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Paul Sparrow
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Recent Posts
5 AI Trends Every CEO Must Act On
Earlier this year, I shared takeaways from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report, which showed how AI is reshaping business at a macro level. Building on that, Google Cloud’s 2025 AI Trends highlights five forces that will directly impact companies in the year ahead.
AI is no longer experimental. It is restructuring markets, reshaping customer expectations, and redrawing competitive boundaries. Here are five AI trends CEOs are preparing for now:
Your Strategic Marketing Plan: Five Gotchas to Avoid
Mon, Jun 28, 2021 — Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, and Don Lee, Partner & CEO, both of Chief Outsiders The city of Las Vegas is an interesting study in best intentions -- resplendent with people hoping that the flip of a card or the roll of the dice will produce luck-driven riches. About 150 percent of the time, our protagonists leave with empty pockets and dashed hopes. If luck is so evasive in Sin City, what makes anyone think it’s the foundation for any serious effort? Unfortunately, we see it all the time – a well-meaning entrepreneur or CEO employing instinct and a mega-watt smile, hoping to achieve Bezos-like success.
Marketing in an Inflationary Environment
Fri, Jun 25, 2021 — In case you hadn’t noticed by the amount of extra cash you’ve had to spend at the gas pump, in stores, or with your vendors, inflation is back – with a vengeance. According to U.S. Labor Department stats just published, inflation pushed up to 5 percent for the 12 months ended May 31 – a 13-year high. For many marketers who have spent the past 18 months riding a stomach-turning economic roller coaster, this news may seem hard to understand – or to put into context.
Seven Benefits a Fractional Executive Can Deliver Today
Fri, Jun 4, 2021 — Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Shannon Muniz, Fractional Chief Sales Officer, Sales Xceleration, Orlando, FL. The sprint is on! The American economy – stuck in the blocks for much of 2020 while waiting out the pandemic – has heard the starting gun and is accelerating around the track at a feverish pace. With vaccines, optimism, sales, and profits on the rise, the time to sit on the sidelines is over. I recently talked about the surging economy with Shannon Muniz, with the goal of understanding whether the time was ripe to double down, invest in your business, and grow your base (spoiler alert – it is!).
The Entrepreneur’s Growth Playbook: Part Three
Thu, May 27, 2021 — Marketing Strategy: Bringing Your EOS® to Life Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Samuel Kniseley Ballesteros of The Advantage Solution and a Professional EOS® Implementer For anyone who’s ever held a circular saw or tin snips, you know the importance of measurement. With the exception of artist Pablo Picasso and perhaps architect Frank Gehry, precise measurements are absolutely critical in gaining the right result. If you have a manufacturing business, you know what we’re talking about – think about what your supply chain would look like if you didn’t bother to measure things like delivery time, for example. Your customers would rebel, your reputation would suffer – and you may not have a business for very long.
The Entrepreneur’s Growth Playbook: Part Two
Tue, May 18, 2021 — EOS Vision: Defining Your Long-Term Plan Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Samuel Kniseley Ballesteros of The Advantage Solution and a Professional EOS Implementer There’s a reason that unexpected success is credited to a “shot in the dark.” Because the tiny percentage of entrepreneurs who have succeeded this way managed to do so without the most essential trait of business success – vision. The rest of us will need the lights on and a great set of binoculars – not just to see what’s ahead, but to use that visualization in creating sustainable success. And for 66 percent of CEOs, you are going to need clear vision to avoid joining the pile of failed small businesses that couldn’t survive past their first decade.
The Entrepreneur’s Growth Playbook
Thu, Apr 22, 2021 — Blog 1: Are You a Pioneer or a Settler? Six Steps to a Better Business Model Written by: Paul Sparrow, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Samuel Kniseley Ballesteros of The Advantage Solution and a Professional EOS Implementer Take a trip with us, if you will, back to Northern California in 1849. Word has spread across the land – there’s gold in them there hills, and we need to go find it. On just this pronouncement, and with not much more than hope and a promise, pioneers set forth to go find the gold – and with it, riches beyond their wildest imagination. You know the rest of the story – some of these folks went boom, most went bust, and the California Gold Rush became a literal flash in the pan.
Innovation, Part 2: Finding the Discipline Needed to Reinvent and Reinvest
Thu, Jan 28, 2021 — What does it take to be a change agent in a world that doesn’t stop changing? My last blog on change and innovation referenced Billy Joel, and you may recall his song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” essentially a history lesson of the 1940s through 1980s in three minutes. If we asked The Piano Man to write a tune forecasting the 2020s, it would likely last an hour – and still not cover everything.
Innovation, With a Purpose: Use 2020 as a Springboard for Change
Fri, Jan 22, 2021 — Alas, it was many moons ago that one of my favorite musical artists, Billy Joel, sang those insightful words: “Don’t go changing to try and please me.” No matter how eloquent or visionary he might be, the “Bard of Brooklyn” couldn’t have foreseen that a pandemic would all but mandate change as a means of business survival. Now we must all go changing, to try and please EVERYONE. Fueled by the ongoing digital revolution, lockdowns, economic turmoil, and a global financial shakeout, we can generally agree that the tried and true has given way to the untried, and new.
Your Sales and Marketing Pros Are At Odds – Here’s How to Get Them Aligned
Thu, Dec 3, 2020 — Since the era of cavemen, the roles of Sales and Marketing professionals have been fairly well defined. The earliest marketers would create awareness for that remarkable new invention, the wheel; and the salespeople would roll it down the streets, sharing the features and benefits to interested customers, then collect five dodo-birds in compensation. In the million years since, Sales and Marketing departments still have a similarly symbiotic existence -- but a lot seems to have changed in the digital era. Today, the gap between Sales and Marketing represents a gray area at most companies — from the smallest distributors, to the largest multinational enterprises.