My Weekly Marketing

Your marketing can be “good” and still be forgettable, and AI is accelerating that problem. When everyone uses the same tools to write the same posts and the same outreach emails, we all drift toward the safest middle. That is exactly where you disappear. We talk with Maria Katerina Johansson, a link building and digital PR specialist with more than a decade of sales experience, about how to stand...

We talk with leadership and business strategist Tammy McKinney about the quiet red flags that show up when a business starts taking more than it gives. We share practical ways to step out of reaction mode, redefine success as life changes, and build time freedom into the calendar instead of waiting for “someday.”  • spotting red flags like postponed vacations, constant firefighting, and no space t...

Your best growth move might not be finding new clients at all. If you’ve been chasing cold leads, paying for ads, or feeling like you’re restarting from zero every month, I want to shift your focus to the people who already trust you: past and current customers. When you learn to increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), your marketing gets calmer, your revenue gets steadier, and you stop relying on...

A video you publish today can still be sending customers to your business 10 or even 20 years from now, but only if you stop treating YouTube like a place to post updates and start treating it like a search engine. We’re joined by Mary Ann Bautista, co-founder of TurboRank. In our conversation, she breaks down what most small businesses get wrong on YouTube and what actually matters in 2026 when b...

Your calendar is packed, revenue is up, and you finally feel like you can breathe. Then the next month hits and everything goes quiet. If you’ve ever wondered why the feast or famine cycle keeps showing up in your service business, we’re cutting through the frustration and getting specific about what’s actually happening behind the scenes. We walk through the three most common causes of income swi...

Your customers are giving you marketing answers all day long, but most of us rush past the clues. I’m joined by Sarah Tjoa, managing director of Noble West, to break down what “listening” really means in modern marketing and brand strategy, especially now that AI and automation make it easier than ever to publish words that sound right but say nothing. We dig into how marketing falls flat when we...

AI is writing faster than any of us can think and that can make email marketing feel like you can just hand it over to ChatGPT. But don’t buy that narrative. Email is still one of the best channels for small businesses to build trust, increase retention, and drive sales, but only if your messages sound like a real person and give subscribers a reason to keep opening. We’re joined by Adri Kopp, an...

Your website can be stunning, your offer can be dialed in, and your copy can convert, yet your calendar still stays empty for one simple reason: nobody can find you. In this episode, I’m pulling apart the traffic problem most small businesses get wrong. The goal is not more eyeballs. It’s more of the right people landing on your site, without you turning into a full-time content creator or dumping...

Your website can be gorgeous and still quietly lose you clients in seconds. In this episode, I share a simple way to spot what is really happening when someone lands on your homepage, clicks around for a moment, and disappears and why the answer is usually not a full redesign or “more traffic.” We break down the five layers of a website that actually works. We talk through the shift from thinking...

Entrepreneurship makes marketing feel like a hundred disconnected tasks, and fear can push us into scattered efforts that do not add up. In this episode, I walk through five common small business marketing mistakes and the simple fixes that create a clear Trail to the Sale™ from stranger to customer.  Trying to be everywhere at once.  Making it about you.  Selling the offer instead of the outcome....

A robot answered the phone when I called a local shop, and it instantly reminded me how fragile trust is in small business marketing. That very first “hello” is not a throwaway moment, it’s a brand promise. When we automate the front door of our business, we might save time, but we can also teach our best customers that they don’t matter enough to reach a real person. I walk through the question t...

They told you they were interested. They showed up for the call. They maybe even said, “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.” Then the DM goes quiet and the email thread dies.  If you’ve ever stared at your inbox wondering what you did wrong, I walk you through a more useful truth: most of the time, they didn’t reject you. They just never made a decision. In this episode, we unpack the thre...

In this episode, I break down four pieces of marketing advice I used to treat as law and explain why they stop working for me, and for my small business clients.  I've replaced them with a simpler approach built on audience fit, owned channels, and small tests that let the results guide the next move instead of trends or best practices.  Have a listen! Send us Fan Mail Support the show Free M...

Marketing is starting to look the same everywhere, and AI is accelerating the slide toward safe, average choices. But that's not what good marketing is. In this episode, we dig into what the data says about email performance and what we can change right now to make our messages connect on a human level.  I’m joined by RJ Talyor, Founder and CEO of Backstroke, who’s spent decades in digital ma...

We are wired to love stories and they are a powerful marketing tool. In this episode, we talk with storytelling and branding expert John Elbing about why most marketing falls flat when it starts with the business instead of the buyer. We share a simple three-step framework that helps people recognize themselves, trust what they see, and picture the outcome before they commit. Click to listen! Send...

Your sales email can be perfectly written and still not sell. If it reads like an inventory list of what's included in your offer, people will skim it, shrug it off, and move on–even when your offer is genuinely good.  In this episode, we'll dig into the real reason this happens: buyers don’t get excited about modules, coaching calls, and workbooks. They get excited when they can picture...

In this episode, I talk with Jermaine Ee, founder of Heirlight, about how to market products and services people actively avoid, using will creation and estate planning as the clearest example.  We dig into trust, storytelling, and small first steps that help customers move from “I’ll do it later” to real action. We also cover: problem aware versus solution aware buyers and why education alone fai...

Pricing can feel like the simplest lever in a small business, but it’s also the one that messes with your head the fastest. When a prospect disappears after you send a proposal, it’s easy to assume the number is the problem and start discounting, adding payment plans, or stuffing your offer with bonuses. I take a different angle here: I’ve become convinced that pricing often wears a mask, and unti...

What happens when AI starts deciding who gets seen, trusted, and recommended? Whether we like it or not, tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are already shaping how people discover businesses. The question is this: when AI goes looking for information about you, what story is it finding? In this episode, I sit down with PR strategist Cindy Woolley, founder of C2 Communic...

What if a big slice of your ad budget never reaches a real human?  If you've ever stared at your digital ads dashboard thinking “the clicks are there, so why is nobody buying?” you’re not alone and you’re not crazy. You might think there's a problem with your content or creative. But sometimes the problem isn’t your offer or your copy. Sometimes it’s ad fraud, click fraud, and invalid tr...

In this episode, we unpack why standard marketing advice fails when you’re starting a consulting or service business with a short runway and deep experience. I share three practical moves that help you get traction faster by leaning on relationships, focusing your effort, and pricing like the expert you already are. It includes: why most marketing advice assumes infinite time and why that doesn&ap...

Trust becomes the real sales gate in a world full of AI content, fake reviews, and copycat marketing. We break down how to build a resilient brand by tightening what happens inside the business before we try to persuade anyone outside it.  <br>• losing control of the narrative as AI and social platforms reshape reputation  <br>• differentiation as a trust strategy, not a slogan  <br...

Ever “fixed” your marketing by blowing it up and starting over… then felt worse?  If you’ve ever felt the urge to start fresh with a new website, a new lead magnet, a new niche, or a totally new strategy, this is your reminder that the problem is often not that you need something new. The problem is "scattered marketing" and the quiet habit of reinventing before anything has time to be t...

Your dream client is on the couch, ready to hire, and instead of Googling, she asks ChatGPT for “the best” person to solve her problem. If your name never appears, it may have nothing to do with your skill and everything to do with visibility in AI search. We break down what it takes to get recommended in a world where Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and other answer engines are shaping buying dec...

If you’ve ever watched someone speak and thought, “Why is their message so magnetic?”, the answer usually isn’t louder marketing or a prettier color palette. It’s clarity.  Janice sits down with Kelly Schoenick to unpack what personal branding actually means and why it’s one of the fastest ways to build trust, stand out in a crowded market, and make your marketing feel less like a grind. We talk a...