Jason Black

Moving Your Feet with the Lumineers

On Sundays, many people feel a sense of revival or inspiration for life’s bigger purpose – the classic “Church High.” In Austin this past weekend, I spent 3 days being inspired by the great musical talents that converged in Austin for ACL Fest (Austin City Limits). I found myself having a similar high but around [...]

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Capitalizing on a Double Dip Recession

It was October 2008… the “other shoe” had fallen and the great US economy was officially in a recession. During these days it seemed like the market was losing 700 points a week and the national news was polluted with the economists, trading blows on how to fix the looming dip. Fast forward 4 years [...]

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The Story of the Hammer and the Wedge

As a professional in the promotional products industry, your two greatest assets are your time and customer relationships. You make money from your customer relationships and your ability to effectively leverage your time determines the amount of money that you will make. The Big Challenge: The vast majority of all sales professionals eventually hit the [...]

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Wal-Mart Prices with Nordstrom’s Service

Nothing materially new has changed… other than the velocity of change. This time the majority of change is from the buyer’s side of the supply-chain, your end customers. Today’s buyers enjoy their flexibility and access to information. In the old days, if they wanted some pens, they would call their promotional guy “Bob”. Bob would [...]

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The Four Phases Of A Distributorship

Starting a promotional products distributorship is a huge rush—the creative products, the endless number of customer opportunities, the substantial earnings opportunity and the fun of building a rewarding business. In my more than 10 years as an entrepreneur, I’ve had my share of ups and downs. Some of what I’ve learned I share here to [...]

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3 Tips to Grow by 300% in 24 Months

In life and in business there are several factors that separate those that win vs. “get by” vs. lose. In the promotional products industry, you can boil the list of reasons into a single word with three different scenarios. The vast majority of people selling in the promotional products industry are not selling to their [...]

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How will you communicate in 2014?

Someone in our management meeting last week said that “email is for old folks.” We all laughed, but then I realized the comment rang true on some level. Out of curiosity, I looked into my own communication habits, and I discovered that about 30% of my direct messages come from LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. No [...]

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Exponential times

I ran across this video a while back, and I recently came back to it and was amazed by its message all over again. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend checking it out. The video highlights some astounding statistics about the “exponential times” we live in, and I feel like this information is [...]

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Change your bait

In Texas we have a saying that goes, “if you’re not catching fish, you need to change your bait.” Now more than ever, this statement can be applied to the promotional products industry. In the spirit of fishing and bait, I wanted to share with you a “big fish story” about how one industry professional [...]

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The next generation

Throughout history, there have been only a few times when entire generations follow a different path than their predecessors in business.  In most cases the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree–many approaches to business and sales strategies remained consistent over long periods of time. Right now is one of those rare moments. The [...]

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