Jim Connolly Marketing

Lessons from highly successful business owners

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rags to riches success,

With September upon us, I thought you might find the following useful. 

There are traits I see, which are common to all the successful business owners I know. These are people who started with nothing, but made fortunes. Real rags to riches stories.

Let’s see if there’s something here, which you can learn from.

Here’s a brief list. In no particular order.

They never mistake movement for progress. Other business owners are busy… doing figure eights.

They do not accept the idea of comfort zones. Their mindset is based on doing what’s required for success. Others act like a child when their business needs them to do something difficult, ‘I can’t. It makes me feel uncomfortable’.

They always have enough time to do everything required. That’s because they know the difference between a lack of time and a lack of direction. With direction you can achieve more in a day than others achieve in a week.

They are self-starters. They don’t seek external motivation. They do what needs doing.

They are reliable and turn up even when it’s easier not to. This commitment to reliability is both rare and highly valued.

They accept responsibility when they make a mistake. They own the error. They learn the lessons. Then set to work on putting things right.

They are good decision makers. Once they have the information required, they make a decision. They know that leaving decisions unmade is messy and unproductive.

They make a study of business success. They listen to informed minds and take notes. Others seek success, but listen to uninformed minds, and make uninformed plans.

They have discernment. They know the difference between bad advice delivered powerfully, and good advice delivered sincerely.

I hope you found that useful.

Get creative: Let others market your business for free!

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creative marketing, creative growth, Jim Connolly, marketing is dead

In my previous article, I explained why traditional marketing is dead. I also gave an example of a powerful creative marketing strategy.

Today, I’m sharing another 2 creative marketing examples.

The first example can be used very successfully to market products or services. It can also be used by those selling locally, nationally or internationally. The second example, is for those of you who sell into your local area.

Like all creative marketing, in both examples it costs you nothing or almost nothing. Plus, other people will happily do the heavy lifting for you, so it won’t eat into your finances and hardly eat into your time.

It starts with Gizmo. That’s him in the above photo, (which is on a wall in my studio).

Dad. A cat walked into our lecture!

During my son’s first week at university, he told me that a cat walked into his lecture. It turns out the cat lives at the university and is called Gizmo. Students love him. Because Gizmo helps set them at ease, like an unofficial therapy pet.

Thousands of people every week see photos or videos of Gizmo. Students (and fans) take selfies with him to share on their social platforms. The students come from countries all over the world. So, these photos are seen worldwide.

And at my son’s graduation last week, Gizmo had a queue of student family members and friends, who wanted to see him in real life.

Why am I telling you all this?

Simple.

  • Gizmo has massively increased awareness of this outstanding seat of learning, worldwide.
  • Those wonderfully happy photos and videos of students with him, position the university as warm and welcoming.

Why this matters: when choosing a university, a major factor is how friendly and welcoming the environment is. So, marketing for every university says it cares deeply about student wellbeing. They all say it. Meaning it has zero impact!!!

When they check out a university and find out about Gizmo, that promise has huge impact. When they then learn about the other ways they help students, it’s more believable.

More people hear about the university. More people feel that real wholesome vibe. More people check out the university, and see how highly it’s ranked. 

More people will choose to earn their degree or PhD there.

Your business: It’s not about cats

It’s about creating something that people will naturally want to share. Something interesting, funny, memorable, weird, puzzling, uniquely valuable, or counter intuitive, etc.

People then do the rest for you. Just like they did with my son’s university.

Here’s a great example that longer-term readers may remember. 

It takes minutes. It costs you nothing. 

My friend owns a coffee shop. Business was slow. I suggested she should write a ‘word of the day’ on the specials menu board. A word that’s interesting, funny or quirky. I gave her the first word to get her started: balter. To dance clumsily, with enthusiasm.

Here’s what happened.

  • Customers immediately noticed the word of the day. 
  • Customers who seldom spoke to her or her team, started talking about that day’s word. That’s better customer engagement.
  • Best of all, customers regularly take a photo of the word of the day, which is intentionally written on the specials menu board. Then, they share it, along with the menu, with their friends on social platforms.

My friend gets free publicity for their menu, which is now spread locally across social platforms, mostly at lunchtimes (perfect timing). This attracts new, regular customers, many then go on to do the same. Rinse, repeat.

My friend isn’t working for social platforms, by filling them with content. She didn’t even have a social media account! Instead, social platforms are making money for her: every. single. day.

She’s spending nothing. It takes a few minutes of her time to change the word of the day. That’s all.

I hope this make sense to you

Every day you waste by repeating what the masses do, is losing you money. More importantly, it’s losing you time. Time you could be using to get creative… and watch, as others grow your business for you.

Others growing your business for you?

Yes.

Of course!

Remember:

Gizmo is a just a cat. He walks around. He naps. He chases anything that moves. He naps again. He’s like the cat next door. 

It was only when a character was created for him, which people found cute, interesting and fun, that he became an invaluable asset to the university and not simply a pet.

  • That’s when students started taking photos of him, to share with their friends.
  • That’s when students encouraged the university to make a Gizmo calendar, with proceeds going to animal charities.
  • That’s when radio stations started to mention him.
  • That’s when people all over the world learned about this caring little cat, who loves the students.
  • That’s when it became clear that Gizmo’s story was warming hearts of people looking for a university. A powerful asset over competing universities.

And yes, that’s when people like me put his photo on our wall!

It was the students who happily, lovingly did all the work. Gizmo was just too good not to share with your friends.

Remember:

My friend had a struggling coffee shop. It made good coffee and good food. Like her competitors. But nothing special. Nothing worth telling everyone about. Thats why she used to struggle.

It was only after my creative idea to get her specials menu in front of masses of local people at lunchtime, that things improved dramatically.

  • That’s when people started sharing photos of her specials board menu, with the word of the day.
  • That’s when people started seeing her coffee shop on social platforms. Shared by people they know and trust.
  • That’s when her business started to thrive.

It was the customers who did the day-to-day work. The word of the day was weirdly different enough, to inspire people to want to share it. The coffee shop’s growth then took on a life of its own. Driven by a natural, human desire to share things we think others will find interesting in some way.

In short: creative marketing costs you little or nothing financially, requires very little effort from you and will grow your business, even if it’s currently struggling or spinning its wheels. 

Psssst: Things get really interesting, when you have a few different, creative marketing ideas working for you. It scales brilliantly, because you don’t have to do much.

Yes, it’s awesome. I know.

If you want to discover more, I’m here. 

Traditional marketing is dead

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marketing is dead, creative growth, Jim Connolly

What we all knew as marketing, is pretty-much dead.

It was designed for a world that no longer exists.

It’s no longer fit-for-purpose.

Here’s an example of how vastly over-saturated marketing has become and how difficult it is to get noticed.

Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the world’s leading experts in social media marketing. Back in April of this year, Gary told an audience what his 30 person team was doing, to optimize their social media marketing. He said that the day before the event, his team:

‘… published 412 pieces of content, across 10 platforms, and 81 different social media handles‘. Remember, Gary knows every marketing trick, tactic and strategy in the book. And less than a year ago, Gary was recommending 100 pieces of content a day.

Back when I discovered Gary, he was posting just 4 or 5 times a week on YouTube and using Twitter. Yet millions of us knew him, worldwide.

Traditional marketing is dead

AI has provided us with the ability to produce as much content as we want. It will also publish it for us, so we can mass produce, with close to no effort. As a result, every day, millions of people are producing billions of pieces of content between them. This number is growing daily.

Traditional marketing can no longer force its way through.

That’s why I am going to show you how to achieve spectacular results, using a Creative Growth tactic.

Long live Creative Growth

Creative Growth is about creatively growing your business, boosting sales, revenues and profits, by attracting the right clients or customers. It’s about focusing on fewer tactics, and focusing in a less obvious, more creative way.

The Creative Growth tactic I’m showing you today, has no connection with the noise and nonsense out there. It’s a detailed look at a creative way to grow your business, which I have only mentioned very briefly before.

Let’s start with a question.

Did you know that you can make a year’s worth of high profit sales, simply by focusing on attracting a tiny number of influential contacts?

Tiny number?

Yes. If you’re a service provider, it could be as few as two!

However, these need to be influential contacts.

Here’s how this tactic works.

Let’s pretend you’re a graphic designer

And you want to grow your design business 200% over the next 12-months.

The senior partner of a large accountancy practice really likes your work. So, they recommend you to all their clients. Their clients who use your services loved your work. They then thanked the senior partner for recommending you. Naturally, the senior partner carries on recommending you.

That one, influential contact has the trust of 800 business owners. Their trusted recommendation lands powerfully, with high conversion rates. This could easily provide you with enough new clients, to smash your target. And provide you with lots more clients, over time, on repeat recommendations.

To make this happen, you switch from traditional marketing (marketing your services to thousands of individual prospects, who don’t know you or have any reason to trust you) to Creative Growth (identifying, and connecting with 1 influential person, who is trusted by 800 prospects).

