Real-world marketing and public relations experience.
Leslie has spent more than three decades helping businesses understand how to promote themselves with greater clarity and purpose.
Meet Leslie A.M. Smith
Marketing has changed. Good marketing thinking hasn't.
For more than three decades, Leslie has helped business owners understand marketing and public relations without the hype, jargon or unnecessary complication. McCormick L.A. School brings that experience into the digital classroom.
Why the School?
Because business owners shouldn't have to become marketers to understand their marketing.
Leslie has spent her career working with passionate business owners who know what they do exceptionally well β but haven't necessarily spent decades studying promotion.
They don't need another expert telling them to add more to their marketing list.
They need to understand the principles well enough to make thoughtful decisions about their own businesses.
McCormick L.A. School exists to make that knowledge more accessible.
Experience, Distilled
Decades of experience. Without decades of trial and error.
Leslie's teaching is grounded in the work she's spent her career doing β not simply in what's currently popular in the marketing world.
Experience that isn't tied to one type of business.
Her client work has crossed more than thirty industries, creating a broad perspective on how marketing principles translate into very different businesses.
Marketing explained for people running businesses.
The goal isn't to turn business owners into marketing professionals. It's to give them enough understanding to make better decisions.
The Long View
The tools keep changing. The noise keeps getting louder.
But the questions underneath good marketing remain remarkably consistent.
Who are you trying to reach? What do you want them to understand? What are you asking them to do? Why have you chosen this particular way to reach them?
Platforms come and go. Algorithms change. New tactics arrive every week.
Understanding gives you something more durable to build on.
The McCormick L.A. Approach
Understand first. Choose second. Do third.
Leslie's no-nonsense approach starts before the tactic.
Instead of beginning with what platform to use or what marketing activity to add, she teaches business owners to understand what they're trying to accomplish and make decisions from there.
Know what the business needs.
Start with the objective, the audience and the reason for promoting before choosing the activity.
Decide what actually belongs.
Evaluate marketing options against the business instead of treating every new tactic as an obligation.
Put your energy where it has a purpose.
Move forward knowing why you've chosen the work you're doing and what you expect it to accomplish.
What Leslie Believes
You don't need to become a marketer.
You need marketing to make enough sense that you can make good decisions about your own business β without fear, pressure or constantly wondering what everyone else knows that you don't.
From Consultant to Classroom
The work Leslie has done one business at a time now has a digital classroom.
McCormick L.A. School turns Leslie's experience into practical training business owners can access wherever they are.
The classroom may be digital, but the thinking behind it comes from years spent inside real businesses, real promotional decisions and real conversations with owners trying to figure out what to do next.
That experience is now organized into a learning path designed to meet you at different stages β from getting out of marketing mania, to building the foundation, to creating a plan and continuing the work.
What You Can Expect
No flim-flam. No overpromising. No marketing theatre.
Language you can understand.
Marketing concepts explained without hiding simple ideas behind unnecessary jargon.
Learning you can use.
Training designed to connect back to the business decisions sitting in front of you.
Thinking before tactics.
A consistent focus on why you're doing something before worrying about how to execute it.
Marketing that fits around the business.
Because promotion should support the work you're here to do, not consume all the time you have to do it.
βLeslie is a fantastic instructor, and professional person to work with! She finds very creative, interactive, and efficient ways to communicate years of experience.ββ D. Flores
Learn With Leslie
Find the training that meets the question you're asking now.
Start with the fundamentals, build your understanding, create a plan and keep moving with ongoing support.
Explore All Training β
McCormick L.A. School
Practical marketing. Real experience.
Digital training designed for business owners who want to understand their marketing without turning themselves into full-time marketers.
Enter the Classroom β
Start for Free
Not sure where to begin? Escape the marketing mania first.
Leslie's free on-demand training introduces the no-nonsense approach and helps you step out of reactive marketing mode.
Watch Escape Marketing Mania β