Insights From the Trenches

Innovative yet practical tools, tips and resources derived from a voracious love of learning and over 20 years of working with clients around the world.

Interview Me

Blog

Email Segmentation: Wins for Little Effort
A client messaged me the other day and asked if I could join a meeting they were having with their marketing contractor — sales for their upcoming virtual event weren’t... Read More
Customer Retention 101: 4 Ways to Keep Clients Coming Back for More
We’re celebrating our 20th year in business in 2024 and am thrilled to say that each of those years has been profitable.  In doing a recent client review, we took... Read More
How to make the best decisions: A counterintuitive approach
A client texted this morning and asked if we could have a quick call…  They have an opportunity to purchase a piece of equipment for their business and wanted my... Read More
Google’s New Email Deliverability Rules Summarized
Take a deep breath and let’s dive in: First… Google’s changes affect sending email to contacts whose email addresses end in @gmail.com or @googlemail.com. After a review of our clients’... Read More
FinCEN: Corporate Transparency Act
Have you heard of the Corporate Transparency Act, or CTA? Highlights… The regulation by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requires entities created or registered by state... Read More
Goal Setting: An Alternative Concept
One of my annual rituals, like many people’s, is to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s goal setting and planning for the upcoming year.  Except this year.  I’ve... Read More
Business Time Defined
We’ve all heard the saying that “work expands to fill the time allotted”. As a business owner, there are different types of time: Work you’re paid for on an hourly... Read More
Is your business scalable?
As you know, there are several types of work: Work you’re paid for on an hourly basis Work you’re paid for on a value basis (totally subjective and a matter... Read More
Choosing a CRM? 12 things to know first
Are you happy with your customer relationship management (CRM)  or email marketing system? One of the things we do is support clients with their CRMs and have become experts in... Read More
Success as a Solopreneur
A neighbor recently learned that I bought a piece of property and am having a house built. She asked “Don’t you work for yourself?” Technically I work for The Martini... Read More
The Power of Referrals
If your clients or customers perceive that you do a great job for/with them, the easiest marketing strategy is one of referrals… …providing either you ask for them or you’re... Read More
How not having an FAQ could cost your business
If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you likely know that I’m an avid gardener and fan of growing as much of my own food as possible.So late last... Read More
One Strategy for Creating a Winning Proposal
Imagine… you’ve been promoting a live event for months, it’s easily got the potential to be a 7-figure few days and on the first morning people show up that you... Read More
The impact of a toxic client
As summer approaches and many people take vacations or otherwise slow down a bit, it’s a great time to review your current clients. We’ve covered how to do a client... Read More
The #1 reason optimization fails
Everywhere we turn these days, we hear more and more about optimizing — our business, our health, our relationships, our tech, etc. I’m a huge fan of optimization and would... Read More
Learn from these 3 epic customer experience fails
I’ve been in research mode… signing up for different membership, subscription and one-off courses to gather data for my upcoming book. Here’s what I’ve experienced from the last three: It... Read More
Overcome Overwhelm: 3 Stages of Business
In our 3 Causes of Overwhelm post recently, we shared that the primary cause of overwhelm is trying to do all things equally and simultaneously while constantly being seduced by... Read More
3 Causes of Overwhelm
Do you find yourself working more than you should for a fraction of the results you’re anticipating?  Running here and there thinking the next webinar, program, self-study course or event... Read More