Lance Pincock
Poet. Marketer. Storyteller.
Founder of The Cash Flow Method. Creator of The Hidden Layer. English major. Father. Dungeon master.
"The one question nobody in marketing asks isn't 'what does this person want to buy.' It's not 'what problem do they have.' It's: what does this person believe about themselves?"
from "What Your Buyers Actually Want"
Contents
- i. What I Do 3
- ii. What I'm Writing 7
- iii. Marginalia 12
- iv. What I Play 17
- v. What I'm Reading 23
- vi. About the Author 27
- vii. The Journal 31
- viii. Say Hello 35
What I Do
Every project starts with the same question: what is the person on the other side of this actually trying to say? I listen first. Then I write.
The Cash Flow Method
I built a marketing firm around the idea that you should understand your buyers before you write a single word to them. Research first. Language second. 215+ primary sources before anyone touches a headline.
Visit the firm →The Hidden Layer
This is the research methodology I developed. It draws on Rene Girard's mimetic theory, Gerald Zaltman's deep metaphor research, narrative psychology, and twenty years of direct response testing. The goal is simple: figure out what your buyers actually mean, not just what they say.
Speaking
I talk at marketing conferences, leadership retreats, and private workshops about the things I'm discovering. The Hidden Layer. The Mimetic Trap. Why most businesses are writing to an audience they've never actually listened to.
Somewhere between a talk and a confession
What I'm Writing
A book, some essays, and questions I haven't finished asking. I write long because the ideas deserve it.
Buyers
Actually
Want
What Your Buyers Actually Want
A conversation between two people trying to figure out why good businesses keep running bad marketing. Written as a dialogue because that's how I actually think: out loud, with someone pushing back.
Twelve chapters. Philosophy meets direct response. Girard meets the ad account. The poet in me wrote it; the marketer in me pressure-tested every line.
In development.Recent essays:
Buyer Psychology
The Assumption Machine
I keep finding the same thing: agencies feed demographics into a machine and nobody checks whether the inputs were real.
Philosophy
Rene Girard at the Ad Account
I brought Rene Girard's mimetic desire theory into the ad account and discovered it explains why every SaaS company runs the same three Facebook ad templates.
Theology
The Interior Life of the Buyer
Harold Bloom wrote about the interior life of literary characters. I started wondering what happens when you bring that same attention to the person reading your landing page at 11 PM on a Tuesday.
Marketing Theory
Against Cleverness
The best marketing I've ever written didn't win awards. It won trust. This is my case against the industry's addiction to being clever when it should be trying to be honest.
Marginalia
Fragments, observations, half-finished thoughts. The stuff I scribble next to underlined passages at two in the morning. Not essays yet. Maybe someday.
What I Play
Tabletop RPGs are collaborative novels nobody writes alone. Video games are the solo version: stories you inhabit rather than read. Both taught me more about storytelling than any writing workshop.
Tabletop campaigns:
Mothership RPG
Sci-Fi HorrorI built an AI Warden named Marvin to run campaigns. He handles Pound of Flesh and Hull Breach with procedural generation, dynamic NPCs, and a memory system that never forgets when your crew makes a terrible decision.
Collaborative horror fiction where the narrator actively wants you to fail. It's the most fun I've had building anything.
Play the AI Warden →Vampire: The Masquerade
Gothic HorrorClassic World of Darkness. Political intrigue, existential dread, and the question every kindred faces: how much of your humanity will you trade for power?
Byron would have loved it. Shelley would have played a Malkavian.
Video games I keep coming back to:
What I'm Reading
Current reads, recurring influences, and the lines I keep returning to. This isn't a reading list. It's a map of every rabbit hole I'm currently down.
Philosophy + Theory
Literature + Poetry
← currently reading
Lines I keep returning to
Rene Girard
W.B. Yeats
Benjamin Franklin
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Anne Sexton
About the Author
Still figuring it out
I'm a poet, a marketer, and a natural storyteller. I use words to make the world a better place. That sounds like a big claim, so let me tell you how I got here.
I studied English literature in college. Anne Sexton for the raw nerve of it. Thomas Mann for the slow patience of a sentence that earns its ending. Douglas Adams for the reminder that the universe is fundamentally absurd and you might as well laugh. Then I taught myself marketing. Not by accident. On purpose. Because I realized that marketing is just writing with accountability: you find out immediately whether your words moved someone.
After years in direct response, I kept finding the same pattern: campaigns fail before the first word is written. They fail in the assumptions. The audience profile built from demographics and guesswork. The creative brief that sounds authoritative but contains nothing real. So I built The Hidden Layer: a research methodology that listens before it speaks. 215+ primary sources before anyone touches a headline.
