When the Road Stops: What Primm’s Casino Closures Teach Marketers About Fragile Advantage
Primm’s casino closures are more than a regional business story. They show what happens when a once-powerful convenience advantage erodes, customer behavior changes, and operators fail to rebuild the broader ecosystem that made the destination valuable in the first place. A border-town business model runs out of road For years, Primm worked because it occupied […]
Your Next Customer Might Not be Human, it Might be an Algorithm
The most important shift in commerce right now is not happening on a website or inside an ad account. It is happening in the layer between the buyer and the brand. With the rollout of systems like Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol and the expansion of agent-driven purchasing inside tools like ChatGPT, a new kind of […]
WATCH: What New Marketers Learn Too Late
Most people entering marketing think the industry is about creativity, trends, or going viral. It’s not. It’s about attention, persuasion, incentives, and understanding how people actually make decisions. In this episode, I break down the five lessons I wish someone had explained to me when I first entered the marketing world—from working in media and […]
Why Customers Trust Influencer Marketing More Than Big Brands
People are choosing products in new ways. In the past, just explaining what a business does and what makes it different was enough. Today, people notice businesses that feel familiar first, and that sense of recognition often gives them a big advantage over those that only talk about their benefits. You can see this change […]
WATCH: What I Learned Owning a Brewery
It sounds like an episode of “The Simpsons” but believe it or not, before moving to Nevada, I was a co-owner of a Milwaukee-based Brewery called MobCraft Beer, and let me tell you, I LOVED every minute of it for the 2 years I was involved before we sadly had to close our doors in […]
WATCH: Why ChatGPT is Making People Hate Themselves
ChatGPT will make you hate yourself. Hear me out. We need to sit down and have a conversation about something far too many people don’t want to talk about in our workplaces and in our personal lives. Does AI and all these tools like ChatGPT just make you feel dull? If the answer is “yes”, […]
The Pinball Lounge Rewriting What Boulder City Entertainment Looks Like
Most businesses try to manufacture “experience” after the fact. LED lights, a playlist, maybe a themed drink menu—and hope it feels authentic. Utopia Pinball Lounge didn’t start that way. It wasn’t built to chase a trend or retrofit nostalgia into a business model. It started as a refusal. When Bari Jo Berman stepped away from […]
WATCH: The Truth About AI in Marketing
AI is everywhere — but most businesses are using it completely wrong. In this video, I break down how to actually use AI in your marketing without losing the one thing that makes your brand worth paying attention to: authenticity. Here’s what we cover: -Why ignoring AI will put you behind your competitors -The biggest […]
Beyond the Logo: The 2026 World Cup and the Rise of “Ambush Authenticity”
In the summer of 2026, the FIFA World Cup will sprawl across North America, turning three countries into a single, borderless marketing arena. For the Big Six official sponsors, the bill for this privilege is north of $100 million. They are paying for the right to use the trophy in their ads and put their […]
WATCH: The Biggest Marketing Sin Small Business Owners Can Commit
They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink… Well, that’s as true with horses as it is with people. Last night Jules and I were going to grab a late Sunday night indulgence (Cinnaholics which just opened up if you must know) and we ended up talking about […]