Strategist · Author · Dungeon Master · Western US
I help companies discover what their buyers actually want. I write about philosophy, theology, and the hidden layers underneath marketing. And on Tuesday nights, I run sci-fi horror campaigns where everyone might die.
Photo by [photographer], [year]
"The system did not fail you because you were difficult. It failed you because it was never designed to see you."
From "What Your Buyers Actually Want"
What I Do
Everything I build starts with the same inquiry: what does the person on the other side of this actually need to hear?
My marketing firm. We build campaigns on buyer intelligence, not assumptions. Research first, then language. 215+ primary sources before anyone writes a headline.
Visit TCF →My research methodology. It draws on Girard's mimetic theory, Zaltman's deep metaphors, narrative psychology, and two decades of direct response testing. The result is buyer intelligence that tells you what to say and what not to.
Methodology →I talk at marketing conferences, leadership retreats, and private workshops. Topics include The Hidden Layer, The Mimetic Trap, and how to stop guessing what your buyers want.
Book me →What I'm Writing
Long-form thinking about buyer psychology, marketing philosophy, mimetic theory, and the places where theology and commerce share a border.
A conversation about what happens when you stop guessing what your market wants and start listening. Written as a dialogue between two people trying to figure out why good businesses keep running bad marketing.
"The system did not fail you because you were difficult. It failed you because it was never designed to see you."
Twelve chapters. Philosophy meets direct response. Girard meets the ad account.
In development. Notify me at launch ↓
Every agency runs one. It takes demographics in and produces creative briefs out, and nobody checks whether the inputs were real.
Mimetic desire theory was built for literature and anthropology. Turns out it also explains why every SaaS company runs the same three Facebook ad templates.
Harold Bloom wrote about the interior life of literary characters. What happens when you apply that lens to the person reading your landing page at 11 PM on a Tuesday?
The best marketing does not win awards. It wins trust. A case against the industry's addiction to novelty over resonance.
What I Play
Tabletop RPGs and video games. One teaches you to build worlds. The other teaches you to survive them. Both make you a better storyteller.
I built an AI Warden (game master) named Marvin. He runs Pound of Flesh and Hull Breach campaigns with full procedural generation, dynamic NPCs, and a memory system that tracks everything your crew does wrong.
Classic World of Darkness. Political intrigue, existential dread, and the question every kindred faces: how much of your humanity are you willing to trade for power?
What I'm Reading
Current reads, recurring influences, and the quotes I keep coming back to. This is less a reading list and more a map of where my thinking lives.
About
I studied English literature in college. Not because I planned to end up in marketing, but because I wanted to understand how language moves people. That turned out to be the only training that mattered.
After years in direct response and agency work, I noticed a pattern: most campaigns fail before the first word is written. They fail in the assumptions. The target audience profile built from demographics and guesswork. The creative brief that sounds authoritative but contains no actual buyer intelligence.
So I built The Hidden Layer, a research methodology that draws on 215+ primary sources before anyone writes a headline. It borrows from Girard's mimetic theory, Zaltman's deep metaphor work, narrative psychology, and two decades of direct response testing.
I run The Cash Flow Method, a marketing firm that builds campaigns on this intelligence. But this site is not about the firm. This is where I write, play, and think in public about the things that interest me, from buyer psychology to tabletop RPGs to the theology of desire.
I am a father, an English major, a Girard nerd, and a dungeon master. I drink yerba mate, not coffee. I live in the western US. I believe the best marketing and the best storytelling come from the same place: listening so carefully to another person that you can say back to them what they have not yet been able to say for themselves.
Contact
Whether you want to book a speaking engagement, discuss a project, collaborate on something strange, or just continue a conversation that started in one of these essays, I read every message.
lance@thecashflowmethod.com