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Thomas Edison’s Loss… Your Gain

By Tom Ruwitch

The first thing Thomas Edison patented was a total flop. It was an “electric vote-recorder,” designed to speed up vote-counting in legislative halls. It worked like this: Each legislator had a switch at their desk to cast a “yes” or “no” vote. The votes were transmitted to a central device that recorded results immediately and…

“A Lot of People Who Don’t Say ‘Ain’t’ Ain’t Eatin'”

By Tom Ruwitch

Last night, Melissa and I heard novelist Virginia Hume talk about her new book Liberty Island (which I highly recommend). She said something every business owner needs to hear. The novel is set in 1910 America when contractions weren’t were not common. If she wanted to be historically accurate, Virginia would have written dialog with…

Social Platforms are Cracking Down. What Now?

By Tom Ruwitch

The word on the street: LinkedIn and other social platforms are cracking down on AI-generated content. They won’t tell you when they bury your robotic junk. You may not even notice… …until you realize no one is responding to your posts, and your social media mountain-climb has done nothing to elevate your business. (Holy Sisyphus,…

Should They Sue AI For Malpractice?

By Tom Ruwitch

Here’s the story of a Swedish researcher who punked AI… Her name is Almira Osmanovic Thunström, and she invented a completely fake eye condition called “Bixonimania.” She wrote a bunch of bogus research studies and posted them online with obvious clues that screamed, “THIS IS FAKE.” Within weeks, the most popular AI tools were telling…

“The Most Important Ingredient in Selling…”

By Tom Ruwitch

My favorite sentence in The Most Powerful Sentence of All Time is the very last one: The most important ingredient in selling is not your prospect’s belief in your offer but your own.” I can’t wait to discuss that later today with the author, Neil Gordon. Today, at 2:30 p.m. ET, Neil will be our…

Farm-living Ain’t The Place for You

By Tom Ruwitch

“Ever got to the stage with marketing when you just want to quit it all and live on a farm?” So asked “Jason” on Reddit last week. And the crowd went wild. There are a lot of frustrated marketers out there, ready to trade in their laptops and online real estate for hoes and green…

Superstition Ain’t the Way to Grow a Business

By Tom Ruwitch

It’s Friday the 13th. (Uh-oh!) Are you afraid? Franklin D. Roosevelt would be. He suffered from a bad case of paraskevidekatriaphobia. That’s a big Greek word for fear (phobia) of Friday (paraskevi) the 13th (dekatre). Ol’ FDR preferred not to travel on Fridays or on the 13th. He also refused to attend a party with…

You Don’t Have to be a “Killer” to Grow Your Business

By Tom Ruwitch

A few years back, I met with a prospect about a massive project. The meeting went well. I remember thinking as the meeting moved along, “I’m CRUSHING it.” Before I left, they committed to hire me. I returned to the office, shared the news with my team, and slapped high fives all around. “Way to…

Joe Turned Trash to Treasure and Built an Empire

By Tom Ruwitch

From a seaside cafe, Miami Beach, Florida… Melissa and I had a spectacular dinner last night at Joe’s Stone Crab — a legendary restaurant in the heart of Miami’s South Beach neighborhood. Before Joe’s, stone crabs weren’t a thing. I mean they existed, scuttling along the sea floor and such. But humans didn’t want to catch, cook,…

He Paid HOW Much? For a NOTEBOOK?!?

By Tom Ruwitch

On this day in 1994, Bill Gates paid $30,800,000 for a notebook. Granted, this wasn’t just any notebook. This was Leonardo daVinci’s “Codex Leicester.” But still. $30 million!?!? Nice work if you can spend it, Mr. Gates. You had some big ideas in your day. You implemented, and you cashed in. And then you bought…