Writing
Playbooks and field notes on building brands, systems, and growth for small businesses — and the story of the Lift Up Local Fund.
Fix my business listings — for a health practice, that means two systems, not one
If you run a dental office, a chiropractic practice, an optometry clinic, a PT studio or an independent primary care practice, and you have ever typed *fix…
Read →Marketing Operations for a Small Business Is Five Numbers, Written Down Twice
There is a version of "marketing operations" that costs forty thousand dollars and arrives as a diagram.
Read →Free Marketing Help for Small Business: What's Actually Free, and What's a Sales Call
If you are searching this, I can guess the situation. Money is tight enough that marketing is the line you cut, your online listings are somewhere between…
Read →Google Business Profile Not Showing Up? Start With the Field You Set Once
There is one field on your Google Business Profile where Google has published, in its own words, that what you type in affects what you get out. Most owners set it once at signup and never reopen it. Mine was wrong for three years.
Read →Local SEO for a Service Business: The Three Fields That Decide Whether You Get Called
Most advice about local SEO for a service business is about being *found*. Keywords, citations, content, reviews.
Read →Your AI Agent Says the Task Is Done and It Isn't. Here's the Harder Problem.
Everyone who delegates real work to an AI agent learns the first lesson the same way. The agent reports success. You go and look.
Read →Wrong Business Address on Google? Five Things Can Change It, and Only One Is You
The address is the flattest fact a business has. It's on the door, the invoice, the van. The owner could recite it half asleep.
Read →Marketing for a Pizza Shop: Fix These Three Things Before You Spend a Dollar
Most advice about marketing a pizza shop starts with posting. Post the cheese pull. Post the Friday special. Run a boosted post at the high school.
Read →How to Nominate a Local Business (and why they don't need a big following to win)
Nominating a business for the Lift Up Local Fund takes a name and a city. Here is what happens next, how businesses are actually chosen, and why the biggest network doesn't automatically win.
Read →How to delegate work to an AI agent without it editing the wrong repo
Most advice about delegating to an AI agent is about the prompt. Be specific. Give it context. Tell it what good looks like.
Read →You don't have a marketing problem. You have an order problem.
Twelve things you could do and no sequence that says which is first. Here is the order I run for paying clients — six phases, fourteen days — and why the free half comes before the paid half.
Read →How to Fix Your Google Business Listing — Starting With the List Google Already Wrote You
Your Google Business Profile dashboard names the empty fields in plain English. Most owners have never opened it. Here's that list, what each field actually does, and the order to fix them in.
Read →Marketing for a Nail Salon: Why the Booking Is Lost Before Anyone Sees Your Work
Most advice about marketing for a nail salon starts in the wrong place. It starts with content — post more, run a promotion, get on TikTok, ask for…
Read →How to verify AI agent work: the test that proves your tests can fail
There is a specific failure that happens when you delegate work to an AI agent, and it is not the one people warn you about.
Read →I run online presence audits for a living. Here's mine, unedited.
An online presence audit is a list of every place the internet describes your business, and a judgment about whether each one is right, wrong, or missing.
Read →The Internet Lost Track of This Salon. It's Probably Losing Track of Yours.
87% of consumers have encountered wrong business info online, and 62% walk away when they find it. What a first-week audit of a beloved Rochester salon found — and how the Lift Up Local Fund is fixing it.
Read →How the Lift Up Local Fund Works
A community-backed way to grow local businesses priced out of the systems and marketing that would get them found. How nominating, backing, and lifting works — and how we report back on every dollar.
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