One year ago this week, we published Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro.

One year feels like ten. Maybe because Bianca and I have been talking about these ideas for ten years. The book didn't start the conversation. It just finally gave it a home.

What I didn't expect was how fast readers put it to work. The feedback has been consistent: practical, immediate, usable. Not "interesting theory" — "I tried this on Monday." Every review positive. Same thread running through all of them: the ideas weren't hard to use. They were just new.

If you've read it, I'd love to hear what landed. If you haven't, the people who have keep telling us it changed how they work. That's worth something.

I'm grateful for Bianca. Brilliant, relentless, exactly the right person to build this with. And grateful for you still being curious enough to open a Friday email and think about getting better.

Thanks for reading!

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Thinking Like a Marketer

We get a captive audience. Marketers don't.

They have to earn every second of attention or their audience disappears. We can mandate completion and still lose people in the first five minutes. That gap is what this book is about.

A year ago this week, Bianca and I published Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro. The argument was simple: L&D and marketing share the same two goals. Get attention. Change behavior. So why were we ignoring everything marketers had figured out about doing both?

We expected debate. What we got instead was a lot of "I've been thinking this for years — I just didn't have a way to say it."

That response told us something. The field wasn't missing the insight. It was missing the framework.

Here's what surprised me most over this past year: the ideas that resonated weren't the big conceptual ones. They were the practical, almost too obvious ones. Write so people can actually read it. Start with something that matters to the learner, not to you. Don't end a course by waving goodbye when you should be handing off the next step.

The three articles below were the most-read on the site this year. They're not the most complicated ideas in the book. They're the ones that hit closest to home.
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Worth your attention
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How Marketers Hook Attention (And Why L&D Should Copy Them)

Your learners decide whether to check in or check out in the first 30 seconds. Marketers have known this for decades. We keep opening with agenda slides anyway. This one will make you rethink every course opening you've ever written.

​Fix your opening →​

Why Readability Is a Quiet Superpower in Learning

Nobody talks about this enough. The way you write your content isn't just a style choice; it's a decision about cognitive load. Clear writing literally frees up mental bandwidth for actual learning. This piece breaks down the science and gives you practical fixes you can use today.

​Run the test on your own content →​

The Critical Mistake Hiding at the End of Your Training Program

You nailed the content. The activities landed. Learners completed it. And then... nothing changed. This article makes the case that most of us end our courses at exactly the wrong moment and shows you how one sentence can fix it.

​Stop building bridges to nowhere →​

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The Bottom Line

Marketing and L&D have always been solving the same problem. We just didn't have a shared language for it.

One year in, that's what the book keeps proving, not in theory, but in the Monday-morning moments when someone tries something new, and it actually works.

Hook attention. Write clearly. End with action. Three ideas. Endlessly applicable.

If you haven't picked it up yet, now's a good time.

🎵 Today I'm listening to Noah Kahan​

📍Where I'll be next

• ​Why Great Training Gets Ignored & How to Fix It, June 24 (Online)
• ​ATD Core4, Sept 29-Oct 1(Indianapolis, IN)

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