The Small Business Secret of Not Being Ignored

Patrick McFadden • January 20, 2014

Your product or service is great, but you’re still being ignored. You’re the expert, you know your industry, but you’re still being ignored. You know that selling is the transfer of enthusiasm, so you’re enthusiastic about your business, but you’re still being ignored.

No matter how strong you, your products or services are, you will still be ignored by prospective customers, that probably will support your business until you fit one more piece into place.

Let’s take a look at what that might be …

The reality is, small businesses won’t gain real momentum until they’ve mastered the “know, like, trust” factor in the marketing process .

Today I would like to outline the small business secret of not being ignored  and what these steps might actually look like from a tactical standpoint for a typical B2B service business.

Note: Marketing should always build trust and/or invite a purchase.

Know

This is the act of creating awareness so while it sometimes starts with a referral received, it’s often the act of putting something out there that gets the attention of your prospect.

If you’re a small business, high-quality content and referrals are your most potent form of advertising.

You may be advertising to attract more clients to a service business. You may be advertising a product. You may be advertising an idea.

Know Tactics

  •  Podcasting/online radio, or Adwords ad promoting free eBook that is related to your service offering but doesn’t sell anything directly,
  • blog posts answering common client challenges amplified in social media,
  • Facebook promoted posts for free eBook,
  • LinkedIn groups discussions geared towards blog posts and free eBook content.

Like

Imagine two people with an identical product and an identical price.

One person comes across as boring and impersonal. The other is charming, interesting, and makes you feel good. Which one would you rather continue talking to and do business with?

In this step you must move towards gaining permission to continue a conversation. The key here is your email capture activities.

Like Tactics

  • Create landing pages for specific networks,
  • create eBook landing page with autoresponder that delivers even more information related to eBook or other eBooks,
  • offer weekly newsletter to all who download eBook.

Trust

While you’re developing “the Know” through articles, advertising, and referrals, “the Like”  through your website, reception, and newsletter, you’re still not selling. But you  are  paving the road to eventually selling a product or service that’s related to your marketing down the line.

When it comes to small businesses selling their products or services, know and like alone are rarely enough — you need to become truly  trusted.

Trust is perhaps the most important step and yet it’s not one you can simply manufacture through one or two tactics – it’s comes together through a collection of things.

Trust Tactics

  • Consistently deliver your newsletter,
  • educate – don’t promote,
  • get backlinks from reputable websites,
  • participate on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter by sharing great information and helping others find what they want,
  • consistently write educational blog content,
  • stimulate reviews on sites like Google+, LinkedIn and Yelp,
  • submit press releases to online distribution sites such as PRWeb and
  • find industry or local publications that accept contributed content.

Marketing is essentially getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you.

While these tactics are nice,   make sure   you’re developing a strategy before you decide what to do. Determining a marketing strategy allows you to clearly demonstrate how you’re different, how you bring value and who, precisely, makes an ideal client for your business is the most important element of marketing.

Question: What do you think? Do you have a know, like and trust component in your marketing?

About the Company:  Indispensable Marketing , a strategic marketing firm helps small to midsize businesses improve or create a strong marketing foundation that generates more leads and closes more sales.

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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