Poet. Marketer. Storyteller.
I'm an English major who taught himself marketing on purpose. Turns out it's just another form of storytelling. I built The Hidden Layer because buyers deserve to be understood, not manipulated. And on Thursday nights, I run tabletop RPGs where everyone might die.
"The system did not fail you because you were difficult. It failed you because it was never designed to see you."From "What Your Buyers Actually Want"
What I Do
Every project I take on 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.
Marketing Firm
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.
Research Methodology
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.
Talks + Workshops
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.
"I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world."
Rainer Maria RilkeWhat I'm Writing
I write long. About buyer psychology, marketing philosophy, mimetic theory, and the places where theology and commerce share a border. These aren't blog posts. They take their time because the ideas deserve it.
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.
"The system did not fail you because you were difficult. It failed you because it was never designed to see you."
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. Notify me at launch.
Buyer Psychology
I keep finding the same thing: agencies feed demographics into a machine and nobody checks whether the inputs were real. This essay is about what happens when you finally do.
Philosophy
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. Literature professors and media buyers have more in common than either would admit.
Theology
Harold Bloom, the literary critic, 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. This is what I found.
Marketing Theory
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.
"The answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is forty-two. The problem, it was suggested, was that no one had ever properly understood the question."
Douglas AdamsMarginalia
Fragments, observations, half-finished thoughts. The stuff I scribble next to underlined passages at two in the morning. Not essays yet. Maybe someday.
"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard."
Anne SextonWhat I Play
Tabletop RPGs are collaborative novels that 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. Both keep me up way too late.
Tabletop RPGs
I 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.
Classic World of Darkness. Political intrigue, existential dread, and the question every kindred faces: how much of your humanity will you trade for power? The poet in me loves this game.
Byron would have loved it. Shelley would have played a Malkavian. I'm still looking for the right table.
"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
Thomas MannWhat 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.
On the Nightstand
Lines I Keep Returning To
About
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. I live in the western US. 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.
Contact
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. I'm better at listening than you'd expect from a writer.
lance@thecashflowmethod.com