Last Call

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For more than four decades, I’ve made a living helping businesses grow, products find their markets, brands find their voices, and sales teams find their customers. I’ve worked in business development, product development, product launches, marketing, communications, and sales. Along the way, I’ve seen great ideas become successful businesses, promising ideas go nowhere, smart people make bad decisions, and ordinary people make remarkably good ones.

I’ve also learned that experience is only valuable if you do something with it.

That’s the idea behind Last Call.

I’ve reached a point in my career where I want to share more of what I’ve learned, not from textbooks, business theories, or the latest management trend, but from actually doing the work. Four decades provide plenty of stories. Some are about successes. Some are about failures. And some are about those moments when you realize, usually a little later than you would have preferred, that the lesson was more valuable than the outcome.

I plan to tell those stories.

I’ll write about developing products and bringing them to market. About building brands and generating demand. About selling ideas before you can sell products. About customers, competitors, agencies, manufacturers, salespeople, entrepreneurs, executives, and the personalities that make business endlessly fascinating. I’ll talk about what worked, what didn’t, what I would do differently, and what I still believe works today.

But Last Call isn’t simply about looking backward.

I also want to put those years of experience to work for people facing decisions right now. That’s why I’m opening the door to one-to-one consulting with business owners, executives, marketers, sales leaders, entrepreneurs, and others who could benefit from an experienced perspective across the table.

No elaborate consulting process. No army of people. No 100-page presentation telling you what you already know.

Just a conversation focused on the problem, opportunity, idea, product, market, or decision sitting in front of you.

Sometimes you need research. Sometimes you need strategy. Sometimes you need someone willing to challenge your assumptions. And sometimes you simply need to talk with someone who has been around long enough to recognize a problem because he has seen a version of it before.

I certainly don’t have all the answers.

But after four decades in business, I have better questions.

And very often, that’s where the answer begins.

So, consider this Last Call.

Not because I’m finished.

Because I have a few things worth sharing before they call closing time.

— Shawn Draper