What Is Not Marketing Ep.00

A Story of a Tree

Today I want to start with a story
There was a tree in our neighbourhood that people had been nailing posters to for years. Weight loss pill posters, guitar lesson posters, A poster about gutter cleaning. I walked by it and saw the sap leaking out, each hole trying to heal. And people kept putting up new posters because they say “the damage had been done”.

Stop Avoiding Your Marketing

As I’ve been working on bringing, birthing this podcast to you, to the world, I realized that I might be confusing.

Because on the one hand I am telling you, encouraging you, begging you to stop not marketing – and what I mean by that is to stop avoiding and shying away from connecting and sharing about your business. These messages you have, and this care you hold, and this change you want to help usher in for people is RIPE within you. What happens after something is ripe? It starts to rot.

Keeping your message, your gifts, your work inside you when it wants to be let out in the world will make you sick, sad and scared.

You think you’re scared or nervous to share now, to raise your voice and speak your truth and tell people your story and what you bring?

HA! Just WAIT – It doesn’t get less scary. No, no. It grows, it festers in the dark corners that you’re covering up and avoiding eye contact with.

Start Not Marketing

So – on the one hand I want you to stop not marketing… AND on the other hand I want us to be not “Marketing.”

Not the way we’ve seen it done before… maybe I should have named it Marketing Differently. Ugh.. the first episode and I’m already ready to rebrand… welcome to my life. Maybe I’ll buy that domain too… just in case.

What I mean by Not Marketing is we don’t have to nail posters to the tree – we don’t have to keep inflicting pain or doing more damage just because that’s how it’s been done or that’s how other people are doing it. Instead I’m taking a shovel and a level and I’m digging a hole and putting up a post beside the tree where the posters can be and the tree can start be be a tree – what it was meant to be.

That’s the power of redefining marketing. We can start to do something different.

Your Own Kind of Not Marketing

If you don’t own a shovel or don’t want to put up posters, take your guitar downtown and sing a silly ditty about your coaching and healing business. And if you can’t sing take sidewalk chalk and write your call to action on the street.

You see what I’m saying. 

Your NOT Marketing can be having a real conversation with a friend and when they ask what you’ve been up to you tell them the truth about what’s inspiring you in your business (or what’s challenging you). It can be sitting at the cafe and asking the other laptop warrior what they’re working on today because you see how focused and “in flow” they’ve been.

That’s not “REAL” Marketing

Some people might tell you or you might even have the thought, well, but that’s not real marketing. Or that’s not scalable.

Here’s my hot take – There is no such thing as marketing without connection.

One person on a stage with a microphone can not market. Connection is a prerequisite. It’s necessary.

Creating connecting takes skill and if you do not have those skills they get built block-by-block. person-by-person. And that skill of creating genuine connection is ABSOLUTELY scalable. In fact THAT is what is being scaled when one gets to that phase in their business.

And until you get to that phase, the training wheels, the places to learn are in the ways that light you up and bring You out to the world.

So, don’t tell me that’s not real marketing or that’s not scaleable.

And you don’t have to buy that idea from anyone else either, or if they offer it you can politely nod and think to yourself, that’s fine. I define marketing differently.

I’m NOT MARKETING.

When You’re Here, Be Present

For those who are leaning in, curious, open and interested in these fresh ideas I want your decision to tune in to be deliberate.

I am a force of nature and I am not for everyone (I even swear sometimes when I get fiery). Nor am I for everyone at any time. So, I invite you to mindfully assess for yourself before you press play.

• Do I have the capacity to engage in this content?
• Am I willing to be uncomfortable?
• Do I have the space to get curious?
• How open to explore this am I, really?

And then tend to the answers you get. This will be here for you. I will be here for you and you need to decide to be here too.

Engage with The Ideas 

I want these conversations to live beyond between my ears.

Your listening to these ideas, concepts, principles, philosophies, skills, practices means they will be part of you for a small moment or a long time.  They may shift you in small or big ways. And your engagement also shifts the idea. It expands it to encompass your context, your experience, what you know and bring – the idea takes on a life of it’s own to help shape our reality.

This is an invitation to engage and participate in the generative nature of this conversation – explore this idea with me or others.

I’m available in our Courageous Community that you can find at amandajane.ca/community or by email hello@amandajane.ca

With that I’m delighted that you’ve joined me to be Not Marketing.

The Next Episode

The next episode is the “real” first episode, and I’ll be sharing why this podcast and season exists, how I came to be sharing this with you and how I see Not Marketing can create a distinct experience and outcome for both you and those around you.

Until then,
Stay Courageous.