A Skunk is a Cat Designed by Commitee

Pattern Recognition Beats Marketing Every Time I’ve spent 40 years watching business owners get burned by marketing agencies. Same story, different company. They hire someone who promises the moon, delivers a PDF, and disappears when results don’t come in. The problem isn’t the tactics. The problem is that most agencies are selling you a process when what you need is pattern recognition. At 68, after bringing 7,000 items to market, building 850 websites, and managing over a billion dollars in portfolio, I see the patterns before you see the problem. That’s not arrogance. It’s accumulated data. When you’ve seen the same failure mode play out across construction companies, multifamily housing operations, manufacturing firms, and mental health practices, you stop being surprised by what breaks. The Committee Problem A skunk is a cat designed by committee. That’s what happens when process replaces judgment. You get something that checks all the boxes but doesn’t work. Most marketing fails because it’s designed by people who never had to live with the consequences of their own recommendations. I’ve watched this play out hundreds of times. A business owner brings me in after their third failed agency. They’re frustrated, skeptical, and tired of proposals that sound good but deliver nothing. They want a straight answer. Here’s the straight answer: if your marketing isn’t converting, someone missed the pattern. What Pattern Recognition Actually Looks Like When a $4 million construction company comes to me saying their website isn’t generating leads, I don’t start with a redesign proposal. I start with questions about their sales process, their client acquisition timeline, their average deal size, and how they currently close business. Nine times out of ten, the website isn’t the problem. The problem is they’re trying to use a website to replace the trust-building that happens face-to-face. A…

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