What Culture Does America Have?
A Marketing Tip
What I’m Reading
From the Research File
Pun of the Day
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I overheard a conversation the other day on a podcast-in-the-background while I was doing dishes. Somebody posed a question that stopped me mid-scrub.
What culture does America even have?
Said like a gotcha. You know, like the answer was obviously “none.”
And I stood there with soap up to my elbows, genuinely offended on behalf of my own country.
Because here’s the thing. Whoever asked that question wasn’t looking for an answer. They’d already decided.
I’ll tell you what I decided, standing at that sink, working through it in my head the way I do my best thinking… mid-chore, half-distracted, fully irritated.
America is cowboys and rodeos and the frontier spirit that said keep going west, there’s more out there.
It’s Southern hospitality that’ll feed you before it asks your name.
It’s California surf culture and New York ambition, two coasts that don’t agree on much except that they’re both right.
It’s Midwestern communities where somebody notices if your porch light’s been out three nights running.
It’s jazz. Blues. Rock and roll. Hip-hop. Music that didn’t just entertain the world, it rearranged it.
It’s Hollywood and Broadway and some of the most influential artists who ever picked up an instrument or stepped in front of a camera.
It’s Silicon Valley dreaming up things nobody asked for and then making us wonder how we lived without them.
It’s NASA looking up at the moon and deciding we’re going there… and then going.
It’s universities and laboratories, research that takes decades and doesn’t make headlines until it saves somebody’s life.
It’s inventors tinkering in garages.
It’s entrepreneurs betting everything on an idea nobody else believed in yet.
It’s baseball, basketball, football.
Diners at 2am (hello Waffle House!)
Barbecues that turn into all-day events nobody planned.
Thanksgiving tables stretched with a card table because you ran out of room.
And under all of it, it’s a military culture built on courage and honor and service to something bigger than yourself. Generations of people who put themselves between danger and the rest of us. Some of them didn’t come home. That’s not decoration, it’s foundation.
None of that is one thing and you know what? that’s the point.
This country was never going to have a culture, singular, tidy, one flavor. It was meant to have a hundred cultures stacked on top of each other. Cultures brought by people who literally came from everywhere around the globe. People who carried everything they knew with them and added their knowledge and experience and yes, culture, to the stack.
That’s not the absence of culture.
That is the culture.
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Want fries with that? Hmmmmm….
You just closed the sale.
Customer said yes, money’s changing hands, everybody’s feeling good.
You know that’s not the finish line, right? In all truth, that’s the best moment you’ll have with that customer.
Here’s why:
they just told you, with their wallet, that they trust you.
You’re not some stranger pitching them cold anymore. In their eyes, you’re the person who knows what they need.
That kind of trust doesn’t come around twice a day.
So the question I have for you is this… are you using it, or are you letting it walk out the door?
Because here’s what I see happen, over and over, in businesses that are otherwise doing everything right: they sell the one thing, say thank you, and stop.
Meanwhile the customer would’ve gladly said yes to the thing that goes with it. The upgrade. The add-on. The protection plan. The bundle that makes the first purchase work better.
Nobody’s doing this on purpose, by the way. No business owner wakes up and decides, “Today I will limit how much value my clients get from me.” It just... happens. You get so focused on making the sale that you forget the sale was never the ceiling, it was the opening.
And look, the numbers back this up. Offer the right add-on, for the right reason, with real value behind it and something like sixty percent of your clients will take you up on it.
Here’re a few examples from my own businesses:
Research customer, sale made via a Zoom call.
They purchased a market research project that would result in an indexed document that included demographics, psychographics, purchase history, competitive intelligence (companies and product). I asked if they had someone on staff ready to take that information and turn it into a full marketing strategy and plan with tactics, metrics and milestones, and timelines. They said they would tackle that later. I told them I, and my team, could do that. They purchased that additional work from me.
Ecommerce customer, sale made after a quiz funnel.
Add-ons offered were visible on the product selection page. Add-ons included 3 more of the same product, a magnetic version of the product, delivery insurance, waterproof version of the product. 70% of customers took 1 or 2 of the add-ons.
So ask yourself: could the people buying from you be getting more? More protection, more benefit, more of an edge, just by knowing the option exists?
If you’re even nodding a little, you owe it to them to say something. Not because it fattens your bottom line, though that’s a nice benefit to you. Do it because they came to you for the whole picture, and you can give it to them.
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The Radio Hour by Victoria Purman
Oh, this one’s a good one. But… it’s got a sting in it, and I want to talk about both.
On the surface, it’s a delight. Set in 1950s Australia, the golden age of radio, all the glamour and magic of that world (I say this because there was a time I would have loved to been involved with radio).
Martha Berry’s nearly fifty, unmarried, and she’s spent her whole career being one of those women who shows up, does the actual work, and gets none of the credit for it.
Then a young man straight out of university gets handed the job of writing and producing a new radio drama. A job he is, frankly, not equipped for. And, Martha ends up quietly saving the whole thing from behind the scenes.
It’s funny and warm. And I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
But here’s where it got me, sitting there reading… it started as a light read and then it wasn’t.
What struck me wasn’t that this was happening in Australia, half a world and a whole ocean away from where I’m sitting. It was that it wasn’t foreign at all. I mean, really, it’s the same story, different accent.
Men getting the byline for work women quietly built from the ground up. And the harder part? A lot of those women weren’t even fighting it. They’d been raised to be unobtrusive. Polite. Small. Told, one way or another, that stepping forward wasn’t their place.
That’s recent history, right? Some of it my own, to be honest.
So yes, read it for the charm, the wit, the little victories Martha wins for herself along the way. Don’t be surprised if you’re of a certain age with more white/gray than usual hair color, when the other part hits you.
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aka random bits of info you may or may not be able to use in your life
Pre-famine Ireland basically ran on potatoes and buttermilk.
Somewhere between a third and a half of the country’s roughly 8 million people lived almost entirely on potatoes, with an adult man getting through 5 to 6 kg (12 to 14 lb) of them a day. Remember, this is way before fad diets were a thing.
It mostly worked.
Potatoes are surprisingly close to nutritionally complete on their own, and buttermilk patches most of what’s missing… like iron, folate, niacin, vitamin E.
So no, I’m not suggesting you try it. Your nutritionist would have words, and the boredom alone would break you.
What is good to know is that sometimes the plainest combination does the job longer than anybody expects.
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I’m reading a book about potatoes. It’s really a-peeling.
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
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May your phone always be at least 20% battery when you really need it.
Charlene Burke
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