Start Here – Welcome to Mike’s Marketing Lab

You found the Lab. Here’s what it is, how it works, and where to begin.

What This Is

Mike’s Marketing Lab is a free, open-source marketing education built on one premise: the best marketing lessons come from doing the work, not talking about it.

I’ve spent six years building the marketing operation at ANCORE, a fitness equipment company, from a garage on the north shore of Boston to serving over 20,000 gyms worldwide. Everything I publish here comes from that experience, real campaigns, real budgets, real results, combined with lessons from the books, podcasts, films, and cross-domain thinking that inform how I work.

No paywalls. No courses. Just the marketing education I wish I’d had when I started.

How I Think About Marketing

Three frameworks give the Lab its structure. You’ll see them show up across different posts:

Communication as Strategy — Communication isn’t just how you talk about your strategy. It is your strategy. The way you frame, position, and articulate creates competitive advantage on its own. How you say something matters as much as what you’re selling.

Influence Compounds — The best marketing investments appreciate over time. Audience trust, brand equity, and institutional knowledge compound the same way money does. Systems beat tactics. Patience beats speed. Building something that gets stronger every year beats any single campaign win.

Infrastructure Over Campaigns — Build systems that appreciate in value rather than campaigns that depreciate. Your email list, your customer relationships, your content library — these are assets. A single ad campaign is an expense. Know the difference.

How the Lab Works

I publish one post per week. Each piece falls into one of a few categories:

Original Frameworks — New ways to think about marketing problems, grounded in real experience. These are the posts where I’m building something, not just reporting on what others have built.

Lessons from the Field — Direct dispatches from my work at ANCORE. What worked, what didn’t, and what I’d do differently. Specifics, not generalities.

Cross-Domain Thinking — Connections between marketing and everything else I’m studying: business history, psychology, storytelling, sports, politics, whatever rabbit hole I’m currently down. The best marketing thinking often comes from outside marketing.

The Almanack — A running collection of short, specific tips from six years of building a bootstrapped marketing operation. Think of it as a reference shelf you can return to.

What You Won’t Find Here

Guru-speak. Growth hacks. “The secret to 10x-ing your revenue.” Recycled listicles. Advice from people who’ve never run a campaign with their own money on the line.

If something I publish doesn’t pass a simple test — could someone have written this without actually doing the work? — it doesn’t go up.

Stay in the Loop

One email per week. That’s it. No spam, no upsells, no “exclusive limited-time offers.” Just the next post, delivered to your inbox.

Say Hello

I read every message. If you have a question, a topic you’d like me to write about, or you just want to talk shop — reach out at mikesmarketinglab101@gmail.com.