a breezy day. One moment, they’re the sweetest slugger you’ve ever seen, running full speed into your arms with a grin that could light up Dodger Stadium. The next, they’re a base runner caught in a pickle, wailing about a lost toy as if it were Game 7 of the World Series.

Let me set the scene for you. The day begins early, as if they’ve got an East Coast road trip schedule to keep. The morning is filled with small victories and dramatic defeats: a successful mission to put on their shoes, followed by a heart-wrenching meltdown because the oatmeal is ‘too lumpy.’ You’ll learn to cheer the wins—‘And he eats all his broccoli! What a clutch performance!’—and let the losses roll off like a foul ball into the stands.

Now, parenting a three-year-old is not without its strategy. You’ll need the patience of a bullpen coach, the flexibility of a shortstop, and the creativity of a pinch hitter. The ‘why’ questions come fast and furious, like a batting practice session you didn’t sign up for: ‘Why is the sky blue?’ ‘Why can’t I have ice cream for breakfast?’ ‘Why does the dog bark?’ Every answer feels like stepping up to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded.

But oh, the moments of magic! Watching a 3-year-old discover the world is like witnessing a home run hit deep into the night sky—awe-inspiring and unforgettable. Their laughter rings out like a perfectly struck ball, soaring high and true. They have an uncanny ability to find joy in the smallest things—a dandelion in the grass, a butterfly fluttering by, a cardboard box that becomes a spaceship.

And let’s not forget, folks, that every day with a 3-year-old is a doubleheader. The afternoon might bring a nap that’s fought harder than any pennant race, and bedtime often feels like extra innings. But as the house finally quiets, and you steal a moment to watch them sleep, you realize you wouldn’t trade this game for anything in the world.

So here’s to the parents out there, grinding it out day after day, finding the beauty in the chaos and the poetry in the madness. Because, as any baseball fan—or parent—knows, it’s not just about the wins and losses. It’s about the love of the game.”

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