I have been getting slack from people over at Instagram for posting about being Jewish (I was born like this, get over it), so here I will share the other side of me... creativity. If you know me, you know I don’t shy away from speaking my mind. So fine, let’s pivot from cultural commentary to something a bit less controversial but just as personal: my love-hate relationship with constraints in creative work. Yeah, you heard that right. Today I’m going to drop some truth bombs about how having less, smaller budgets, tighter deadlines, fewer resources, you name it, can actually make you more creative...and yes this is a theme in my book, so please, go buy it!

You can have the fanciest CRM, the prettiest dashboards, and a 52-step drip sequence, but if you don’t understand how to actually get someone to stop scrolling, lean in, and care? You’re not doing marketing. You’re doing admin.

Let’s get back to basics, the human brain.

Marketing is about understanding how attention works. And more importantly, how desire is manufactured.

Let’s talk about a trend that’s managed to be both hilarious and deeply revealing at the same time: the ChatGPT action figure.

At first, it was clever. An unexpected and playful way to anthropomorphize AI, something that lives entirely in the ether, by giving it a tangible, toy-like form. It was commentary. It was pop art. It was a joke that worked on multiple levels.

Bringing in a consultant or agency is a big decision. I get it, it’s a serious investment. It’s not just the money, which can easily creep into six figures, but the time and energy spent getting someone up to speed on your business. Typically, it takes weeks (or months) before they’re even ready to deliver something meaningful. And honestly, who has that kind of time?

I recently finished reading Peter Levitan's new book "How To Build A Kick-Ass Advertising Agency". I enjoyed the book, and highly recommend it; only a little of it was new to me because I have seen or heard most things in the almost 15 years I have been running my agency, but one thing I did take to heart was his chapter on having a one-page business plan.

I get asked all the time if I have kids, and I always answer the same way. "I have been traveling 100 thousand miles a year for work for a decade and often relied on the kindness of strangers to save me from boredom, so I am sure I have at least a few" (if you are an HR professional, please note that this is just a joke) but the truth is I do have babies all over North America and even a few in scattered around the UK, Brazil, and Australia.

The babies I am talking about are my ideas and my work.

I was recently interviewed by the nice people at Startwell, and we talked about “the brands that stand out from the pack usually win.” I believe this, preach this and live this. You will see this in my talks, in my work, and, more than anywhere else, in my pitches.