I have always been driven by three principles in life and business. Although I have not always been 100% successful in adhering to them, I have noticed that I am 1000 times happier and more successful when I do.

 

• First, life is about motion, emotion, promotion, commotion, and finally, ethical motivation! “When you stop learning, you stop earning.” I have loved learning from others, and I believe that when you teach others, you learn twice as much, twice as fast!
• Second, it's advice from Kenny Rogers. “You've got to know when to hold 'em,  Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, And know when to run.”
  All that motion, emotion, promotion, commotion, and ethical motivation will never change the cards you are dealt.
• Third, it's part biblical and for the Byrds: “To everything (turn, turn, turn) / There is a season (turn, turn, turn) / And a time for every purpose under heaven.”

2014 was my turn to start a podcast, and 2024 (now 2025) is my turn to explore better ways to serve you… my people, fans, and audience!

This time of year, the two weeks around Christmas and New Year's, always seem like a blur. It's hard to remember what day today is, especially when both holidays fall in the middle of a week. Business generally grinds to a halt with people and companies taking vacations.

TV is filled with retrospectives of the past year. It's mind-blowing when you realize all of the events that have happened in the last 365 days.

It's also a time to look forward and try to plan how you would like your next year to play out. In this new technologically charged business environment, it's almost impossible to predict. Larger companies with more people and resources are more capable of directing their futures than small companies, but none of us have crystal balls. All we can do is try to adapt to what's next.

In this podcast, I would like to give you some insights into what I see coming for business and technology in the coming year.

One of the world's great mysteries is the Bermuda Triangle. When it comes to any social media platform, people, features, and more are like the Bermuda Triangle. One second, they are there, and the next, they are gone.

If you feel like your content is being swallowed up by LinkedIn's Bermuda Triangle (algorithms), I am here to offer you hope. The two things I have mentioned are to connect with as many relational contacts, and initiate engagement with them as much as possible.

As I have said in past posts, email is the only tool you can use to control who sees your content. In reality, spam blockers and bad data can hinder that, but the message gets delivered. As a basic free system, social media is controlled by AI to determine who sees your content and when they see it, making it seem and feel like it just swallows it up.

We have officially transitioned from the information economy to the attention economy.

The Information Economy has significantly transformed B2B business, driving a shift towards data-driven decision-making and digital transactions. In this paradigm, companies leverage information and communication technologies (ICT) to streamline business.

The Attention Economy has profoundly impacted B2B business, transforming companies' engagement with clients and prospects. In this new paradigm, marketers face the challenge of capturing and retaining the scarce attention of decision-makers amidst an overwhelming flood of information.

The main difference between the email inbox and the postal inbox is often looked at as cost. It can cost pennies to send to either. Email costs a fraction of a cent to send, while it costs 50¢ to 70¢ to send a postcard. Email tends to have a 20-40% deliverability. But, if you have the correct mailing address for somebody's postal box, you have a 90% or greater deliverability, which is 2-4 times more successful than email.

We are seeing an increase in companies scrubbing their client data. What I mean is that they are looking at their CRM or accounting data and copying and filtering in spreadsheets (by the way, my company does that for them).

The art of getting personal is going to become more of a norm than being part of the “AI Machine.” Automation is great at some things but not at developing relationships.

 

In 1979, AT&T employed a marketing campaign aimed to soften AT&T’s image and promote long-distance calling as an essential part of everyday American life. It focused on “selling emotion” by emphasizing the human desire to connect with others. Phone numbers were designated to a person, an address, and even a desk when PBX systems were implemented at companies.

With the advent of computers and now AI, talking to a human is damn near impossible, especially if they don't have your number in their contact system in their phone or VOIP system.

What has been lost in all of this transition to technology is the “Art of the Phone Call.”

That makes every connection on social media and every conversation a valuable asset in your business arsenal. As I said before, it costs more to have human-to-human contact, but that is something that no internet form, chatbot, or automated voice tree hell will ever give you.

The main thing is to find a way to get people to share information. Reaching out and touching someone digitally has become more complicated and time-consuming than it has been in the past. This is why the 10-10-10 method is so effective.