Every time one of the dinosaurs of retail reports some bad news every news outlet runs to say retail is dead. And someone forgot to send that news over to Zara. I want to say I read on their website that they are opening a store a week somewhere. Every week! Maybe the day of the department store is dead, but overall retail seems to be thriving (at least where I have been recently.) It may be part of an economic indicator but Somerset Mall in Troy, Michigan was packedSEE DETAILS

One quick lesson I learned while working a second job as a stock boy at a party store is that people love their glass bottle coke. I was working at a store right around the time that plastic bottles started hitting the market and people were not happy. Now the plastic bottles with a lid did come in handy and allowed you to keep the beverage fresher, longer and also kept you from spilling it. But many will say it just doesn’t taste the same as a glass bottle coke.SEE DETAILS

Seems like every business owner, entrepreneur, manager and executive is reading or has read this book we have been utilizing as a leadership training book so I decided to give it a read this Saturday evening. If you have kept up on all the bestselling business books over the last 10–15 years, then you already read this book. Traction really is a culmination of the best points and thoughts of the great business books over the last decade or so. Throw in a Franklin Covey like planner for entrepreneurs (EOS)SEE DETAILS

When talking about competitive and saturated markets, I am known to say “Papa John wasn’t listening when everyone said the pizza market is flooded.” And today, Papa John’s Pizza is a $1.5B company. Even in 2017, I still see so much opportunity to build a better mouse trap. You may not even need a better mouse trap. In fact, you can even make an inferior mouse trap as long as you understand modern day branding and marketing. I have stomped on many competitors in the B2B and B2C spaces justSEE DETAILS

This video is about a decade old but if you haven’t watched it, you need to. If you did and forgot about it, it is time for a refresher. Permission marketing really set off the digital marketing boom. At no other point in history did small businesses have a more equal playing field as they do now, well as equal as it can get anyway. From organic search to PPC, any company of any size can be found. Where you have trained yourself to ignore TV and Radio ads, itSEE DETAILS