Sales and marketing are not just a tax you pay for not having a great product or great service. Great companies do sales and marketing. Sales and marketing are not evil. It’s just a tool, and you can do it well or you can do it icky. 

They’re amplifiers.

On building a brand with personality:

A lot of business is boring. A lot of life can be really boring—especially adulting. Things can get really dull. 

Having a little bit of fun is helpful for everyone. 

Every interaction with a customer is an exchange of trust.

You’re either banking trust or withdrawing from your accrued balance.

“The time has come for policy to adjust,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said Friday, in his most anticipated speech of the year. “The direction of travel is clear.”

Powell did not specify a timeline or forecast how much Fed leaders were preparing to lower rates. But his remarks came as close as possible to teeing up a cut at the Fed’s next policy meeting in mid-September.

So this, then Halloween, then election, then Black Friday.

Could be a wild Q4.

Chick-Fil-A is reportedly cooking up a family-friendly streaming service

I don’t understand this play. Trying to recreate the Disney content-experience flywheel? Long game for an ad network? And why not start with a podcast or a YouTube show? And if you have, is your awareness of a streaming service going to be intrinsically better?

Chick-Fil-A is reportedly shelling out about $400,000 per half-hour of unscripted content; the company is also eyeing scripted and animated projects. 

That’s a lot of chicken.

Apple Podcasts can now be streamed from the web. Apple announced on Monday that its Apple Podcasts app is now available on all major web browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari) in over 170 countries.  

The new dedicated web experience aims to make it easier for anyone with a web browser on any device to access podcasts.

This is the second app​ Apple has ​announced a web version for in the last month.​

Feels like someone found a (really) old to-do list and decided to knock it out.

Or, a play to appear more open for regulators (look ma, no proprietary hardware required!).

Or, Apple just finally decided to take advantage of the massive lead it had in podcasts (better late than never?).​

Or, more access points means more users means more ad dollar potential.

Or, all of the above.​

The best way to provide value to your stakeholders is to provide value to your customers.

Notice that the wording of this does not confuse those two groups as the same.