How to market your business in an aligned, ethical way
This week’s show is with Tad Hargrave. Tad is a hippy who developed a knack for marketing (and then learned how to be a hippy again).
Despite years in the non-profit and activist world, he finally had to admit he was a marketing nerd and, in the end, he became a marketing coach for hippies. Maybe it was because he couldn’t stand seeing his hippy friends struggle to promote their amazing, green and holistic projects. Maybe it was because he couldn’t keep a 9-5 job to save his life.
Whatever the reason, for almost a decade, he has been touring his marketing workshops around Canada, bringing refreshing and unorthodox ideas to conscious entrepreneurs and green businesses that help them grow their organizations and businesses (without selling their souls). He has also offered most of his workshops on a modified pay what you can basis (a small deposit to attend and then people choose the amount they want to pay at the very end).
This all feels like a minor miracle as Tad spent his early marketing days learning and applying some very inauthentic, high pressure, extremely gross and pushy marketing approaches. This has made him suuuuper allergic to these kinds of approaches because he discovered they made him feel slimy (even in personal friendships), he didn’t sleep well and he’s very sorry to all those people he spoke with back in the day. After a decade of unlearning and unpacking that whole scene – he now feels ready and able to help other people find ways to market that feel wonderful.
In this show, we spoke about how spending the time distilling your point of view allows you to do business in a way that feels in alignment, ethical and allows people to understand whether they’re a good fit for what you offer. Jonathan and I have recently been using Tad’s methodology to develop our own point of view and have found it unbelievably helpful.
If you’re in any kind of business, I believe you’ll find this episode an incredibly good use of your time.
I’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment below.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
If we’ve spent any time in business and on marketing, we’ll typically understand that we need to articulate the ‘problem’ and ‘promise’ but what tends to be missing is the premise, which is at the heart of our point of view.
Your point of view is your map of how things are, your understanding of why it is that way and your sense of your recommendation of how to make the journey from Island A to Island B
I love how Tad’s idea of a map, includes what we might call a niche but is much deeper than that, it includes where they are, how they got there and where they could go from here. This allows people to understand why they’re in the pain they’re in – a diagnosis, rather than just a description of their symptoms – which is so powerful all on its own.
The more deeply we understand our point of view – and that our map isn’t the territory – the less dogmatic and defensive we can be about it. We no longer have to wield it as The Truth, we can offer it generously, gracefully as our point of view, and a path that we’ve seen has heart.
Three metrics that Tad suggested we can use to measure our points of view: does it work/is it useful? Does it beautiful – does this add to the beauty of life? Is it sustainable?
Resources and stuff that we spoke about
Thank you for listening!
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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan