What Do Small Business Owners Need To Know About Marketing?

Patrick McFadden • April 28, 2024

Marketing can be challenging for small to mid size organizations, who are often working with limited time, money, attention-spans and resources.


In 2023–2024 I started engaging with LinkedIn Collaborative Articles. A place for unlocking community knowledge in an all new way.


It starts with an article on a professional topic or skill, written with the help of AI — but it’s not complete without insights and advice from people with real-life experiences. They invited experts to contribute and here are my insights and advice:


What do you do if your small business struggles to grab customers’ attention with its products or services?

👉My experiences tells me, if your small business struggles to grab customers’ attention with its products or services then you need to revisit your strategy.


You’ve got about five seconds to get and keep someone’s attention and you can’t waste that precious time with a message that doesn’t connect.

A message that connects is one that clearly talks about what your ideal client wants more than anything else in the world — and what is that?

They want to solve their problems.


People don’t want what you sell — they want what they believe they will get, achieve, relieve, dodge, or acquire based on buying what you sell.


Your job is to understand the problems they are trying to solve and match your offering to those very specific problems.


What do you do if you want to gain an edge as a small business owner?

🚀 From my experience consulting over 100 CEOs and owners as a small business marketing consultant, if you want to gain an edge you must do two things:


  1. 🤔stop trying to be better than the competition and start figuring out how you can be different
  2. 👀create a true differentiation that an segment of your target market values or might care about


Creating your own special way to treat customers, creating an experience that’s unique, or creating a totally new and frictionless way for people to get a result is how you gain an edge, it’s how you create a difference that is valued and wanted and can’t be easily copied.


What do you do if you want to uncover your strengths and weaknesses in a small business using feedback?

👏To uncover your small business’s strengths and weaknesses effectively, start by interviewing your top customers. 👏


This process is essential for gaining valuable insights. It’s one of the most effective methods available.


Begin by creating a structured feedback form and regularly survey a selection of customers every quarter or six months. The insights gained will be invaluable, and you’ll find that customers appreciate being consulted.


However, be wary of vague responses such as “you provide good service.” While positive, this feedback isn’t actionable. Dig deeper by asking what excellent service means to them and if they can share specific instances of when they experienced outstanding service.


Here’s how you can revolutionize marketing for your small business.

🔄In my experience, revolutionizing marketing for a small business involves shifting focus to a comprehensive, integrated, and systematic approach. 🔄


By approaching marketing as a structured process rather than a collection of isolated tactics, owners and CEOs can address marketing frustrations head-on.

This method requires developing a cohesive marketing strategy aligned with business objectives and systematically implementing and refining it over time.


Embracing a process-oriented mindset promotes accountability, clarity, and efficiency in marketing activities, empowering businesses to navigate complexities with confidence and purpose.


What do you do if your B2B marketing strategy needs tailored solutions for clients?

🤔My experience has shown that many businesses have more than one type of ideal client. 🤔


Therefore, if your B2B marketing strategy requires tailored solutions for clients, that’s where the concept of buyer personas comes in.


Buyer personas can help you define each type of customer you hope to target, allowing you to create marketing that speaks specifically to their needs.

When you combine great, meaningful messaging, visuals, content, differentiators, promises, guarantees, and terminology with the right audience, you can generate hot leads and expedite them through the buying process.


What do you do if your company needs a content marketing strategy?

👀 From my experience if your company needs a content marketing strategy you must consider content as your voice of strategy and because of that, you must take a strategic and systematic approach to how your content is developed. 👀


And the best way to do this is to produce content that focuses on education and building trust — all based on your core business objectives, your ideal customer, and message.


For example, if one of your objectives for the year is to significantly increase your subscriber list, you would focus on producing, delivering and sharing content that attracts email capture, links and strategic partnering.


Need Help With Your Small Business Marketing?

Install A Marketing Process and Watch Your Visibility Increase, Phone Ring & Revenue Grow.


Without a process approach to marketing, it’s easy to be constantly spinning your wheels. There are considerations around strategy, local SEO, content, local advertising and local review sites that can make or break your local marketing efforts. This is why we continue to help our local clients install a marketing process that gives them clarity, confidence, control and customers.

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.
More Posts