Writing for Business Owners
Two Decades of Insights (And Still Going)
Though we grew up poor, my dad bought us a typewriter and made us learn how to touch-type. He said we’d appreciate it someday in the future when everyone used computers. He wasn’t wrong.
I’ve written more than a hundred articles about business, marketing, branding, and design for publications like Inc. Magazine and others, as well as for my own various blogs and websites.
“James consistently amazes me with his insights on design, marketing, and business process.”
—Troy Busot (Founder & CEO, Athlinks)
Articles
Preserving your SEO Juice While Overhauling Your Website
The biggest mistake people make with website redesigns is thinking that it’s just a website redesign. They see the new site, everything seems to work, and they call it done. Meanwhile, their SEO juice is leaking all over the floor. Their rankings are going...
3 Essential Elements of a Rock-Solid Brand
Over the years, we’ve found that there are three foundational elements to almost any brand: purpose, values, and style. BRAND PURPOSE Research cited in Built to Last (by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras) indicates that purpose-driven companies can outperform the...
Getting Back to Reality
We now live in a world where almost everything is abstracted and over-processed to the point of barely being real. Take hamburgers, for example. What once referred to a thick, juicy slab of minced beef flavored with regional spices now typically refers to a thin,...
Creating People-Powered Experiences for Your Customers with Tribal Marketing
The typical modern consumer generally assumes quality and functionality as given, so what they’re really seeking are experiences that help them to fulfill their psychological needs (affiliation, aspiration, and identity). A key way to satisfy all of these needs is to...
Special K and Wheaties: A Lesson in Positioning
Cereal is great. You throw some milk on it, and you’ve got a tasty and relatively nutritious breakfast. Theoretically, cereals–at least the basic, unadorned ones–should be relatively universal. There’s not much about them that predisposes them to any particular...
Is Your Company’s Power Structure Killing Your Culture?
Geert Hofstede’s research into national cultures from the 1960s onward has identified five primary dimensions of culture: Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long-Term Orientation, and Power Distance. This research has proven useful in a variety of...
ROI is What Actually Happens
Executives tend to be short-term thinkers. Their career has grown through easy-quantifiable successes, and they’re constantly pressured — by other short-term thinking executives — to base their actions around short-term metrics. It’s all about what happened last...
What Happens After Your Revolution
Revolution is easy when you don’t have anything to lose. You say the things everyone’s afraid to say, kick in some doors, fire your guns into the air, depose some tyrannical leaders, and declare your way to be the new way of doing things. When you’re a startup, it’s...
The 30-and-30 Rule for Websites
When designing a website, it’s important to remember that not everyone processes information the same way you do. You might enjoy taking your time and absorbing all the details, while someone else is just trying to get in, get what they need, and get out. When...
Your Spreadsheet Isn’t Telling You the Whole Story
Human behavior is based on emotion first, logic second As technology has given our industry the ability to measure more things faster than ever, there’s been a steady trend towards having metrics serve as the basis for design and creative work, with the idea that this...