All the time you remain focused on traditional marketing, you’ll miss out on amazing results like this.

Next step: Here’s how to get those influential contacts AND earn their trust.

Identifying the right, influential people

This part is easy.

You always start by asking yourself this question: Who is already trusted by a large number of my ideal prospects?

This will help you get started.

You often find that the most trusted people are those who provide expert advice. For example, accountants, lawyers, medical professionals, financial advisors, business consultants and business leaders.

Depending on your ideal prospect, trusted people could be those who are famous. Sports stars, musicians, actors, authors, TV stars and DJs.

That’s just to get you thinking. Do some research based on your business and ideal client or customer profile.

Earning trust and how to connect

This is not as easy as the previous step.

Influential people often encounter selfish individuals who are after something. The more influential a person is, the more often they are targeted. Understandably, this means they’re sensitive to outreach from strangers. So, even though our motives are good, we need to be patient. And give them time to see for themselves that we’re trustworthy.

An exception here, is if you already know someone who is trusted by the influential person you want to connect with.

Earning trust is about giving freely, over a period of time.

For instance, in 2011, music legend Nile Rodgers told his Twitter followers that he would be coming to London, for the UK launch of is autobiography. We had ‘tweeted’ occasionally with each other for about 18-months. Anyhow, I sent him a direct message with my phone number, said I would be at the launch and to call if he needed any help.

It turned out he did, and it was something I was able to assist with. We became friends. Had I hardly known him, it’s unlikely we would have connected the way we did.

What’s the best way to reach influential people?

For the past 20-years, based on the success of my clients and my own success, the best tool for the job by far is social media.

This is especially the case if you are hoping to connect with extremely influential people.

How do you earn trust, by ‘giving freely’ on social media?

Start by taking the list of influential people you created earlier.

Then use the search function to locate them on your app. If they are on the app, check how recently they posted anything.

Tip: also check how recently they replied to someone. On the Threads app, X app and other apps, it’s not uncommon for people to post rarely, but be very active in the replies section.

If they are active, follow their account.

Then spend time looking at what they have recently posted. You’ll get some insight into what they’re interested in, etc.

Next, when appropriate, look for ways to contribute something useful or helpful to one of their posts/replies. Keep it positive. Don’t push them or get too friendly too fast. Don’t reply to everything they post. Slowly become one of those people who often engages with them.

At this point you’re connected. Try to maintain a cadence with them.

Finally, when enough time has passed, and an opportunity arises from something they’ve said, where you can provide them with help, reach out. Similar to what I did with Nile.

And what’s the best social platform?

X (Twitter) gives direct access to influential people in every walk of life. It’s where the majority of my clients, and myself, get the best results.

Some people find LinkedIn works very well for them. So, it could be just what you need. Again, it depends on the profile of influential people you want to connect with.

In closing

Spend some time pondering Creative Growth. It’s different. So is the approach required and the results.

It is definitely too different for some people. They’ve told me they’re concerned about the risk of not doing things the way they’ve always done them.

It’s a natural human reaction, when we’re confronted with change. And we all deal with it differently.

I hope you’ve found this look at one of my Creative Growth tactics useful. If you did, forward it to a friend.

The stupid game

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get noticed, marketing, AI

You want to get noticed in a non-stop world. Great! I’m going to show you how to get started.

First, I want to share something weird with you.

Did you know that using AI on a task as simple as writing a pretend essay, can negatively impact your brain?

Here’s some background. Plus, why a less mentioned side of AI, contributes to all the look-a-like junk out there… and how YOU can cut through it!

The weird

A scientific study at MIT, scanned the brains of volunteers in a simple test. One group of volunteers was asked to use ChatGPT to help them write an essay. Another group was asked to write the essay without AI. 

Despite how simple the task was, the EEG scans of those using AI for the task showed poorer judgement, reduced brain engagement and memory loss, where they couldn’t remember key parts of their essay.

All of that came from one, easy, zero pressure task.  

Now imagine a business owner, using AI regularly across stressful, important, commercial tasks. Such as: strategy development, strategic planning, project notes, reports for clients, marketing copy, advertising, graphic design, social content. 

I know many, many businesses that rely on AI for all or most of the above. And many more, who rely so heavily on AI, that almost every written word they publish is AI or AI, plus light, human editing. 

The ‘voice’ of businesses like these have been silenced, or are being silenced. Very little human input. No uniqueness. HUMAN SLOP!

Nothing to see, worth seeing.

Nothing to read, worth reading.

Nothing to say, worth hearing.

