Promotional Products

The Climb to #1

In sports or business, striving to be number one is important. One of my biggest frustrations is seeing how we’ve become so soft with our children, a society where everyone is a freaking winner. Real life doesn’t work that way. Much to my wife’s dismay, if you ask my 6-year-old about second place, she will [...]

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Lessons learned in 2009

We’ve all heard it before: in 2009 the economy had a big impact on the promotional products industry. And although the industry as a whole took a hit, individual businesses experienced the recession differently. Some people sank, losing up to 50% of their business. Some treaded water, surviving but not thriving. And some people swam, [...]

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Surprise! There aren’t 48 hours in a day.

Some people just don’t seem to understand that the day is only 24 hours long. You’d think after a few years on Earth people would get used to this fact. But after working with sales professionals for the last 15 years I have developed some (hardly unique) insight: all sales professionals want to increase their [...]

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A Business Planning Experiment

A vision is a clearly-articulated, results-oriented picture of a future you intend to create.” – Jesse Stoner Zemel At Boundless, I have recently began an experiment with five of our top professionals. My objective is to design a foolproof recipe that can make any professional successful. I am modeling this plan after many of the [...]

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The Top 1% is a Mentality

I get asked all the time about how Boundless Network has been able to grow so quickly and bring on so many promotional industry leaders. I thought I’d give my blog readers a peek into how Boundless relates to the top 1% of professionals in our industry. Keep in mind that by top 1%, I [...]

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The Digital Generation

Seth Godin wrote a blog the other day called “From Sixty to Zero” that talked about how to prepare your business for hitting the brakes in tough times. He asks, “how would you manage or market differently if you knew that you had to hit the brakes, and hard?” I thought this was a great [...]

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2008 vs 2009 Budgets

One thought that has been circulating in my pea brain the past few months centers on the budget cycle of companies that typically takes place in Q4. Are you, as a promotional products professional, planning 2009 based on your clients’ 2008 budgets? This time last year (Q4 of 2007) companies broke into their respective management [...]

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The New Economy

Last week I sent an e-mail to top professionals in our industry about the looming recession and its effects on the promotional products world. I invited them to join me in a conversation about what I call the “New Economy.” Not surprisingly, the response has been overwhelming. Hundreds of folks have already signed up to [...]

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Surviving the “R” Word

I am going to write a couple of blogs on the stress that is being placed on distributors, sales professionals and end customers.I want to inject a little reality into our current situation. I truly want all folks to be successful (with or without Boundless Network). Hopefully some of the topics will create a sense [...]

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Politics and Promotional Products

I have to admit: I am enamored with this political season. I love the gamesmanship of the candidates, watching the debates and arguing (soft debating) with my friends and co-workers. Candidly, I don’t have a dog in this year’s presidential race, as it’s my personal opinion that neither of the candidates are very good and that the entire system is broken and quasi corrupt. I won’t go into more detail for now, but if you see me at a show and you want to talk politics, we can rant and rave about the election with a couple of cold ones.
As I lay awake in bed last night at 3 a.m., my sleep-deprived brain started taking the race in some interesting directions. I began to wonder: if I was putting together a company and could only hire prominent members of the political arena, who would I pick, and for which roles? And, most importantly, would they survive in my company?

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