The biggest decisions I ever made didn’t seem big at the time.

I’ll bet the same is true for you.

Pivotal changes in direction seem obvious to us 10 years later, but during that tiny moment when we alter our course a little, it feels like a very small thing.

Here are 4 small, pivotal moments that loom large in my mind today.

Moment #1: I was a 22-year-old advertising salesman who was rapidly going bald. Every business owner I met was trying to decide, “Where should I invest my ad budget?”

One morning I heard myself answer, “I don’t care where you spend your money. The thing that matters most is what you say in your ads.”

The man didn’t believe me.

But I believed me.

The direction of my future was altered by a few degrees in that singular, magical moment.

Moment #2, about 18 months later:

I was writing exceptional ads and everyone was dancing except me. I knew something was missing, but I didn’t know what. And it was bugging me.

I looked into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror for about a minute one morning. And then I said out loud, “Why am I not seeing better results?”

My reflection reached out from that mirror, slapped my face, grabbed my collar and pulled me in so closely that my nose was pressed into the glass. I could feel its breath on my ear as it whispered, “You are reaching too many people with too little repetition.”

You never forget a thing like that.

Moment #3: I was pondering the “Reach and Frequency Analysis” of my media schedule that had been calculated for me by the most famous data company in America and It said everything was fine. But I knew I was reaching too many people with too little repetition. That was the problem.

I found the cause of that problem – and the solution to it – buried deep in the methodology of how advertising everywhere is measured, sold, purchased, and evaluated.

Good science is distorted by our erroneous assumptions. We gather perfectly accurate data and then misinterpret it. We rarely question our assumptions, especially when they are part of the universally accepted way of “How Things are Done.”

If you could see the mistakes that hide in your blind spot, it would not be called “a blind spot.”

Misinterpretation of data is an irresistible tide that carries every boat in the wrong direction.

The first fatal mistake occurs so early in the process of data processing that we never really question it.

The second fatal mistake happens during the implementation stage. You assume that spreading your small ad budget across different media is the right thing to do because everyone does it. This idea of a “media mix” is practiced by all the largest advertisers and taught in every university. They say to their marketing students, “This is what the biggest companies do. You should imitate them.”

But here’s the dead fly in that bowl of soup: When a company has a much bigger ad budget than everyone else in their category, they can aim that firehouse across several media and soak everyone with relentless repetition.

But you don’t have a firehouse. You have a watering can.

If you use your watering can properly, you’ll be able to afford a garden hose. And if you use that garden hose properly, you will soon be able to afford a fire hose.

The water in your watering can should be used to water all the people you can reach with sufficient repetition.

“with sufficient repetition.”

“with sufficient repetition.”

Repetition is the non-negotiable you must protect at all cost.

When you reach too many people with too little repetition, no one gets wet, and you stay small.

NOTE: I am dangerously oversimplifying the solution when I say that you can achieve automatic, involuntary recall