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Moving To Mexico

September 27, 2019 By Peter 24 Comments

Moving To Mexico – Perfecto

A 2019 Update: The Moving To Mexico post below was written when I achieved my 2016 goal of moving to Mexico. I’ll keep most of the detail intact to keep Google’s indexing happy.

This blog post has been read over 3,000 times. Guess I am not alone in thinking of moving to Mexico – or somewhere else. 

I am now 3 years in. Live here full-time. My wife and I built a house (that’s it in the picture).

I am maintaining my global advertising agency consultancy and am way into a major multi-year global photography project.

I am convinced that I made the right move. San Miguel de Allende is great (and has been named the best city in the world by Travel & Leisure).

By the way, check out my 210 San Miguel de Allende portraits photography series, La Gente. Please pass it on, especially to Americans.

Side note: Americans ask me all the time about the why and how I moved to Mexico. No, it is not just baby boomers. It seems that a lot of folks want to get to either a “NEXT” thing experience or just get the hell out of today’s USA – and figure out how to go digital across the globe. I did not move for political reasons. But, hey, living somewhere where lots of people smile every day and are not addicted to Google News is a ‘good thing’.

——————————————-

[The Original 2016 Blog Post]

Why Mexico? 

This post explains why I moved to Mexico, the where, the how and provides some details should you want to follow me. Yes, you can make a living in Mexico.

The move has been a two-year process for my wife and me to decide to make the move and then choose where to live. We selected San Miguel de Allende (for its culture and high-altitude weather) over Puerto Vallarta (too beachy); Baja (too close to California); the Yucatan (way too humid); Oaxaca (a close second); Mexico City (too crazy); or Lake Chapala (boring – though near Guadalajara).

I like moving to new places and do so about every 7 years. The upside is adventure and having to creatively deal with unknowns. The downside is leaving friends behind. But, some visit and Skype plus Facetime keeps everyone face-to-face.

In addition to pure wanderlust, there are other factors that seem to make me move. Here is a new one. I recently read the Wall Street Journal article, Nature or Nurture? What Makes You an Expat? Is a lust for travel, adventure and new surroundings built into your DNA? The article covers the idea that moving and living in a foreign country might be, partially, a function of your DNA. My kids are in their twenties and they now live in Buenos Aires and Budapest. Is the Levitan DNA responsible? Who knows. But, this is an interesting concept to digest.

By the way, that’s me up above C/O of an artist’s photo booth at a Mexico City art museum.

OK, so why am I moving to Mexico?

I grew up in New York City. Went to college in Boston and San Francisco. Then moved back to New York, to Minneapolis, to New Jersey when we had kids, to London and back. And, 15 years ago my family split from post 9/11 New York metro to go to Bend and then Portland, Oregon. Was it genes? Wanderlust? Career building? I think all of the above.

Why Mexico?

san-miguel-de-allende-mexico_87359_990x742We love Mexico and Mexicans. And, I can run my consultancy from anywhere, so why not head south.

We are not alone. Mexico has the highest number of American expats. The actual numbers are a bit flaky but the U.S. government estimates the number at over 1 million. These include people working in Mexico, folks just hanging out, Mexican Americans and a very large number of American retirees.

But, hey, this blog post is about me.

My reasons…

  • Numero uno: Adventure (life is short.) See David Bowie for inspiration. ‘”Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strange) Turn and face the strain. Ch-ch-Changes”
  • Our new home is San Miguel de Allende which is in the middle of the country. That’s one of its most famous scenes in the picture. SMA is one of the coolest towns in the world (yes, the world.) Here is what Huffington Post says.
  • If you don’t mind skipping heat and humidity, San Miguel de Allende’s weather is perfect (high desert at over 6,000 feet.) See the map at the bottom for its location.
  • The people in San Miguel are always smiling.
  • It’s safe. Please stop the silly ‘gringo’ question, “Is it safe?” Get this: most of Mexico is safer than New Orleans and Detroit. And, you know that if Americans stopped doing tons of coke, meth and heroin, we’d solve the cartels problem. The key is that you don’t go hang out where they do business.
  • The Mexican culture combines indigenous and Spanish cultural influences. There are endless street, art and music festivals and a very vibrant art scene.
  • The cost of living is about 60% of living in the USA. In our first ‘test’ year, we are renting a fully furnished 4 bedroom house with 3 days of housekeeper service and a gardener for $2,000 per month. At over 18 pesos per dollar, the dollar is as high as it has been in years.
  • San Miguel has the second best restaurant scene in the country. It has become a major weekend destination for people living in Mexico City.
  • Surrounding towns deliver sweet day trips to visit hot springs, local ice cream meccas and university towns. And… truly exciting things like a CostCo and the largest shopping mall in Latin America. I haven’t been there yet but will avoid a Chili’s if they have one.
  • I can easily fly nonstop to L.A., Dallas, and Houston out of two local airports and internationally from Mexico City.
  • Getting a long-term visa easy. Try living long-term in the U.K. or France or Thailand.
  • I’ll try to avoid CNN and FOX and MSNBC.
  • Oh, and I can work from anywhere I have a laptop and WIFI. Plus, my town is conveniently in the central time zone.

