About three years ago, I was struggling to create some kind of work—still lagging on at the end of the dot-com crash, and hadn’t really had any work to speak of for over a year. Finally, I got a coach (Jaquie). She is an amazing person, and turned me on the work of Robert Middleton, who specializes in helping service professionals get clients. Honestly, it had never even occured to me that one should “market” their services. Don’t ask me how I thought you were supposed to get clients! Like a whole lot of people, what marketing really is was a black box, and the only connection I had to it was an image of sleazy rich men in fancy suits lying to me and trying to convince me that I should buy their soap.

So, Robert Middleton is a really cool, high-integrity guy. And I found out that marketing can be about sincerely spreading the word about your services, so the right people can find you. The phrase you might use is:

If only the right people could find me, the people I am meant to serve, I could help make their lives better by doing something I absolutely love doing!

This was definitely not the sleazy-guy-selling-soap thing I had thought about. And I was quite ready to wipe that image from my mind (or at least, push it to the side, and allow this much more interesting one to take up the space).

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A very interesting post (from last August) on the new marketing from Creating Passionate Users. It’s amazing to see how much anger and mistrust the old “TV soap ad” version of marketing has garnered. The author has to defend the fact that “we are all marketers”.

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I was looking at del.icio.us. I searched on “marketing fun” (because just “marketing” might pull out tons of really boring stuff). (This is a really fun way to browse the web, by the way.)

Somehow, I noticed a site called MailChimp.com. It had been saved by 156 previous del.icio.us users. After browsing the site for about three minutes, I was completely sold on it, and realized it was obviously a great tool, that I would use, love, and meet my needs. To be honest, I realize I have not even given myself enough time to completely verify that this is true—but the point is that everything about the site told me exactly what I wanted to know, and it did so in ways that are not obvious.

First, I did not “read” the site at all. I scanned it. The site is beautiful. Everything about the clean, clear, crisp design tells me they have already thought through what their users want and worked out the bugs. The MailChimp tag line is “You Design. Me Deliver.”

The first subheading reads “Features you’ll actually use”. So I know (a) they have a sense of humor; (b) they’re concerned about tailoring their tool for actual users, not just being hype-meisters.

The site has a ton of “marketing” information, all of which is tailored to giving me the information I need to make a good decision. “MailChimp email design guide. Free! Click here!” “Quicklinks – Free trial… Pricing… Screenshots… Testimonials.” “Kudos from our clients…”

I guess part of my point is, the fact that they are making all the right information available for me, in a scannable format, sold me, without my even having to read it all. The fact that they know to provide it gives me the information I need to want to use their service.

I think this all points to what happens when you really, genuinely think about your customer, what they want, and what they would need to know in order to decide to use your service. The site gives a pervading impression that there’s no shenanigans hiding underneath the surface, and that’s something you can’t really fake.

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“People can really get creative when they can get comfortable enough to say something stupid.”

- Quincy Jones

This quote is from an introductory flash video about the TED Conference. Very exciting… I would like to go. I am not sure exactly how the registration process works, but at the bottom of the registration application page, the form requires you to check a liittle box affirming the following:

“I understand that those who attend TED do so in a spirit of curiosity, open-mindedness, respect and tolerance, which allows TED speakers to take risks and be more open than they might otherwise be. I confirm that I will respect these values and refrain from any action which would exploit a speaker’s vulnerability. I also understand that the atmosphere at TED is appropriate for high-level relationship-building, not salesmanship. I confirm I will not use my TED attendance to aggressively pitch my company, organization, products or services to other attendees.”

That is so cool.

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I love Trader Joe’s, and even though I guess I am taking business away from the local La Montania Coop, I think it’s interesting what Seth Godin has to say about how they work.

TJ’s uses a “virtuous cycle. The key mantra is that Trader’s finds foods for its customers, NOT customers for its foods.”

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Today, Seth Godin talks about being brave with names – if you have something that is really new and unique… If you have something where you really want people to see the uniqueness in it and develop it, don’t be shy about giving a new name to the new thing.

Zaida and I came up with the name Enlivend Design, because it’s so obvious that what she does is more than just “feng shui”. And of course, if you want people to notice you, don’t demonstrate to everyone how you’re like everyone else. It’s nice to have Seth backing me up—that if you have a really new idea, and you’re prepared to back it up, then go for it, and give it a new name.

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“From the time I was in college, I made a conscious promise to myself that I was not going to spend my life doing things that I didn’t love doing even if I had to be broke.”

—Garrison Keillor, quoted in Worthwhile Magazine

This quote epitomizes how I feel, but have not always done. I do not know what the new career I am going into is going to look like. But, the more I connect with my passion, the more I just deciding to go for it and do it anyway. Maybe I am becoming a “marketing consultant for small businesses”. Maybe I am becoming a “producer”. Maybe it will look like something else, around empowering people to feed their spark and honor their purpose in life.

We often want to hide behind a patina of professionalism. But I realilzed that I am not pretending to anyone that I already know how to do what I am doing; I am just doing it.

I can feel the tremor in my body as I write this—the fear of being really stupid; or really boring; or really selfish. Oh! Those are all the things that have kept me from moving forward into what I loved and really wanted to do all my life. —Interesting!

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