I run The Cash Flow Method, but this site isn't about the firm. This is where I write, play, and think out loud about buyer psychology, tabletop RPGs, theology, and the places where storytelling and commerce share a border. This is the notebook, not the business card.
I'm a father, an English major, a Girard nerd, and a dungeon master. I drink yerba mate, never coffee. And I believe the best marketing and the best poetry come from the same place: listening so carefully to another person that you can say back to them the thing they haven't been able to say for themselves.
The Journal
Essays, observations, and arguments with myself. Some about marketing. Some about philosophy. Some about video games. All written at hours I should have been sleeping.
February 3, 2026 · Marketing
The Scapegoat in Your Ad Account
Every underperforming campaign has a sacrificial lamb. Usually it's the creative. Usually the creative isn't the problem.
February 7, 2026 · Gaming
Ramza Didn't Win. He Disappeared.
Final Fantasy Tactics is the best marketing case study nobody talks about. The guy who told the truth got erased from history, and the liar became king.
February 12, 2026 · Writing
What My English Degree Actually Taught Me About Selling
Nobody recommends an English degree for marketing. That's because the people recommending things went to business school and learned to copy each other.
February 17, 2026 · Philosophy
Harold Bloom Walks Into a Marketing Meeting
The literary critic who said every reading is a misreading accidentally explained why your customers ignore your ads.
February 21, 2026 · Philosophy
The Immortality Project You're Building and Won't Admit
Ernest Becker said every human enterprise is secretly a bid to outlive death. Your business is no exception. Neither is mine.
February 26, 2026 · Writing
Sitting with Data Like Hans Castorp Sat with Tuberculosis
Thomas Mann wrote 700 pages about a man who went to a sanatorium for three weeks and stayed seven years. That's what real research feels like.
March 2, 2026 · Marketing
Why Every Agency Sounds Like Every Other Agency
I pulled the homepages of 40 marketing agencies. 37 of them used the word "results-driven." This is not a coincidence. This is Girard.
March 5, 2026 · Writing
Anne Sexton and the Courage to Say the Actual Thing
She wrote poems that made people physically uncomfortable. That's the standard. Not comfortable. True.
March 9, 2026 · Personal
The Mission Question
When your kid asks you what you do all day and you realize your answer sounds like a LinkedIn headline, something has gone wrong.
March 14, 2026 · Marketing
215 Sources Before a Single Word
I read 215 primary sources about one client's buyers before I wrote a single line of copy. Everyone thought I was stalling. I was loading the gun.
March 18, 2026 · Philosophy
The Universe Is Ridiculous and So Is Your Funnel
Douglas Adams understood something about absurdity that every marketer needs to hear: the answer to everything is 42, and nobody remembers the question.
March 22, 2026 · Philosophy
Elaine Pagels and the Mythology Your Brand Keeps Accidentally Building
The origins of Satan aren't what you think. Neither are the origins of your brand story. Both were manufactured by institutions that needed an enemy.
March 29, 2026 · Marketing
The Anti-Mimetic Postcard
We rewrote a client's direct mail piece by finding every phrase their competitors also used, then saying the opposite. Response rate tripled.
April 1, 2026 · Gaming
What Dungeon Mastering Teaches You About Leading a Team
The best DMs never force a plot. They build a world and let the players destroy it. The best leaders do the same thing.
April 4, 2026 · Marketing
The Ache Nobody Talks About: Why Business Owners Hate Their Own Agencies
I've had the same conversation with 40 different founders. They all say the same thing: "I don't trust them but I don't know enough to fire them."
April 7, 2026 · Philosophy
Zaltman's Deep Metaphors and the Buyer Who Couldn't Explain Why She Bought
Gerald Zaltman proved that 95% of purchasing decisions happen below conscious awareness. Your survey is asking the wrong brain.
April 10, 2026 · Marketing
Pretty Pages, Dead Copy
The most beautiful website I ever built converted at 0.3%. The ugliest one I ever wrote converted at 11%. Design is not intelligence.
April 13, 2026 · Marketing
The 97.75% Problem
97.75% of people who see your marketing will never buy from you. Not because your ads are bad. Because you're talking to the wrong version of them.
April 16, 2026 · Writing
Writing a Book in Dialogue Because Essays Are Cowardly
I chose to write my entire book as a conversation between two people because it's harder to hide behind abstractions when someone is pushing back in real time.
Say Hello
Whether you want to book a speaking engagement, talk about a project, collaborate on something unexpected, or just keep a conversation going that started in one of these essays: I read every message.
lance@thecashflowmethod.com