A newsletter about marketing, leading teams, and frameworks that help you do your best work

Latest

Jul
24
Grading Your Marketing Team out of 10

Grading Your Marketing Team out of 10

As a marketing leader, a perennially useful exercise is to get your team to grade the marketing function out of
2 min read
Jul
17
Putting Lipstick on a Pig Actually Works Sometimes

Putting Lipstick on a Pig Actually Works Sometimes

Marketers and advertisers are sometimes accused of "polishing a turd" or "putting lipstick on a pig." The sentiment being that
1 min read
Jul
10
How Do You Write a Memo?

How Do You Write a Memo?

You're probably aware of Amazon's memo culture, which is fetishized in the tech world as yet another example of Bezosian
2 min read
Jun
26
Learn To Be a Micromanager

Learn To Be a Micromanager

“Micromanaging” is not the dirty word you think it is. A whole generation of workers has been brainwashed to think
2 min read
Jun
19
What Does Good Look Like?

What Does Good Look Like?

During my time at HubSpot, I worked closely with one of those leaders that instilled a productive kind of fear
1 min read
Jun
12
Pick The Place With The Smartest People

Pick The Place With The Smartest People

I'm writing this in summer of 2022, where the job market (especially in tech) is volatile. On one hand, weekly
2 min read
Jun
05
One Star vs Five Star Managers

One Star vs Five Star Managers

One of the things that Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, attributes to his company's success is that he imagines what
2 min read
May
29
Levels of Impact

Levels of Impact

If you're a mid to senior marketer, here's a useful exercise that acts as as a sanity check to make
3 min read
May
22
Time, Targeting, Trackability: A Short Guide For Picking Channels

Time, Targeting, Trackability: A Short Guide For Picking Channels

From around 2008 to about 2016, marketers were obsessed with content marketing. With good reason. Content marketing built major companies
3 min read
May
15
Perfect Marketing Can Still Fail

Perfect Marketing Can Still Fail

I feel a little bad for the marketing team behind the Game of Thrones prequel. At time of writing, it's
3 min read