So, here I am, sitting in my new office, at the Source, and feeling, essentially, very happy. And a lot of the time extremely happy. And I still don’t know exactly what I am doing. But I’ll tell you—a few months ago I decided that it was my prime goal in life to follow my spark, and bring it fully, unabashedly out into the world and to be totally in service with it. And ever since then, things have gotten a lot smoother, a lot easier.

I have become a “marketing fanatic”. I am fascinated by books on marketing; and the more I read, of course, I realize that it’s not all a bunch of used car salesmen in plaid suits trying to huckster you out of your money (maybe used car salesmen aren’t, either, by the way). It’s so amazing—it’s what I always used to tell myself, when I was younger:

If only marketing weren’t wrong and evil… I would love to do it, because I’d be really good at it!

Well… it turns out it doesn’t have to be, any more than anything else is! And I realized that, even though I am a total marketing newbie, and I don’t want to hide that from anyone or have any pretense that I am some expert with lots of experience about it, I am, nevertheless, starting to develop my own philosophy about it, and it is starting to define how I want to construct my business, and the clients I really want to serve. And I realized—oh! It’s all based around this same principle:

Bring your spark of passion out into the world, and fully serve the world with it.

So, I am starting a business assisting others in doing this, and by so doing, doing this myself. The implications are incredible. I’ll tell you—there is a whole, huge market of people out there who think marketing is evil and wrong, or at least feel so alienated from it that they don’t know where they would begin, or at least, have no clue what to do about it. And the interesting thing is, when I talk to these people, and tell them that I am developing a practice in high-vibrational marketing, they immediately go, “oh—I need that!” Pretty exciting!

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So, for years, I had this vision that would come to me, whenever I would really imagine what I wanted in a work life. I would see this lively, collaborative work environment, with plants, and beauty, and light streaming in from many directions.

For years and years and years after graduating from college, I had wanted to do something meaningful, useful with my life, and really feel in service. Instead, I just tended to do computer programming work—because it was safe, high-paying, and relatively interesting. Meanwhile, I tried to get involved in numerous ecological and “activist” projects, in an attempt to help make change in the world. But I was still so frustrated.

Finally, in the spring of 2004, out of a desperate need to do something to create definite change, I decided to move to a swing state for several months before the November election, in an attempt to help get John Kerry elected, and not have George W Bush elected again for another term. It’s not that I considered the political approach to life necessarily my passion, but according to the way I was seeing things going at the time, that seemed like a good idea, and better than—once again—doing nothing concrete.

So in early September, I drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started volunteering for America Coming Together.

I tried really, really hard to like it, but it was very boring, honestly. There were a bunch of people in the two-house little community I was staying in that were into something called Avatar. I didn’t really know what it was, but I trusted them. So, I decided, “okay, I’ll do the first part of this nine-day course (2 days)”. As I started to read more about it, I started to think, wow—this is the same kind of thing I have been reading about for years; but in this case, it is the clearest, most lucid and well-thought-out explanation of how this whole “what you believe creates your reality thing” I had ever seen. So I started to get inspired about doing the whole course. And, that is what I did. Doing the Avatar Course totally changed my life.

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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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