Measuring Marketing ROI for Small Business A dog groomer I know spent two years running Facebook ads because “that’s what you’re supposed to do.” She never checked whether those ads were bringing in clients or whether her regulars were coming…
Human + AI Content Workflow A letterpress print shop owner I know she told me about a year she spent following the workflow everyone recommends: type in a topic, get a full draft back, clean up the sentences, and publish.…
ai Customer-Review Analysis The scenario: An online outdoor-gear shop has more than 2,000 customer reviews spread across its store platform, Google, and two marketplace listings. The owner has read plenty of individual reviews, but never had the time to examine the…
How to Test a Marketing Channel With $100 A few months ago, a friend of mine who runs a small candle-making business out of her garage asked me a question I couldn’t answer with confidence: “Which marketing channel should I…
Traffic But No Customers Elena runs a small, mostly self-taught skincare line called Birchmark, sold entirely through her own website out of a rented studio space above a laundromat. About a year ago, she reached out to me in what…
Marketing Experiments With Almost No Budget Priya bought her taco truck, a rusted-around-the-edges 1998 step van she renamed Salt & Lime, with almost every dollar she had. She told me this sitting on the truck’s back step during a dead…
Customer Questions Ravi runs a small bicycle repair shop wedged between a laundromat and a taqueria, the kind of place with one glass door that sticks in humid weather and a bell that hasn’t worked since before he took over…
AI Without Robotic Marketing Last spring, a client of mine — a small independent bakery called Miller’s, run by a woman named Dana who took over the shop from her father — sent me a screenshot that stuck with me…
One-Person Marketing System With AI Eight months ago, I almost shut down my marketing consultancy — not because I lost clients, but because I couldn’t physically keep up with the ones I had. I was running marketing single-handedly for four…
AI Marketing vs Human Marketing In March 2025, a client of mine — a small home fragrance brand selling scented candles and reed diffusers — launched a new “Autumn Harvest” collection. They’d used an AI copywriting tool to generate all…