Marketing should not be a joyless grind. Marketing should not be a chore we dutifully check off as we go about our businesses. Marketing should not feel, as one of my clients described it, like pulling fingernails.
If marketing feels this way — Heavy. Joyless. Worrisome. Fraught – there’s something profound you’ll want to shift.
Marketing is heavy when it feels separate, disconnected, from the whole-hearted expression of who we are. Who we are as unique and magnificent humans.
When we decide that the brightest, shiniest, most alive parts of who we are don’t get to show up when we market.
Because we are afraid our audience won’t like who we really are. Don’t care about the things we do.
Because we don’t think they care about what we did last weekend, or the thought we had in the shower this morning.
Because we think our communication has to be serious and practical and well thought out before it goes out into the world.
Because we don’t see how our personal activism might be relevant to our work empowering women.
Or we aren’t sure we’ll be taken seriously if we show up playful and exuberant talking about the joys beyond the work grind we so often get caught in.
We have to liberate ourselves.
We have to smash any vestiges of “traditional” business culture we’ve taken in to our bones that tells us we can only succeed by wearing the gray suit, by toning ourselves down, by being appropriate and reasonable. And, by being, as one of my mentors says “bland and beige.”
We have to question EVERY business rule we’ve been given that makes us cautious and fearful about what we say and to whom we say it.
We have to face our own deeply rooted personal fears. The ones instilled from a lifetime of conditioning that we all get no matter how hard our parents tried.
The fear that we are too much. Too intense. Too esoteric. Too complex. Too goofy. Too frivolous. That we use too many words. That what we care about doesn’t matter. That what we want for people isn’t important.
We have to counter our deep tribal conditioning that if we stray too far from the beaten path we’ll be cast out and alone.
But oh, the joy!
The joy of letting what rises up, alive in you, can come out in your marketing. Be the meat and material of your next email, your next video, your next spontaneous conversation.
To operate from the assumption that what you feel, what you know, what life has instilled in you has value. That other humans benefit when you have the courage to say it and speak it. Over and over again.
To feel very little difference between the magnificent human you know you are at times, and the one who shows up in your emails, your blog posts, your social media posts, your networking.
To know that the words and phrases, the concepts and ideas, don’t need to be perfect and polished, or even fully formed yet to go out into the world.
Marketing should not be a joyless grind.
When it can be an opportunity to express yourself, to express what matters most to you, in service to other people.
When it can be a chance to rise up, to show up in full and living color. Exuberant in your expression. Delighted in the moment. Regardless of the response.