Have you considered living in Mexico?

googleA recent research study I did testing Google Consumer Research focused on where Americans want to retire. My findings show that 13% (13%!) of Americans between 45 and 65 “have considered retiring in Mexico”. By the way, you do use easy-to-use-super fast Google Research in your business development program, right?

Who will thrive in Mexico? [Read more…] about Moving To Mexico

A New Advertising Book?

September 12, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Should I Write Another Advertising Book?

Should you write your advertising (agency) book?

I’ve written and produced four books since I sold my Portland advertising agency in 2012. I am now thinking of “writing” a new advertising book based on a tight edit of the best thinking I’ve delivered on this blog. I currently have well over 300,000 words here. The blog posts have been viewed over 340,000 times.

I’ll discuss why to bother turning the blog into an advertising book a bit later in this post.

Some History. Books I’ve Written.

These include:

Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide. This was my training wheels book on the, dare I say it, interesting subject of using suicide as a financial planning tool. When I sold my agency, my accountant said there are two things we can control: how much money you have and how much you spend. However, there is another major factor we cannot control: how long your money has to last. I went, um, why can’t I control the length of my life. Buy Boomercide here.

The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. I have read every book on pitching and presenting. This is without question the best book on this subject. Join thousands of other agency leaders and buy this book here. Or, pitch against the agencies that read my tome, and, dare I say it, possibly lose.

Potlandia and Jointlandia are two photo books I researched and shot about the early days of the burgeoning legal cannabis market. I shot these because I am an in investor in Portland’s cannabis industry and was fascinated by the early attempts (almost hippie-like attempts) at product and retail branding in what is now a billion-dollar marketplace. You can see these books right here. While you are at it, take a look at my other photographs. I am currently traveling around the world to photograph people on every continent.

Why Write A Business Book?

I think that there are four reasons to write a business book – an advertising book by me, a consultant, or your agency. [Read more…] about A New Advertising Book?

Google And Your Advertising Agency Podcast

September 6, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Advertising agency podcast

Do you have an advertising agency podcast? Yes? Cool. If not, Google might give you a new reason to consider having one.

You know that Google wants to eat your advertising agency’s lunch. How? By moving their considerable power to a no click environment. That means in an ever-increasing search universe, many searchers, your Google target market, are getting all the information they need from the Google home page or directly from a Google service. Ever search for flights on Google? Chances are the first thing you did was to go to Google’s own flight search.

Big Time Google Advertising Agency Podcast SEO Benefits

Now Google wants to get on the podcast wagon. They’ll deliver podcast information directly in search results. Like, why search beyond Google on podcast platforms for podcasts. What do I mean? Here is some copy from Google itself.

“Starting today, when you’re searching for a podcast about a topic on Google – such as “podcasts about Awkwafina” or “Instant Pot recipe podcasts” – we’ll show you playable episodes in Search results alongside web pages, news, images and videos. We’ll surface these episodes based on Google’s understanding of what’s being talked about on a podcast, so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form.”

And from SEO-Hacker:

With podcasts becoming present in Google search results, this makes promoting podcasts much easier, while making them more accessible to a wider audience thanks to the increased searchability. The increased convenience helps make the listening experience more efficient while making more users discover new podcasts without having to browse and search through hosting platforms.

I’ll keep it simple:

Google will highlight information about individual podcasts in related searches. Example: Do you want to own an advertising-related podcast about “Instagram video advertising”? Google will find you.

Google will also transcribe some podcasts into text. Yikes!

