Until putting this newsletter together, I had never heard of Nipsey Hussle (aka Ermias Joseph Asghedom). Shame on me. I found that Nipsey wasn’t just an amazing rapper, but a strategic entrepreneur. Among other things, he opened one of his “Marathon Clothing” stores in the Crenshaw commercial district because he ...

In the early 2000s I worked at a business media company called Penton Media in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. For about a two-year stint, I reported to Mr. Bill Donohue. Bill was both a salesperson and entrepreneur. He snagged a nice exit when his magazines were purchased by Penton. Once acquired, ...

In an interview last week, there was a question about consistency. For years, I’ve talked about consistency in frequency as being the most important thing to building a content-first business. For example, this enewsletter goes out every other Thursday and has for almost two years now. But in actuality, there ...

I began my publishing career in 2000, reporting to a 30+ year publishing wizard named Jim McDermott. Jim taught me an incredible amount, both about publishing and about navigating internal politics. A few years later Jim was promoted to a new position. Before he left, he gave me an assignment. ...

It’s easy to be negative about things. Since March, our world has been turned upside down (to say the least). Let’s change it up a bit. I present to you, the 100% positive issue of The Random Newsletter. I’ve been in the marketing/publishing world for over 20 years now. Over ...

When Content Marketing Institute (CMI), the company my wife and I started in 2007, began to take off in 2011, we received a lot of credit for its originality. Except, that the entire concept wasn’t even close to being original. I’ll come back to this example in a second. But, ...