Author Archives

I am originally from Columbia, Missouri, the County Seat of Boone County. My parents split up when I was 5 and growing up I lived in Mexico City, Acapulco, Miami, Atlanta, Columbia, and St. Louis! After High School, I studied French Literature and played Rugby in Neuchatel, Switzerland. I finished my BA in Liberal Arts at U.T. Austin where I played Rugby for the Longhorns. My first job was on the 5th Floor of the Tishman Building in NYC, and I played Rugby for NYAC. I attended Business School at Thunderbird in Phoenix. It was there that I hung up my Rugby Boots and started writing. I was the Editor in Chief School Newspaper, and interviewed among others Barry Goldwater. During my stay in Phoenix, I loved hiking Camelback Mountain. I converted to Catholicism at St. Thomas the Apostle Church. And I was lucky to find a job with in Direct Marketing, and really took to it as a discipline. Met my wife at a trade show, the DMA Fall Conference 1999. Moved to Cleveland for love. Got married. Have three kids. Work from home to watch them grow up. Love what I do. I’m a husband, a father, and a business owner. It’s fun.

‘Doing your best’ is a process of ‘trying to do your best.’

“Why do you write only said songs?” someone once asked the legendary Townes Van Zandt. 

“Well…, many of the songs…, they aren’t sad. They’re hopeless,” he affirmed. 
If you’re going to sing and play the blues, you might as well be the best that you can be. Maybe that’s why Townes Van Zandt is revered as a Texas Bluesman.
Here […]

The Night They Drove ‘Ol Dixie down

The Night They Drove ‘Ol Dixie down is one of the best songs, if not the best song, of all time.
When I was growing up and attending Thomas Jefferson High School in the late 70’s, we listened to The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Grateful Dead almost exclusively. There was a little room any […]

Don’t just go to them…, Make it easy for them to come to you

How to mine for hidden treasures on your website by capitalizing on traffic you might be missing out on, and then turn more browsers into inquirers and buyers 
The key to online marketing is relevance. Relevance drives both your pagerank and your conversions. The secret to relevance is segmentation and targeting of your offers and messaging. […]

Springtime in Cleveland

We always know that springtime has arrived in Cleveland when the crocuses start to bloom.
We’re not out of the woods yet. It could still snow, and it’s still a little chilly, but at least we know we’re moving in the right direction.
It’s time to clean the yard of the remnants of winter. Time to open the […]

B2B Lead Generation Systems

When the going get’s tough, the tough get marketing.
Crisis “schmisis”.
There are still mouths to feed. Mortgages and taxes to pay.
Clevelanders, like most Americans, will do what we’ve always done.
We’ll make the best of things, and we’ll move on.
In the spirit of making the best of things, and of moving on, as well as helping companies make more money […]

What’s Good About Fine Disregard?

Here’s a picture of the University of Texas Longhorns Rugby Football Club visiting Rugby School in Warwickshire, England. That’s me in the lower left hand corner.
We went on a tour in January 1987. It was one of those “Dave Robbins Rugby Tours”, and there were matches arranged on our behalf in (1) Upton-upon-Severn, Worcester (2) Bedlinog, Wales (3) Malvern, Worcestershire, and (4) Tonbridge Wells, […]

Ultimate Secrets of B2B Lead Gen

Here is a White Paper about using Direct Mail for high-response lead generation.
This 6-page document is using old-school direct mail copywriting techniques, and I’m using the old Army formula of 1) Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, 2) tell ‘em, and then (3) then I tell ’em what I told ‘em. It’s surprising how many […]

Small Business Internet Marketing

This started as a simple 5-page site that morphed into a little bit more, but not too much. The idea was to create a simple website in 2-days, similar to one that I could create for a small business owner; in essence a “presence, promotion, and hosting package” that is affordable, and could help a business […]

The Sea Venture

My Uncle Carl Bunge completed his research on our family geneaology, and has traced my ancestors from Boone County, Missouri to the early settlement of Jamestown, Virginia in 1610. Micajah Gipson Proctor settled on a homestead in 1817 near present-day Sapp, Missouri, prior to the founding of the State, and I’m the 7th generation of Proctors from that line.
Prior to […]

“If”

By Rudyard Kipling 
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way […]