Online Training

Learn the marketing you actually need.

Practical, straightforward digital training designed to help business owners understand their marketing, make better decisions and stop wasting energy on things that don't belong in the plan.

Find Your Next Step
No hype. No jargon. No chasing every new marketing trend.
Where Do I Begin?

You don't need to learn everything about marketing.

You need to understand enough to know what your business needs, what it doesn't and why you're choosing one marketing activity over another.

That means you don't have to become an expert in every platform, algorithm or trend that appears in your feed.

Start with the fundamentals. Build your understanding. Create a plan. Then keep moving.

The McCormick L.A. Approach

Start with the question your business is actually asking.

You don't need the biggest course library. You need the right learning at the right point in your business.

Core Training

Find your next step.

Each program builds a different part of your marketing understanding. Start with the place that sounds most like where you are now.

Business owner managing marketing tasks
Start Here

Escape Marketing Mania

Get out of reactive marketing mode.

If marketing feels like a constant stream of things you're supposed to be doing, start here.

Escape Marketing Mania introduces Leslie's no-nonsense approach and helps you step back from random promotional activity so you can begin thinking about your marketing with more intention.

Online On Demand Free Training
Business owner working with focus
Build

BOOST!

Build a stronger marketing foundation.

If you're ready to stop guessing and understand the principles underneath effective promotion, BOOST! is your foundation.

Through focused video training and practical activities, Leslie introduces the Laws of Promotion and helps you connect those principles to your own business.

Digital Training Practical Foundation
Business owner developing a marketing plan
Plan

Velocity

Turn your marketing into a real plan.

If you have plenty of marketing ideas but no clear strategy connecting them, Velocity helps you bring everything into focus.

Work through your offers, audience, objectives, strategies and tactics to create an outcome-driven marketing plan built around the business you're actually running.

Online Course Video Training Worksheets Marketing Plan
Experienced business owners learning together
Continue

Continuum

Keep the momentum going.

Building the plan is one thing. Living with it, adjusting it and making decisions as your business evolves is another.

Continuum gives Velocity graduates ongoing access to guidance, feedback, learning and conversation while they put their marketing plans into practice.

For Velocity Graduates Ongoing Learning Support
The Goal

Make marketing something you understand — not something you fear.

You don't need to know every tactic. You need enough clarity to recognize what belongs in your business, what doesn't and what deserves your resources.

Specialized Training

Build the skills your business needs next.

Focused learning for specific communication and promotional skills that sit alongside the core McCormick L.A. training path.

Coming Soon

Media Relations

Learn how traditional media can still play a meaningful role in reaching your audience and strengthening your visibility.

Coming Soon

MOOD SENSE — Communication Styles

Understand how your communication style affects colleagues, clients and teams — and what it communicates about your personal brand.

Experienced professionals in conversation
More Ways to Learn

Your next chapter may need more than marketing.

The Second Act Business Summit

More than thirty expert conversations and practical trainings for experienced professionals creating what's next.

Explore perspectives on business, career, life, finance, marketing, networking and skill-building — all available to learn from at your own pace.

Leslie A.M. Smith
Leslie's Teaching Philosophy

Practical enough to use. Strategic enough to matter.

Leslie has spent more than three decades working in marketing and public relations across a wide range of businesses and industries.

The platforms have changed. The noise has certainly changed. But the value of understanding what you're trying to accomplish before deciding what to do has not.

No flim-flam. Just marketing that makes sense.

Not Sure Where to Start?

Start by escaping the marketing mania.

Leslie's free on-demand training will introduce you to a simpler, more intentional way to think about promoting your business.

Watch the Free Training