Why does that even matter? Because our uniqueness is all you and I have!

The stupid game

Everyone’s trying to find the perfect social platform for them to make a big impact.

Everyone’s convinced they need a personal brand, when all that does is make them even less visible. These people conform to a predictable, personal branding recipe. They emerge somewhat synthetic. Lacking their uniqueness. Camouflaged.

Everyone’s using AI.

Everyone’s trying to beat the algorithm.

Everyone’s attempting to create the best prompts.

Everyone’s testing hashtags.

Everyone’s optimizing their content, their photos, their marketing copy, their subject lines, their titles, their message, their timings for mailings, articles and posts.

Everyone’s trying to get noticed… just like everyone else.

Thankfully

Some people are cutting through that cheap, nasty, unhealthy noise.

And they’re actually getting noticed. Ironically, that’s the very thing the busy, directionless, confused masses are working tirelessly to achieve.

How are those people getting noticed?

By refusing to play the stupid game.

Instead.

  • They embrace organic. They make space for analogue. As in, face-to-face human interactions.
  • They refuse to become part of the nonsense, which causes human slop.
  • They keep their minds sharp, by using them.
  • They publish or post when they have something to contribute. Something useful. Something they created.
  • They focus on people. Not algorithms.
  • They build systems for their business, not prompts for their AIs.

You are enough.

And the more people playing the stupid game, the more visible you become.

Just by being YOU. And letting the right people learn who YOU are.

Hey! Not so fast!

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time lapse photography of brown concrete building

Business owners tend to be a pretty motivated bunch.

We have to be, right?

Not only are we motivated, we also believe in the value of our product or service. When you combine motivation with belief, you create a potent mix. An essential, high energy blend that keeps us moving forward and inspires us to persist even when things are tough.

And that’s great!

However.

Sometimes that mix of belief and motivation can work against us.

Really?

Yes, really.

For example, we speak with a prospect and immediately see that our product or service is the perfect match for them. We know we can provide exactly what they need. So, we’re eager to help them make the right decision.

Here’s the thing.

There’s a thin line between encouraging someone to make the right decision, and rushing someone to decide.

When that line is crossed, it can make you look desperate. Or too pushy. It can quickly lower the buyer’s confidence and make them feel uncomfortable.

It can, and often does, lose you the sale.

How to avoid this, before it happens!

Based on decades of experience and observations, I’ve found that this is most likely to happen during the follow-up process. 

You need to be very mindful regarding how soon and how often you follow-up with an email or call. That’s because there isn’t a universally ideal time, or frequency I can give you.

Different industries and different cultures have different expectations. So, you’ll need to test and measure. Take into account things like the size of the decision your prospect is making financially, plus the number of people involved with the decision-making process, the size of the overall risk, etc.

Important note: Do not confuse rushing the process with being appropriately proactive.

There are times when we need to be swift. To move quickly.

Most opportunities in life and business come with a use-by date. If we take too long, we’re often too late. 

The advice is don’t rush the process. 

Fast is fine. 

Too fast is rushing.

I hope you find this idea useful. More importantly, I hope you do something with it.

Photo by Zhang Kaiyv on Pexels.com

A 3 shot espresso for your business

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small business marketing, small business,

Today’s post is for those of you who need to turn things around in the 2nd half of the year.

This isn’t cookie-cutter advice. Instead, think of the ideas that follow as nudges. Nudges to encourage you to focus on some key areas.

Don’t make long-term plans, with short-term people. Short-term people leave a trail of disasters behind them. Intentionally make connections with smart, long-term people.

Finish before you start. Here’s the thing: you don’t start building a house until the plans are finished. If the bricklayer is working, and someone asks them what they’re building, the bricklayer never says ‘I’ve no idea‘. If you want a successful second half of 2026, plan it first. And don’t rely on the person who created your current plan… including if it was you. 

Feed what you need. When you starve a business of the resources it needs, it dies. Just like everything else on the planet. 

You can’t climb a smooth mountain. You need places where you can plant your feet, and grab with your hands. No struggle = no success. The key is to learn from your current struggle, so you don’t repeat it in the 2nd half of 2026. 

Don’t get complacent. Why? Simple! Complacency comes before cockiness. Cockiness comes before a fall. And when cocky people fall, the line to help them is extremely short.

Foolish advice leads to pain. That wisdom has held true for thousands of years. ‘Whoever walks with the wise, becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm’. Proverbs 13:20. When you associate with wise people, their wisdom will influence you. When you associate with fools, you will pay a hefty price. 

If you found this information useful, please share it with a friend.