The 3 Steps to Massive Marketing Success

Patrick McFadden • October 14, 2013

If you’re trying to market a product, a service, a cause or a widget of any kind you’re probably looking for that one magic tactic or key to make your business explode in profits and customers.

You buy the books, the online courses, the CDs and the DVDs that will tell you the steps to unlocking this massive marketing success. You subscribe to sites like Indispensable Marketing to study the steps. You look at very successful businesses in your market and try to reverse engineer them.

After all of this poking, you may be tempted to believe there are no steps to massive marketing success. But the steps are real.

Actually, there are three steps that work together for massive marketing success. To be honest, these three steps separate the winners from the losers, and the cash cows from the starving cows. Implement them effectively and you’ll start to separate your business from the pack, increase customers and profits, and achieve massive marketing success.

Slowly at first, though, then you’ll pick up momentum and things will start to move amazingly quickly. No hype, no tricks, no gimmicks. These three steps are . . .

Massive Marketing Success Step #1: Take action. Start Marketing!

Every year, hopeful entrepreneurs, business owners and organizations buy millions of dollars’ worth of self-help “how to market” or “how to grow your business” products. Almost 95% of the customers (businesses and independent professionals) who buy these products will spend thousands of dollars, then turn around and DO nothing.

The problem with doing nothing is that Massive Marketing Success is about action. Action leads to profits. Most business owners and organizations value the dream more than they do the result. They want more customers, and more profits. They might even want it desperately. But they don’t take action.

The best way to learn marketing…is to do marketing. Go take action!

Massive Marketing Success Step #2: Have a marketing blueprint. 

The down side of “just taking action” is that if you do a lot of random marketing tasks, you tend to get a lot of random results. And add to that marketing can be a painfully slow process that moves in sudden bursts, instead of in a predictable fashion.

You need to put together a simple, reasonably marketing blueprint. Create a marketing plan. It will force you to examine each project in detail and confront the tough issues—who are your clients or customers, what do they need, and what can you do for them? As Harry Beck said, “Planning teaches you and your colleagues about your business . . . writing a plan educates you in a way that nothing else can.”

If you want massive marketing success and to make a million dollars in your business, start with a marketing project to make $X. Figure that out, then scale it. It sounds simplistic and even silly, but it works.

Massive Marketing Success Step #3: Work on “YOU”

This is the one that’s going to take #1 and #2 to a higher level of success. Success steps #1 and #2 can make you or your business a decent living. Add #3 to those and you’ll start to make a fortune.

As a marketer —yes, everyone is a marketer, from business owners, C-level executives, to independent professionals— your mindset must be marketing is everything you do. From creating useful and relevant content online and off, to customer benefiting policies, interesting presentations, how you bid on a job, how you perform, how you build relationships, answer the phone, designing your invoices and who you work with while you’re in business. Remember every smart business is in the relationship building business . Your story , blog posts, blurbs , coupons, promotional products, free reports , free checklist, free speeches, trade show booths and email newsletters all contribute to the holy grail of marketing: to establish a relationship.

If you’re just going to copy a competitors marketing which is the usual stuff in a lame me-too way, you’re not going to find too many customers. You’re betting off spending your time differentiating your business from the competition, even slightly, which can bring you more clients or customers, higher profit margins, and lower cost of sales. Too often, business owners and organizations attempt to distinguish their businesses in ways that have little or no influence on the reasons clients hire or customers buy.

Question: What are you going to do?

The Missing Layer in AI: Why Judgment, Not Just Data, Will Define the Next Era of Intelligence

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.

Everyone Talks About AI Judgment. We Built It.

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer™? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer™… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.

We Found the Missing Layer AI Has Been Waiting For

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
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