Joel Kelly

What does “strategy” even mean? What’s your definition? Do you see it as just a “synonym for expensive,” as one economist called it?

“Because George believed he was supposed to find a solution, he did.” Whether we believe it or not, our beliefs affect our actions and our abilities.

The hardest part about creating a marketing position that’s right for your ideal customers is that it’s necessarily wrong for your non-ideal customers.

At the age of 49, only a few years before being elevated to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln considered himself a flat failure. And on that evening in 1858, after watching the election results come in at the telegraph office, he walked home defeated.

There’s a tendency for consultants, especially new ones, to take themselves pretty seriously. I certainly did. Knowing, as Benjamin Franklin once said, that “grave men are taken ... as wise men,” I fell into the trap of trying to be overly serious in my conversations, marketing, and day-to-day work.

It’s hard to see our own business objectively. It’s hard because we’re so close to it. We can’t see much of ourselves without a mirror, and we can’t always see our own business from the inside, either.