Poet. Marketer. Storyteller.

I use words to make the world a better place.

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.

Book a Conversation See What I Play
*People assume English majors stumble into marketing. I walked in through the front door. Poetry taught me precision, fiction taught me empathy, and direct response taught me accountability. The combination turned out to be the point.
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"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

Here's what I'm finding

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.

01

Marketing Firm

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.
02

Research Methodology

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.

03

Talks + Workshops

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.

"I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world."

Rainer Maria Rilke

What I'm Writing

A book, some essays, and questions I haven't finished asking

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.

What Your
Buyers
Actually
Want
Lance Pincock

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.

"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

The Assumption Machine

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

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. Literature professors and media buyers have more in common than either would admit.

Theology

The Interior Life of the Buyer

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

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.

"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 Adams

Marginalia

Things I keep writing in the margins

Fragments, observations, half-finished thoughts. The stuff I scribble next to underlined passages at two in the morning. Not essays yet. Maybe someday.

On choosing this
"I didn't accidentally become a marketer. I taught myself on purpose. The words don't feel like me when they're just selling. They feel like me when they're telling the truth about something that matters. That's why I do this. Marketing is writing. Writing is how I make the world a little better."
Identity
*Anne Sexton wrote with her whole chest. That's the standard. Not clever. Honest. The willingness to say the true thing even when the comfortable thing pays better.
On sitting with it
Thomas Mann could spend forty pages on a single afternoon in The Magic Mountain. He understood that depth is not speed. I keep coming back to that when I'm knee-deep in buyer research. You don't rush insight. You sit with the data the way Mann sat with Hans Castorp on that mountain, and you wait for it to tell you something you didn't expect. The poem arrives when it's ready. So does the truth about your market.
Process
On saying less
"Every meeting that could have been an email is a small crime against the human attention span. Every email that should have been a conversation is a larger one. Most marketing copy commits both crimes simultaneously."
Craft
*I have committed all three. Repeatedly. With enthusiasm. The poet in me winces every time.
On the table
Running a tabletop RPG and writing marketing copy require the same skill: listening so carefully to the people in front of you that you can build a world they actually want to inhabit. Both fail the moment you stop paying attention to the players. I learned storytelling at the gaming table before I ever learned it in an agency.
TTRPGs / Storytelling
On the degree
"People ask what you can do with an English degree. Here's what I found: you can hear what someone means underneath what they say. You can notice when the story a person tells about themselves doesn't match the story their actions tell. You can write a sentence that changes how someone sees themselves. These turn out to be the only skills that matter in marketing."
Education
*It also means I have strong opinions about semicolons; this has been less useful, professionally.

"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard."

Anne Sexton

What I Play

Stories I tell out loud

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

🚀 Sci-Fi Horror

Mothership RPG

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.

Active campaign

Play the AI Warden →
🦇 Gothic Horror

Vampire: The Masquerade

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.

Looking for a table
TTRPG table setup
[PHOTO: Game night setup, table with maps and minis]
[PHOTO: Marvin AI Warden app, session in progress]
[PHOTO: RPG book collection on shelf]
[PHOTO: Dice collection close-up, dramatic lighting]

Steam Library

Most Played
Connected via Steam API
[Game Header]
Final Fantasy Tactics
Currently playing / Chapter 3
[Game Header]
Baldur's Gate 3
--- hrs on record
[Game Header]
Elden Ring
--- hrs on record
[Game Header]
Divinity: Original Sin 2
--- hrs on record
[Game Header]
Disco Elysium
--- hrs on record
[Game Header]
VTM: Bloodlines
--- hrs on record

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

Thomas Mann

What I'm Reading

Where my thinking lives

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

  • The Gnostic Gospels
    Elaine Pagels
  • Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
    Rene Girard
  • The Anxiety of Influence
    Harold Bloom
  • The Western Canon
    Harold Bloom
  • How Customers Think
    Gerald Zaltman
  • The Magic Mountain
    Thomas Mann
  • The Complete Poems
    Anne Sexton

Lines I Keep Returning To

  • "Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind."
    Rene Girard
  • "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
    W.B. Yeats
  • "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing."
    Benjamin Franklin
  • "To understand is to transform what is."
    Jiddu Krishnamurti
  • "I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seeds every spring and never counts the cost."
    Anne Sexton
Company The Cash Flow Method
Method The Hidden Layer
Education B.A. English Literature
Influences Rene Girard, Harold Bloom, Anne Sexton, Thomas Mann, Douglas Adams
Roots Rene Girard, Harold Bloom, Gerald Zaltman, Elaine Pagels
Location Western United States
Fuel Guayaki Yerba Mate
Current Writing a book, running campaigns, raising a son

About

I chose this on purpose

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.

*My son once asked me what I do for work. I said, "I help people figure out what other people want." He said, "So you're a mind reader?" Close enough.

Contact

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. I'm better at listening than you'd expect from a writer.

lance@thecashflowmethod.com
🎤 Speaking inquiries
🤝 Collaboration and projects
📚 Book pre-launch notifications
👋 Just saying hi