Follow me back 45 years ago, when my Mom invited me to skip school and visit Dad’s office at Litton Industries.

This represented a BIG adventure to me. I knew Dad was a mechanical engineer, but I never truly understood what his job entailed. This was my chance to get answers.

We pulled up to the four story, steel gray industrial building in West Hartford, Connecticut. As we exited the elevator, I spotted Dad in the conference room….

A few weeks ago, a doe-eyed workshop volunteer stopped me at the entrance to the crowded meditation room.

“Has anyone talked to you about our dress code?” she asked. “You see, we require you to wear white clothing from head to toe. Our teacher said that if you don’t have anything light to wear, you will have to sit out the next session and go home to change clothes. Another option is that you can buy some of our clothing in our upstairs room.”

Truthfully, I had no idea about any dress code….

We just completed our first annual CMOs Leading Innovation Conference (CLIC ’15) in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. Although this full day session deserves more reflection than a David Letterman-style Top Ten List, I wanted to pass along my initial thoughts.

Twenty-five CMOs and CEOs gathered from cool companies such as Twitter, Informatica, H&R Block, SageWater, Gannett/USAToday, Decision Lens, XO Communications, Celerity, and DestinationDC. Adobe’s CMO.com, a globally reknown publication reaching over 22,000 marketing leaders, partnered with us to cover the event….

Let’s talk about how we design our marketing communities. In Buddhism, we have a term called sangha. This has to do with surrounding yourself with like-minded people who support you in whatever you’re doing.

We need to find our sangha as mindful marketers. In this video, Jamie Gorski, CMO of The Bozzuto Group, and I discuss what’s worked for us over the years. Some of the points we cover include:

The importance and benefits of a peer group (for example, our Marketing Leaders of DC™  community)
Guidelines and ideas for designing your own peer communities
How surrounding yourself with champions can also make you a champion

I invite you to take four minutes to enjoy the video….

What does the term “customer data” mean to you?

Many tech-savvy marketers will imagine a magical dashboard showing customer churn rates,  pipeline velocity, lifetime customer value and the cost to acquire a customer. And the topic of customer data is top of mind for many CMOs in my community. Let’s examine why a frenetic level of focus on technology-generated customer data is often a waste of marketing resources.

We just completed our third annual CMO Innovation Trends study….

What are some practical, everyday ways that marketing leaders can become more mindful?

That’s the question I posed to attendees during my AdWeek DC keynote. What emerged were some extremely thoughtful mindful marketing ideas that I’d like to share with you in this video.

A few highlights:

How to understand and find balance between what is meaningful, rather than just measurable…
Why peer-to-peer interaction and genuine empathy are so crucial in today’s over-“connected”

I recently met with IN Live! network host Limor Schafman to discuss The Mindful Marketer. We discussed how mindfulness is playing an increasingly important role in corporations—both in personal practice and in regards to marketing strategy. I shared how these new trends in mindfulness can help marketing leaders be more effective, and create deeper connections with customers.

Check out the video to learn:…

Why you need to create “white space”

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Can we talk for a moment about our marketing habits?

During AdWeek DC, I addressed the topic of marketing habits with Jamie Gorski, CMO of The Bozzuto Group. In our fireside chat, we uncovered the most common mindless marketing habits (including some that will probably surprise you). Here’s a sampling:…

Spending too much time on immediate tasks and not enough on innovation (being an “order taker”

Do you have what it takes to lead successfully in today’s fast-changing marketing environment?
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That’s the tough question posed in Be a Marketing Maestro, a new eBook from Direct Marketing News and sponsored by Teradata. To thrive as a marketing leader today, you must learn how to create harmony in a cacophonous marketing environment.…

Spring is bursting with professional development opportunities for you. Below you will find my upcoming schedule for keynotes and workshops. Please join me for these exceptional networking and learning experiences.

Integrate 2015 – Integrated Marketing Conference,  West Virginia University, May 29-30. Join me for my keynote and book signing. You’ll meet marketing leaders from Sony Music Entertainment, Coca-Cola, St. Jude Hospital, and PEMCO Mutual Insurance.

The Social Shake-Up 2015 Workshop and book signing: “Leading the Mindful Marketing Revolution,” June 8, Atlanta….