So honored! I’m a CMA Top 100 Influencer & Strategist for 2024. Grateful to the amazing customers, partners, and colleagues who make it all possible! Thank you to everyone at Base (formerly Crowdvocate) for making this possible. Base’s mission is to maximize revenue through engagement by taking your customers and teams on a journey for higher retention, lifetime value, and advocacy.
To me, “going vegan” was not about being trendy or better-than-thou, showing anyone up, or guilting anyone into doing what I have come to believe is the right thing. It’s just what my wife and I have done in our household after our younger daughter introduced us to it back in 2016.
Below you’ll find links leading to literally thousands of choices ranging from tasty to delicious to downright delectable. In this piece, we:
A programming note: this post is rigorously sourced, but I couldn’t get references to click to the endnotes for you. Links that simply open to company websites and the like, not part of a news story, are embedded in text. Those sourced from research reports and news stories have a notation, from |a| to |z| and more. Either way, all links open the way God intended them to: in a new tab =;-D 
At post’s end you’ll find all endnotes with sources, titles, and the same links.
These burgers feature something that would surprise those who haven’t tried them: THEY TASTE GREAT. Even if I weren’t a plant-based enthusiast, I would never go back to “regular” burgers.
As reflected in the opening image, we love Beyond Meat Burgers at TGI Fridays. Having had every burger Fridays makes over the years, to us these are the best and tastiest on the menu. We are also proud and happy $BYND shareholders.
Burger King rolled out its Impossible Whopper to rave reviews across the US and Impossible products are available in a handful of other countries. Beyond Meat products have far greater reach, currently sold in the US parts of EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. Both companies are of course looking to expand into other markets. Continue reading
In my past work in marketing and public relations I’ve gotten a client or two placed in the New York Times, but now my own name appears in “those hallowed halls”–which is a phrase I reserve for those pages where the Times is not trying to tell us how we should all feel about politics. No, these are the informative-and-topical hallowed halls of the Times. A Travel feature in the Business Day section.
And wow, it’s a WHOLE paragraph. At the very end of an article. But it IS the New York Times. When you get your name in the Times, you salute the flag and say, “Thank you, Sir, may I have another [mention in the Times someday]?”
Typical for a major media outlet, the person who interviewed me spoke with me for about a half-hour, yet most readers can polish off my Paragraph of Fame in seconds. Did I tell them who I work for, and provide my title, and spell it all out for the interviewer? Yes. Did I ever once say I was “a business consultant”? No. But again..it’s…the New York Times.
And they spelled “Cotrupe” correctly. MAJOR bonus points for that.
Here’s the link to my moment in the sun. Enjoy.
Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators
FAR AND AWAY
Apocalyptic Love
There are a zillion lyrics pages out there. (Okay, more.) Why create one for this song? Because even the best of the best lyrics sites have not, in my good listening ear’s opinion, captured the true lyrics for this epic piece of music. Many come quite close but fall short a “give it tomorrow” here or an “I’m so alone” there. I believe I’ve captured the correct intersection of lyrical sets here.
Those who know me best know I love music across the spectrum from heart-wrenching symphonic movie soundtracks to smooth jazz to rockin’ country to crash-and-burn, deliciously vicious hard rock and metal. What I love most, though, are intelligently-constructed minor key cavalcades, melodic and molten and beautiful, and capable of shaking arenas and stadiums off their foundations. Continue reading
It Was Just a Thought™ 