The Irony of Marketing Products that Make Other People Happy
I said to a colleague of mine this week on LinkedIn, “I can’t even read a post about marketing or branding anymore.” There’s just too much noise. And I meant it. In deciding to step away from business promotions and consulting for a while, I’ve been working to curate my social media feeds into something filled with more joy. And the irony of marketing products that promise to make other people happy while we, ourselves, are not aligned in our own happiness, is enough to bring me to write this article.
I don’t hate business, but I think I hate what business has become and that’s coming from someone who obsessively worked to learn marketing, brand and advertising strategies for nearly ten years. I have invested countless dollars into programs and coaches and systems and frameworks just to be able to get the word out about my business. A business I care a lot about. But in this season of change, I can see now how that obsession has turned the tide against me and I thought I’d share my new outlook in the off chance you’re also feeling like you never want to hear someone talk to you about sales funnels ever again.
When the Message No Longer Lands Within You
What I came to realize in the very short period of time I’ve been focusing on my creative work instead of my consulting work is that when you make something just to make it, you don’t really care about audiences or up sells or even approval. What you care about is following through on your idea. You care about creating things that make you happy, and maybe by default, in the hands of the right person, those things might make other people happy too. But it’s certainly not the goal.
This week I spent time working on this website, getting lost in it for hours. I spent hours working on a piece of art that I dreamed up all on my own when the idea of writing another business book felt like a chore. I wrote and published three blogs. Not because my content strategy demanded it (I haven’t published a business blog in ages), but because I wanted to write about those things.
And I launched a quiet email list to connect with the few people I know this journey is going to resonate with. Otherwise, I didn’t worry about making money. Yes, I’m fortunate to have this time to myself right now, fully funded by the business I worked so hard to build, but that’s not the point. The point is that even though my business is fully funding my creative era, I’m not lifting a finger to grow it over the next 12 months. The business, that is. I’m taking a break. A well-deserved and hard-earned break.
While I don’t dismiss the importance of marketing and branding and whatever else the internet is telling us we all need to be doing at alarming rates right now, I am rejecting it. I am showing up and doing things I want to do right now and whether or not the “messaging” lands is neither here nor there. I’m working to create something here that is going to help me reconnect with what makes me happy. And I’m not worried about whether or not it makes other people happy.
The Promise of Happiness: The Irony of Marketing
Whenever I have shown up to promote my business in the past, I worried constantly about saying the right thing to the right person at the right time. I’ve expressed my discontent with content marketing in recent years, despite being a rock star at it in the early days of my course creation business.
Trying to find the words to convince someone that what I have will make them happier suddenly doesn’t sit right with me because the truth is the damn thing isn’t make me happy right now. It feels like false advertising to me to pretend that the business I spent years growing is the exact thing someone needs right now when what I need is a freaking break.
I want to reconnect with what makes me happy and when I got quiet and thought about it, my desire to simply create rang loud and true. Even louder than the multiple $50,000 pay cheques I’ve been receiving in my consulting business this year. And maybe it’s because I’m getting older, and hopefully a little wiser, but the lure of simplicity and quiet creation feels more important right now.
As entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time focusing on other people. We practically throw ourselves under a bus to get the attention of our potential clients, promising them that we have what they need. Do we even have what we need? I mean, in the time it’s taken you to read this far into this article, several coaches are trying to tell you that you can’t succeed without them. Some marketing “expert” is trying to tell you why their process of marketing is what’s going to get eyes on your product.
It’s a Good Time to Shift Our Thinking
Everyone is clamouring for our attention and in the process, we are forgetting to listen to ourselves. We are more focused on preformative excellence than actual excellence. We’re more focused on pretending to be happy and look like we have our lives together than actually feeling like we’ve got our lives together. And when it comes down to it, I bet dollars to donuts that most of us can’t even express what would make us happy beyond “success.” Whatever the hell that is these days.
