I met with a local entrepreneur yesterday who began our conversation wondering how Amazon became such a global retailing force. No stores. No in-the-black earnings. A stock price in the stratosphere. Not exactly smoke and mirrors but Amazon’s arc does seem magical. Mr. Brand Hammer (That’s me. To a hammer everything looks like a nail) posited, perhaps it’s just the creation, care and feeding of a great brand??? That’s magical.

When I worked as director of marketing at Zude the web’s first true drag-and-drop web development tool, I recall standing on the back step of my home telling the CTO that we were about to make a billion dollar decision. It had to do with product focus. Was I tripping? Sniffing too many company fumes? Probably.

Today, thanks to the internet, ecommerce, and lack of proper marketing training, many entrepreneurs aim too high. They are looking at Amazon. And Facebook. And Uber. What they need to do is aim low. One customer, one prospect, one channel partner at a time. By aiming low, at ground level where the people are, we learn from real consumers. We use our senses to understand likes, dislikes, energies and needs. Spreadsheets and market universes are macros, entrepreneurs need to dig into the micros. They need to dump the cache and originate. Aim low me droogies, aim low.

Peace.