When Warren Buffet speaks, people listen.

Recently I happened to catch Warren Buffet on TV talking about how leaders should set business priorities.

Buffet was saying that you should run your business like it’s a family business–one that you are going to hold onto for 100 years, and the #1 thing you should think about is how to build a sustainable competitive advantage, like building “like a moat around your castle.”

If you look back to medieval times, moats were excavated around castles as part of the defensive system–an obstacle immediately outside the walls–and usually they were filled with water.

A good moat made it difficult for your enemy to access your walls with siege weapons, such as towers and battering rams, which needed to be brought up against a wall to work effectively. A water-filled moat made it impossible for your enemy to dig tunnels under your fortifications in order to effect a collapse of the defenses. A good moat protected your castle and everything in it.

The wider your moat, the longer you can protect your profits. The deeper your moat, the more profitable you are.

“Understanding your customers” is key to building a good moat

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Direct Marketing Old Timers will tell you that the success or failure of any marketing program is attributable to:

• 40% the list,
• 40% the offer, and
• 20% for everything else , i.e., copy, creative, timing, etc.

If you’re not getting the response you think you should be getting, look at the offer first.

The strategic process in old-fashioned Direct Marketing is matching up the right list with the right offer… segmenting the list into micro-segments (or “splits”), and tailoring specialized offers to make the offer more relevant. 

The 3R’s: It’s not Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, but…

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Marketers the world over, with much greater resources than you or I, have worked relentlessly, and have spent millions and millions of dollars, so that their products and services can be seen and heard in an overcrowded marketplace.

So how is a small business with limited resources supposed to compete with companies that have much greater resources and greater budget?

The secret is positioning: “It’s not what you do to your product, or how you market it, it’s how you position your product in your customer’s mind.”

Don’t bet the farm on changing someone’s mind

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Living with Intention

You are what your deepest desire is.
As your desire is, so is your intention.
As your intention is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.”
 ~ Upanishads

For an ambitious blogger and hard-charging entrepreneur, a goal of a million clicks a month begins with the proverbial first post.

My wife has launched her new Mommy Blog called Mommy Fuel. While there are a plethora of Mom Blogs out there, her “unique angle” is to create a place where Moms can reconnect with who they are,  with what they are called to be, with their ultimate purpose, and to ”live and give with intention”. 

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If you sometimes feel like you’re stuck, or that your key employees are stuck, and that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, then you’d probably be interested in a fascinating piece in the New York Times that was entitled: “Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?”

In the article, it affirms that ”brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.”

Moreover, “rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.”

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