This post is based on excerpts from my book, Teenage Wastebrand: How Your Brand Can Stop Struggling and Start Scaling. Several of my teenage memories recall disagreements and negotiations with my parents over my curfew. Until the middle of my senior year in high school my parents insisted I be…

Last November 2 nd, a thick white envelope from Ocean Conservatory arrived in the mail. I’d never heard of the organization. As a family we had donated to a similar organization in the past. I assumed Ocean Conservatory had gotten my name from a shared list. I smiled to myself…

I named my brand in a hurry. That was not my plan. I started my company in November 1999, while two months pregnant with my daughter. My plan involved networking for the remaining seven months of pregnancy, taking a real maternity leave (not the corporate 10 weeks), and turning the…

Ten years ago, I pressed send on my first Varsity Marketing Newsletter. Unbeknownst to you, my wonderful readers, the launch was over a year in the making. Starting a newsletter was part of my marketing plan in 2010, but by September I still hadn’t begun. That changed when I hired…

On a bright mid-October Monday, my friend Liz and I had a strange experience when we had lunch outside at a restaurant. Sunlight warmed the patio where two parallel rows of tables were spaced about 15 feet apart. …

Have you heard a December holiday song yet? It always amazes me how early the holiday music starts. I am among the 81 percent of Americans who don’t want to hear it in stores before Thanksgiving. But while I am not ready to endure endless loops of “Grandma Got Run…

My internet browsers open to the front page of The New York Times. For years, the first thing I would see when I went online looked like this:

Every summer I go berry picking at least once. This year my husband and I picked blueberries on an August Saturday at Tougas Farm in Northborough, Massachusetts. During the two hours we were in the field, I reveled in the berry-picking crowd. Entire families picked berries together. Parents with toddlers…

For 21 years I’ve been marketing my services. My book pushed me into the realm of product marketing. By self-publishing my book Teenage Wastebrand: How Your Brand Can Stop Struggling and Start Scaling, I got to create, produce, and market a product. People ask me how long it took to…