Avoid "dictionary" words.

I live near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Home of the Brewers (who are 2 games up on the Cubs, btw) and the biggest thing going at the ballpark for the past 30 years hasn't always been the team, but the RACING SAUSAGES. Everyone knows about them... and Klement Sausages is the brand behind it. And the guy behind that is a graphic designer (who I am working on to interview for us) is Michael Dillon. Who knew something so silly would become your signature marketing achievement? Today could be your day! 😆 ⚾ 🌭

Job 1.

Many of you are familiar with the Ad Professor on LinkedIn (and other platforms)... many of the ads they create are great in concept. for brands projects real (and imagined). Some miss the mark - IMHO. Here are two that I stumbled on to today. What's your opinion?

When you run your own show for so many years, sometimes, you get lazy (or dumb). You assume that your clients will just keep the gravy train flowing... until they don't. That's what this summer has been like for me. The faucet slowed down until it was just a trickle. Not good. 🤨 At first, you say "it will come around." But after a couple of weeks with marginal work, you realize that your monthly income is going to take a hit. Time to put on your big-boy pants and get back to shaking the trees. 💰🌳🤑 So what did I do that netted this little gem? What was it? and why is it $5K+? 📣_ _ _ _ _ I'm going to tell you _ _ _ _ _ 📣 NEW BUSINESS 101: The quickest way to money is to work with the people who already know you (or knew you). I opened up an old removable hard drive and made a print out of every business I had worked with in the last 10 years. It was a pretty big list, with a number of companies and brands that are no longer in existence, and many, that I had long forgotten that I had even done work for (some pretty good work, I might add). I took a look at who my contact was and went to their site or to their LinkedIn profile to see if they were still active. Turns out, most still were, but some had retired and sadly, a few had passed away. (Don't really want to make that your first call back to a company asking for a "dead guy".😳 I sent out an email for starters, simply re-introducing myself and being honest (to a point) on "how it had been such a long time since we last worked together..." "we've been updating sites and brands..." "would love to work with you again." And ask for a call or meet-up. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ All but 2 of 20 got back to me... and 2 firms had projects that could go to me... but many, I got on calls with to rekindle a relationship that once was. One such project I picked up was a website update for a small industrial company. There out-of-date website was actually one I had done the original work on. Unchanged for more than 10 years! So I set up a time to drop by, chatted for a bit and offered a site re-fresh.