George W. Bush recently addressed America saying that although our economy is strong and our wages have not followed suit over the past 2-3 years, the best solution is to start teaching more math and science to our youth.

The only thing I have to say to Mr. Dubya Bush is that perhaps we should inspire our youth to use the left side of their brain. Maybe spend more in art and music classes. Kids today spend soo much time on the internet that they are rapidly discovering cliff notes and how to paraphrase and copy someone else’s work at a younger age than ever before. Creativity in the classroom is dwindling every year.

We have to allow our children’s imaginations to rule. Our children do not need more math and science to help our wages go up. Just look at the iPod invention. It solved the problem of having blaring boom boxes, eliminating the need to carry a cd case around, and allow you to easily jog while listening to music. That invention helped create thousands of new jobs and boost our economy along with helping save Apple.

As an adult I see the majority of business owners, especially in the small town I currently live in while attending college, completely clueless to their surroundings. No wonder the phrase “think outside of the box” was coined years ago to encourage creativity in today’s growing world of copycat businesses.

The copycat ideology of Americans has gone to extremes. We need templates for everything now from sales letters, business cards, brochures, resumes, blogs, websites, letterheads, logos, and so much more.

Templates are not the only problem surrounding our pure lack of effort. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to get a business owner to tell me exactly how his marketing dollars are being returned. They are completely clueless on how to track their investments. Do you think a person with $50,000 invested into the stock market would just ‘not know’ where his money is coming and going? Of course not and small business owners should be doing the same.

Consequently, these small business owners become quickly grumpy when they don’t see the results they were expecting by advertising in “Tid Bits.” They are the number on source of victimization while watching late night infomercials touting get rich schemes and real estate foreclosures.

The Caffeine Marketing way about this is obvious. Caffeine Marketing would tell these business owners that they are not doing it all. They are looking to their competitors and other businesses and copying everything.

My bottom line:

Only the strong will survive. All of these small business owners are so wrapped up in a circle of copy cat marketing incest that every ‘new’ idea is usually copied from some other business. Marketing is becoming very pathetic. We have to start educating ourselves to stop looking for inspiration from just anyone. Gradually, you’ll start to see outside of the box and create great marketing tools that others have never even thought of if you stick to it.

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