The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE!

Businesses, especially ones that have well-established systems and methodologies, tend to ebb and flow. It’s pretty common for a business to slow in the dog days of summer and pick up in the fall, but I hear frustrations from some and jubilation from others. I was conversing with a client about how business has changed since COVID-19 (2021-2022). Before that time, you could meet people in pe...

I had the opportunity to travel to the South Carolina Coast for my son’s wedding. However, I dreaded the idea that renting a house or condo was the only way to stay on Edisto Island. I had visions of Florida or Myrtle Beach, where the coast has huge hotels and condos. When it comes to marketing a B2b business online, it’s more like Edisto than Myrtle Beach. Edisto is trying to reach a...

When I was a kid, I did not have to walk to school uphill, both ways, in the snow! But it was before you could buy calculators and computers in the dollar store. I am trying to remember any algebra, trig, or calculus that I actually use today. Much of it was based on formulas and principles. I know it’s used in science and computing, but I’m in sales, marketing, and advertising. Most o...

Growing old means having another day to learn, live, love, and grow. If you choose to continue to learn every day, you acquire wisdom. That wisdom may or may not help you become more successful, but I find that to stay relevant in business, you have to continue to follow trends and learn from experts who may be both younger and older than you! When it comes to marketing, I think we need a team of...

One big difference between Chicago and Raleigh is traffic. Chicago has basic north-south east-west routes and a lake that stops you from going east at one point. Raleigh has roads that can go east-west-north-south within a few miles, and you cannot live without a GPS. Also, Chicago has many 8-12 lane roads while Raleigh has 2-6 at most points. Yet, it takes almost twice the time to go the same dis...

Back in 1997, Deep Blue (an IBM computer) defeated Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion at the time, in a six-game match with a final score of 3.5-2.5 in favor of Deep Blue. Almost 20 years later, in 2016, Google’s AlphaGo program achieved a similar victory by defeating Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top professional Go players, in a five-game match with a final score of 4-1. Artifi...

I have always been entertained and enamored by magic tricks. When people see one performed, they usually have one of two reactions: amazement or curiosity. The amazement is, “How did they do that?” and the curiosity is, “ How did they do that?” Some people will look forward to the next one, while others are distracted by trying to figure out the sleight of hand. At every turn, your data is being c...

Do you remember life before Beepers, CB Radios, and Fax Machines? All three gained momentum and popularity in the ’70s and ’80s and peaked in the ’90s. However, all three fell victim to mobile phones. Beepers became text messaging, faxes became email, and CB radios became Nextel phones and then standard mobile phones. Artificial Intelligence is about to completely disrupt how you...

As Artificial Intelligence begins to overtake the marketing world, I think it’s a good idea to get nostalgic about marketing and see how we can infuse it with a modern-day perspective. When you get down to the core of marketing, it’s about people. Marketing is creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society. At...

In sports (and in business), two factors affect success. The physical and the mental are two parts of the whole, yet one is easier to evaluate to predict success… especially in football. In business, we tend to focus more on the mental than the physical of the people we work with. This is why artificial intelligence is both an opportunity and a detriment. AI has the benefit of agility and speed wi...

I was just in Chicago at the American Marketing Association’s Leadership Conference, where 400 people from around North America, representing 50+ chapters, came to learn and grow with and from each other. Conferences are great for networking, learning, and getting out of the routine work rut, but they are also very peoply. Sometimes, too peoply. Like social media and audio amplifiers, my bra...

Growing up in New York, Yogi Bera was one of my favorite characters. He was a good player but even more of a philosopher (well, sort of). Some of his most famous “Deep Yogi Thoughts” include: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” “You can obser...

When you think of unicorns, I am sure the first thing that comes to mind is a mythical and colorful horse with a single horn. Although there are no living, breathing unicorns that I have ever seen, I know unicorns are REAL! Real unicorns in business refer to an elite privately funded startup that has crossed the $1 billion valuation mark, usually in the technology field. When you think of business...

One of the most recognized sounds computer lovers remember is the dial-up connection and AOL’s announcement that says, “You’ve Got Mail!” It was like a sugar high whenever you heard that sound. Nowadays, most of us feel like we have the stabbing pain of a cavity when we hear our Outlook or Gmail inbox notification saying, “You’ve Got Mail!” What changed? The biggest difference is...

Let’s face it. We are living in a world that is overwhelmed with information. 380 new websites are created every minute, and over 500,000 new websites are added every day 7 million blog posts are published across the internet daily 300 BILLION emails are sent per day (85% spam) 720,000 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube (30,000 days’ worth of video content) per day AI-generated cont...

Mulch is made by shredding trees. Finer shredding improves the soil over time. As organic mulches decompose, they can add nutrients and organic matter to the soil, enhancing its quality. Mulch is not only decorative but also functional. It helps plants by regulating soil temperature, retaining water, and preventing weeds and erosion—all from recycled trees. I think of creating content as an ecosys...

You may not think about it, but we are surrounded by messages and ads all day long. In today’s digital age, the average person encounters between 6,000 and 10,000 ads daily. We are bombarded with billboards, snail mail, radio, and TV, not to mention all the social media content, spam emails, and robocalls. All of that noise has one goal: to get you to spend or give your money to them. The ne...

If you have been involved in online marketing in any way over the last 10+ years, you have been fed a steady diet of more . More followers equals more sales. More hits to your website equals more sales. More social media engagement leads to more sales. Almost nobody would argue that more sales are bad, but people have conflated more with better. I am here to say that better is worth more. In the w...

Trust has to be planted and grown. It is a seed planted through a personal relationship. It needs to grow roots and be nurtured through light and water to produce fruit. Trust must be watered by honesty, warmed and fed through the light of integrity, and rooted in consistency. Strong roots and branches provide shade and shelter in the stormy weather of doubt. It would be great if there were a way...

Going from Know to Trust requires a stepping stone, and that’s called a Like . You can try to jump over that stone, but it leads to a transactional two-step. You may make a sale, but it will not build a relationship. Relationships are key in the B2b world because businesses need to be reminded that you are there to serve them when needed and that they can continue to trust you. Like is a connectio...

Know is a beautiful word. People ask, “You know what?” They text IYKYK (meaning if you know, you know ). Know can also be a derivative of knowledge. Know is a two-way street when it comes to marketing. You want people to know about you and your business. You may also want to know who knows about you and your business. Knowing who knows what is almost like the old Abbott and Costello bit, “Who’s on...

The concept of “Know – Like – Trust” has been around for a while. It is commonly attributed to author Bob Burg (Endless Referrals and The Go-Giver). Another person attributed to the concept is sales trainer Michael Goldstein, who talked about buyers needing to experience “confidence, affinity, and empathy” before making purchases. No matter who originated it or how you phrase it, it’s undoubtedly...

Networking has been around for a long time in business. Some of the names you may recognize (Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller) were prolific advocates of networking. As we know it today, networking started taking hold in the 1970s. More formal groups like BNI (Business Networking International) started in 1984. Tradeshows, associations, and even chambers of c...

One of the foundations that’s stuck with me through the years is, “Businesses do not do business with other businesses. People do business with people.” There has never been a corporation that has ever paid cash or written a check. People do that. Yes, companies try to put you on autopilot by making you subscribe to things, but it still takes a human to enter the data and make the initial pu...

What’s your image? Top view on pan with fried egg with bacon Babies are cute, puppies are cute, and bacon is not cute, but I bet your mouth watered a little bit. What if someone recently lost a baby? Maybe they are a cat person? What if they are an animal rights activist or vegan? Then, those first statements could not be any farther from the response you had hoped for. Brands, like cute, are in t...