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Thomas Edison Salt

By Tom Ruwitch

Do you sprinkle salt on your food before tasting it? If so, Thomas Edison would not have hired you… …and your marketing might suck. When interviewing job candidates, Edison would offer them a bowl of soup. If they salted the soup without first tasting it, Edison would disqualify the candidate. Edison didn’t want assistants who assumed the…

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Tim Dean Life Coach

By Tom Ruwitch

When I asked Tim Dean to describe his ideal client for me, his answer blew me away. Tim is a life coach whom I ran into at a networking event. His ideal client: “Parents of a millenial son or daughter who is living at home.” We’ve all heard the old adage about finding a niche…

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The #1 Reason Albert Pujols and Your Customers Break Up With You

By Tom Ruwitch

Baseball great Albert Pujols got his 3,000th hit earlier this month.  I’ve rooted all my life for the St. Louis Cardinals. So it broke my heart when Pujols broke up with the Cardinals in 2012 to join the Anaheim Angels. The heartache reminded me of my ninth-grade girlfriend, Susie Wallace. Susie and I had just…

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Toilet Instructions

By Tom Ruwitch

I recently spent a couple of weeks in New Zealand. Beautiful country. One of the most memorable things I saw there: Signs illustrating the right way to pooh. This is not B.S. These signs were as common as fart jokes in a boys locker room. On the right… a drawing of a person sitting on…

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Groundhog Day

By Tom Ruwitch

I hope you had a joyous Groundhog Day! (It was last Tuesday, in case you missed it). Truth be told, I can live without the holiday. But I love the movie. Weatherman Phil Connor (Bill Murray) wakes each morning in Punxsutawney, PA for a Groundhog Day do-over.  On each of these days, Phil runs into an…

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Bubblegum Broccoli

By Tom Ruwitch

Here’s what McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson said when describing bubblegum-flavored broccoli that the company developed a few years ago: “It wasn’t all that.” Huh!? Put yourself in the shoes of those poor kids who tasted this Frankenstein “food.” Imagine what you might have said if you sampled the stuff.  It’s gotta be more (lots more) than, “It wasn’t…

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