About

What’s so funny about peace, love and audacious marketing?

Peter Drucker said it best:

The purpose of a business is to obtain and keep a customer…  Therefore marketing and innovation are the only functions that matter.

I love being a decision maker.  I love the study of innovation and love problem solving and expressing my creativity.  In fact, the definition I choose for innovation is “solving a problem in a new way.”  Seth Godin said it similarly in his book Free Prize Inside.

Everything [a company does] is marketing.”  In essence, when you work in marketing, you are in effect, leading a company.

I’ve come to learn that not every local business owner loves marketing the way I do.  And that’s OK.  That’s what I’m here for and possibly why you and I were meant to meet,

I started a marketing consulting business in Albuquerque, New Mexico I named Queso & Cheese Marketing.  Why that name?  My nickname is Cheese.  In addition to being a Cheese, I'm also a Stanford MBA, I'm a cover band drummer, I'm a graduate of U.C. Berkeley (GO BEARS) and of a friends-defining job working at the Lair of the Golden Bear, I'm a native of San Diego County, I'm a Padres fan, I'm a Chargers fan, I'm an introvert, I'm curious, I'm optimistic, I'm an unabashed liberal who supports gun control (it pisses me off that as a nation we pretend to support our military veterans only to let 20 kill themselves with a gun every single day), and I'm a feminist.  

If we should work together, I promise not to bring up politics, religion, major league baseball or my favorite 80's band.  Those subjects naturally just create conflict.

I'm a specialist in the application of Neighborhood and Local Store Marketing. My goal is to help businesses in my own neighborhood, the NE Heights of Albuquerque to attract new customers that bring them more sales and more profits.  

 

What is great marketing?

I believe that marketing is about change leadership.  The people I know who are great marketers are those who are always striving to achieve a goal, and who constantly ask themselves the question “What will it take?” to achieve those goals.  Then they rush off and create the changes that are required to move in that direction.

What, then, are some important elements that lead to great marketing?  Besides money?

• Great marketers understand that words are everything, that copywriting and ad writing is of tthe utmost importance;
• Great marketers want to set stretch (audacious) goals and finding ways to accomplish them;
• Great marketers know how to articulate our differences vs. competition clearly
• Great marketers know how to evoke emotions within our customers, especially with our copyand ad writing;
• Great marketers are almost always creating and testing new ideas;
• Great marketers are always scanning and searching for ideas outside of our own categories and neighborhoods
• Great marketers embrace learning and practicing skills that make us more effective
• Great marketers have a desire to create a business that becomes bigger than ourselves.

How many great marketers do you know?

So what’s so funny about peace, love and audacious marketing?

Peace, love and audacious marketing are the values I believe can help you create a successful, enduring business.

Audacious is about performing activities differently than your competitors or performing different activities than your competitors.

Love is about doing those activities as ways to serve your customers, not because they get you noticed by your customers, but because they help your customers.

Peace is about having the clarity of mind to know your personal and business path in the future and having the focus to move down that path every single day.

Create Peace of Mind:  Seek Progress, Not Perfection

Let’s face it, when you own or manage a small business, you don’t have deep pockets or the resources that larger companies have.  You’re also as busy as a rooster in a hen house.   

That’s why I live by the credo that I strive for progress, not perfection.  Don’t get me wrong, I am cursed with the perfectionist gene, and I want to knock every opportunity out of the park.  But I have learned to celebrate the daily victories that come with moving my business forward, day-by-day, one step at a time, one check on my massive to-do list every hour. 

I'm currently working on some training to share with my blog visitors.  The first two courses are:  How to Create a Marketing Plan in Less Than 4 Hours & How to Create a Sales Promotion That Rocks the Cash Register.  Sign up below if you'd like me to send you an email when one or the other is done and ready for you to learn.

About Gary "Cheese" Sanchez

I’m a consumer products and retail marketing veteran, cover rock-band drummer and outdoor enthusiast.   I am a student of the audacious, imbiber of music, and laugher at life.  I’m a graduate of U.C. Berkeley with a B.S. in Business Administration and of the Stanford Graduate School of Business with an MBA.

 

I’ve always been surrounded by entrepreneurs in my professional career.  I was a commercial lender who provided working capital and equipment loans to small businesses before starting a corporate marketing career.

My corporate marketing history is filled a long record of growing sales for great businesses, businesses such as Kingsford Charcoal, Pine-Sol, Formula 409, QuickBooks, Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Del Monte Foods. 

After almost 15 years of working for large companies, I remembered that the long term professional goal I stated in my business school application was to help small business owners grow companies.  I do that by helping them discover great marketing. Building new programs, seeing them come to life, and seeing them create results is what I love most about marketing.  Being of service to small business owners is now what I love most about working.

I want you to feel confident and inspired to grow your business while feeling comfortable working with me – I offer the experience of having grown sales on several businesses + the smarts of a Stanford MBA, but without being a corporate, boring stuffed shirt, money-hungry, know-it-all

My nickname is “Cheese” (a derivative of San-cheeeeese) and that’s what my friends call me. I share that because my goal is to help people have more fun getting their marketing created.   As I like to say, “If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.”  And if you can’t have fun with a guy named Cheese who writes about marketing, then when are you going to have fun?

Peace, Love & Success

Gary "Cheese"