Marketing

A Series On The Marketing Solopreneur: #1 Dan Koe

Peter · March 6, 2023 · Leave a Comment

I am doing a series on the world of the solopreneur that offers two things.

1) Insights from a serious thinker/doer that will help you grow your business. I am talking solopreneur.

2) An alternative career path roadmap. No working for the “man”. Even if that man/woman/person is you, as in someone that runs a marketing agency.

Definition…According to Merriam-Webster, a solopreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise without the help of a partner.”

#1 solopreneur is the design guru Dan Koe. He delivers courses +

Dan offers courses on writing, productization, and a Modern Mastery system. These range from $150 to $999. He makes a lot of money. I am considering the book course even though I am now completing my fourth book and am outlining my fifth. Never too late to tap into someone else’s experience. Factoid… Dan has 75K followers on LinkedIn. 295K Twitter followers. 223K YouTube subs. 1.2 million Instagram peeps. Yikes!

From Dan’s website – a very cool website by the way:

Hey, I’m Dan.

I’m a brand advisor for 6-7 figure creators and influencers.

I’m the guy they come to when they want to go from starving artist to a highly-paid and authentic creator. No fancy sales funnels and pushy marketing in this household.

I help them systemize their workflow, marketing, and content so they can work for 2 hours a day, charge more, and sell their products & services without manual effort.

As a freelancer turned consultant turned creator, I’ve developed effective systems with time, skin in the game, and experience with 4000+ students and clients.

Four Things For You To Do

Sign up for future newsletters to scope out even more interesting and way active solopreneur thinker/doers.
Pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Tell Dan you love him. -> LinkedIn
Go here to read my series of 850+ blog posts.

SmarterChild Beat ChatGPT by 22 Years

Peter · January 25, 2023 · Leave a Comment

As BuzzFeed Said About SmarterChild… (way before ChatGPT)

From BuzzFeed 2013: “50 Things That Look Just Like Your Childhood” – “A chat with an online robot”

Did you play with SmarterChild? I was one of the founders and CEO. Was nice to be part of the Internet’s childhood.Who knew then that ChatGPT was coming?

Here is a start-up video … 2000… (Microsoft eventually bought us – ActiveBuddy. And, now they own a chunk of ChatGPT) Yes, that’s me.

A New Kick-Ass Email Tool

Peter · October 13, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Here’s a new subject line email tool that will increase opens.

I got an email today from one of my favorite email newsletters – Josh Spector’s For The Interested. The email pointed me to omnisend’s email subject line tester

The omnisend promise: Boost your email open rates: analyze and improve your subject lines before sending your next campaign.

I used the tool to create this blog post’s subject line. It scored high.

You can see more tools and resources right There’s more! Here in my advertising, marketing agency resources list.

Is Your Advertising Agency Pitching Too Much?

Peter · October 10, 2022 · 1 Comment

Is Your Advertising Agency Pitching Too Much? Maybe You Need To Say No!

Here is an excerpt from my book on advertising agency pitching and presenting. This tidbit emphasizes the importance of not (allow me to repeat myself) not pitching every account that whistles. You can’t afford it. It costs too much cash, time, energy, and agency staff pain (BURNOUT!). Pitching too much causes one more problem. You will reduce your business development ROI.

There is lots more in “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book Win More Pitches.” You can buy the paperback and eBook on -> Amazon.

Yes, No, Maybe?

Before you embark on a new pitch, you should be asking yourself one extremely important question…

Should we be pitching this account?

I know what you are thinking… Levitan’s kidding right? We’ve made it through the RFI and RFP stages, and now he wants us to ask if we should even be going to the finals.

It’s still ok to say “no”, and now is the time to take a deep breath and review a go-no-go decision. You are about to spend a great deal of time and money. Are you sure that you should go through the next step? Are your colleague’s groans getting louder? Looking in any way ambivalent about the pitch will not help your pitch team feel good about charging into it. Passionless pitches don’t win.

Pitch or not is usually one of the most difficult decisions agency management has to make. There is a good chance that you think that you’ve already answered this question if you participated in an RFP that led to your selection as a shortlist candidate. I believe that even if you’ve performed a sound decision-making process, now is the time to stop to determine if this potentially expensive pitch is worth the time, effort, and human and cash costs.

A Zoom Cartoon Just For You

Peter · September 9, 2022 · Leave a Comment

A Zoom Cartoon About A Zoom Pitch Problem

To help illustrate the insanity that often accompanies the act of an advertising agency pitch for new business, I included 12 pitch mistake cartoons in my book “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.” I love the fact that cartoons are a fast way into overloaded brains, evoke emotion, and get remembered. Remembered well past fleeting podcast interviews. Here’s a zoom cartoon to help make my point.

Possibly the most memorable Internet meme is the 1993 (!) cartoon, “On the internet nobody knows you are a dog.” From Peter Steiner in the New Yorker.

My Zoom Cartoon Just For You

Here is a new Zoom cartoon I commissioned from master cartoonist, and brilliant Creative Director, Steve Klinetobe. Steve was a CD at my Portland agency Citrus. This cartoon will go into my next book on how to run a successful marketing agency and business development.

Steve’s nostril cartoon illustrates one of the worst uses of Zoom. It’s about where people put their camera in relation to their face. In this case, it is the camera that sits below a face and looks into your buddy’s nose. YUCK!

When Zooming, pay attention to camera placement + lighting + sound quality + your background. You know this right?

That said, I look up way too many nostrils.

By the way, Steve has gone freelance. So hire him. You will thank me.