This can be good stuff for your advertising agency podcast.

Ready? Go.

Beat the agency down the street to podcast subject ownership.

 

 

Ad Age Small Agency Conference Podcast

September 3, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

 

The Ad Age Ad Lib podcast recently interviewed Sunday Dinner’s Lindsey Slaby just ahead of her appearance at the 2019 Ad Age Small Agency Conference. Since many of you did not attend the conference or religiously listen to the Ad Age podcast (sooo, much to do!), I thought I’d share a few of Lindsey’s insider gems to give her perspective on the advertising industry and what clients want.

From Lindsey’s Twitter account: Founder of Sunday Dinner. Helping brands navigate how to work with the best and brightest agencies through consulting, workshops & partnership search. … Made In Brooklyn Summit speaker, Lindsey Slaby @lasslaby, is the founder of groundbreaking brand consultancy firm, Sunday Dinner.

Lindsey works with a wide range of well-known clients including Diageo, Target, Union Pacific, NBCU, Microsoft, Nickelodeon, Kate Spade, & MassMutual and sits with dozens of advertising agencies a year (she mentions that she had sat through over thirty pitches in a recent month.) Her perspective offers a deep inside look at today’s advertising industry – what it gets right and wrong.

To help isolate Lindsey’s golden nuggets, I transcribed the podcast interview and pulled out a few of the shiny bits. I’ve edited some of the copy for clarity and brevity. I also offer some of my own thoughts… Of course.

Lindsey Slaby’s Ad Age Golden Nuggets

Small Agencies Are Doing Well, But

Lindsey: There’s so much appeal right now to work with the smaller agencies. They’re incredibly busy, incredibly busy.They’re building these businesses. My fear is sometimes that they are, they started, they got a client, they got going, they got a lot of momentum, they have relationships, and they’re just going to keep driving towards revenue, versus actually figuring out, what’s the business model we want to have internally? How are we attracting and retaining great talent?

How do you scale the right way? And how do you make sure you really deliver for those clients? Because one of the things I guess I say a lot is, if you get an A in client service, you’re going to keep my business and earn my business, even if you get a C in creative. If we’re hiring, especially if you’re a brand that’s taking a risk to hire a new agency, which is essentially working with a startup, you need them to deliver for you, keep you informed, and have amazing client service.

[Read more…] about Ad Age Small Agency Conference Podcast

More Advertising Agency Resources

August 30, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Even More Advertising Agency Resources – August 2019

Its Friday 30 August, the ‘end‘ of summer, so I thought I’d shoot y’all some new advertising agency resources that could help you grow your agency. Or, at least, provide some much-needed efficiency. I’ll list these here and then add them to my The Big Advertising Agency Resource List.

Side note, thanks to all of the people that send me their favorite resources that I can have my huge staff of resource-munchkins review and pass on.

Go Ahead Play With These

Awesome Screenshot. Awesome Screenshot captures images, the whole image or a selected area, and records my screen so I can put the images on this very blog or use in my white papers and recommendations. For convenience, it sits on my Chrome bar.

Bulk.ly. I use Buffer to schedule and send out (as in LinkedIn and Twitter) my current and best-of past blog posts. But, I have to admit that it can be a pain in the ass to remember to do it on a regular basis. Bulky helps to automate the system and keeps a Buffer queue full-up.

Checkbot. Checkbot check’s your site (or others) to see and fix SEO, speed and security issues. Are you doing better than your competition? How are your clients doing?

ContactOut. I’ll use ContactOut’s words: “Find anyone’s personal email and phone number.” And, “ContacOut is used by recruiters at 30% of the Fortune 500.”

FormSwift. FormSwift has forty or so forms on their website that you can use to create and edit important documents. Documents include employee handbooks; employment contracts, non-competes, lease agreements, balance sheets, and my favorite: a resignation letter.

No Mas Verano

That’s it for summer, well soon. And for today.

Seasonality is interesting. I know from my years of working with advertising agencies on their growth and profitability strategies, that my incoming lead email will light up a bit once the summer passes. While I know that we’ve moved beyond the days when ad agencies got real quiet in the summer, there is still a deep-seated sense that September means that we all should get our business development acts in order. So, go ahead… give me a shout.

Let’s talk about growing your business. You are in a hurry, right?

Contact me now and take me up on my impossible to refuse 15-minute Vito Corleone offer. 

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