I’m not turning into a pessimist. I’ve always been a little curmudgeonly at heart, but it’s because I tend to look at both sides of the coin before deciding whether or not I want to flip it. And for years, I flipped the marketing coin, the branding coin, and the messaging coin hoping things would “land” eventually. And they did. But not for the reasons you or I would have thought.
This isn’t an article about marketing. And I’m not going to get into what works and what doesn’t. That’s not why I’m showing up here to write this right now. I’m showing up here because I can’t stop thinking about how good it feels to do something just because I want to do it. No agenda. No rule book. No playbook. I can write these blogs, create my courses, author my books, and paint my canvases as little or as much as I like.
Maybe this project will make waves and maybe it won’t. I’m not in a position to be worrying about making waves. I’ve made impact. I changed lives. I’ve shown up and given my all to create something meaningful for other people in the world. More than once. And now, I want to turn inward and focus on doing what makes me happy.
Shifting Focus for The Right Reasons
To be fair, building a business has made me very happy. But it’s also robbed me of the self-expression I need to live a fulfilling life. When I started writing romance novels several years ago, I got a taste and a strong reminder of what it felt like to create something without any strings attached. I didn’t write six romance novels to land on the best seller’s list; although, that would be pretty freaking cool.
I wrote those novels because I wanted to write them. I felt called to write them. The same way I felt called to create art at this point in my life or to write this blog. A return to self, even in small amounts, is important. But it’s difficult when your first priority is making sure your business looks good enough to buy from on the outside.
I’ve made wild changes to my life to be able to downsize and work less. I haven’t talked about them on any platforms because it’s not something I feel like explaining to people. But I’ve noticed a change in how I spend money, opting to always say yes to travel, books and nice smelling soap, but otherwise, I’m not actively looking to make myself happy with spend. I’m looking to make myself happy with creation, exploration, self-reflection.
It’s a different kind of existence for me as I’ve spend most of my life looking for the dopamine hits in several places. And it turns out that the biggest dopamine hit I can create for myself is sitting down to write my truth, paint my feelings, create a course that will be fun for people to take, not instructive or prescriptive.
We all have things to share with the world, and we should do that. I’m not shutting down my business. I’m putting it on the back burner for a while. Maybe it’ll fall apart if I do that. Maybe it won’t. I don’t feel like I need to explain myself beyond, “Hey, I’m doing this now” and “It feels right to me to shift my focus to a creative project.”
What I can say is that any direction I’ve turned to has paid dividends for years to come. Not always financial dividends, but personal progress and growth, as well as freedom and clarity. The more I focus on the things I want to make, the more at peace and aligned I feel.
I’m Hiring Myself for a Change
I don’t always feel aligned when I’m trying to get the words right on social media just so someone will hire me. I want to hire myself for a while. I want to get clear on the messaging I’ve been selling myself, instead of focusing on messaging that will sell others on what I have to offer. And I want to figure out if a creative life is one I can sustain, even if I end up right back where I started. It wasn’t a bad place to be. I liked it. I like it. But it’s not checking the boxes for me right now so I need to see what else might check some boxes.
This isn’t just hurling half-cooked spaghetti at the wall, though. I have a clear vision of what this blog, my art, my books and my new line-up of courses could be. It’s a business, make no mistake. But it’s the beginnings of a business that I’m doing in a way that is wildly different from how I’ve build my business(es) in the past. I’m not worried about how it looks or how it sounds. I’m focused on showing up and sharing the journey. The journey is the message. And that’s good enough for me.
If you feel inspired by the work I’m doing now and want to follow along, feel free to join my email list. I’m not churning out newsletters just because the marketing gurus say it’s the only way to build connection with an audience. I’m looking to build connection with myself first and foremost. And I believe that if this resonates with you, it will create a connection between us anyway. I don’t need to throw a bunch of information your face to remind you of the feelings this has created in you. When something speaks true to us, we remember.
