 Would you like to do marketing authentically and ethically, consciously? If so, then I think it's important to understand the underlying metaphor with which you are approaching marketing. So here's what I mean. The typical metaphors for marketing are either it's like warfare or religion or science. Let me explain. Have you ever heard the terms of, you do a marketing campaign, where does that word campaign come from? It comes from war. You're waging a campaign to crush the competition, war like analogy, right? Or you undercut your competitors with lower prices. You dominate market share. And in fact, a lot of corporations have what they call a marketing war room. It's where the heads of different departments get together and figure out their marketing strategy. So did you know that so much of how marketing is thought of and done is from that viewpoint of domination and of essentially violence? Now they try to be charming about it, but they're still waging violence or a power over. It's a power over others. Now marketing as religion is a similar idea. It's a lot of the online marketing these days is done from that foundational metaphor, which is and literally digital marketing experts talk about using a sales funnel to indoctrinate your new followers, notice these words, you're indoctrinating your new followers into your worldview, all religious language, and then eventually converting them into buyers. Conversion rates, you ever heard that? Comes from religion, conversion, conversion from what, a non-believer into a believer. And so hopefully eventually you have control over your audience, you become a guru to them. I mean, the word guru is used throwing around often as marketing guru, fitness guru, business guru, whatever. These are all essentially cult building, mind control, hypnotic persuasion strategies. And a lot of, you know, you might be learning from marketing experts that are using these foundational metaphors, they might not even realize that they're using them, but that's the energy from which they're approaching marketing, right? Or how about marketing as hunting, right? This is also a common, my apologies, trying to be adjusting the heater here. Something as hunting is when you use an opt-in to bait your target audience, right, target audience, so that you can capture their email address, right? And when someone buys your low-priced item, it's a tripwire that triggers your marketing funnel to sell them more so that you'll make a killing. I mean, so much of this is hunting and sort of like more like analogy. Now in more modern times or more in the past, I would say 20 years, the metaphor of science has become more common for thinking about marketing. So, you know, and sometimes I use part of this as well, like when I talk about marketing as experimentation, that science, scientific metaphor. And also, we're trying to gauge reactions, social media reactions, right, so that we can adjust for more predictable results. These are all scientific. Don't get emotional about ups and downs, stay objective, right? This is better than the warlike analogy. It's more about just looking at the data of what's impacting people and then doing more of that. I like that idea, but what I don't like about marketing as science is the whole idea of marketing funnel or sales pipeline, which is the idea that you're treating your whole audience as just numbers. I mean, I am very much at the data in terms of like figuring out what I like to, well, I'll give you my analysis, my metaphor later, but marketing, marketing funnels is essentially like you put a bunch of inputs at the top of the funnel and then through your messaging, through your messaging, you filter out more and more people, even the idea of filtering out this scientific term, right, until you get to the ideal reactions and the ideal product, right, which is your ideal clients. So again, it's not very human. It's not based in the heart. And it's probably not how no wonder so many of you, as I talk to you, you dislike marketing. Now you understand why you dislike marketing. It's because it's based on these foundational metaphors that don't resonate with you energetically. So how can we do better than that? Well, talking about from the heart, there's another metaphor, which is marketing as dating, marketing as romance. And it's a little better because now we're bringing the human element into it. It's just like you wouldn't go up to a stranger, even though they're very attractive, you wouldn't go up to a stranger and say and try to persuade them to marry you in that instant. Because why? Well, you don't really know them. They don't really know you. So creating this long-term relationship from an instant connection means that you're probably making an unwise choice. Chances are because you don't really know each other yet. You haven't built that foundation of, you know, compatible understanding, trust, all the ups and downs you have to go through. So so so therefore the marketing is dating is like, well, let's romance people and build a relationship before we take things farther and farther into a deeper and a longer term relationship. Right? That's OK. That's pretty good. It's not yet my favorite because dating the way that it's done in the mainstream can have a lot of problems. And so these days there's a lot of, you know, ghosting or there's a lot of short term just, you know, one night stands probably the norm these days. But anyway, so I'm so far out of the dating world. I don't know, even though what's normal these days. So I just I'll leave that as is, but here's a better one. But here's a better one. So instead of marketing is dating, why don't we talk about marketing as friendship? OK, marketing is friendship. And then I'll I'll share with you one more metaphor after this one, which is not even my favorite, but marketing is friendship is how I've been looking at marketing for the last, I would say, probably seven years. Well, until I shift it to a later one, which I'll share with you. But marketing is friendship is pretty good. I really I really do like it. It's I've said this before, authentic marketing is building friendships at scale. So just like when you are wanting to build a friendship, you want to make sure that you and the person are compatible. Like if you want to think, gosh, I want to, you know, hang out with this person more and more and more. I want to invite them over to my home. I want to go out, you know, maybe take trips together and work on projects together. You know, you're thinking about this person. Well, you want to make sure you do are compatible. Well, how do you do it? Well, similar to dating. You get to know them over time as you as you grow it. But not similar dating, of course, is that we are we are we can have many friends. It's less likely we have many romantic relations once, but we can have many friends, right? We could be friendly to lots of people, right? And just like as a true friend is we feel we can be ourselves with them when when you have a true friend, when you have a authentic friendship, you don't feel that you have to pretend when you're with them, just like an authentic marketing. I don't feel like I have to pretend to get your attention. I don't have to do something. I'm not in order to try to get your attention or to try to charm you or to try to persuade you. No, I've I've I've looked at our relationship, our connection as building friendships at scale for a long time. So I'm always honest, as honest with you as I can. I show up as I am. I don't have to feel like I have to, you know, really make special arrangements to be especially charming or whatever. No, I'm just if I feel comfortable with you, you know, if I feel comfortable with you, then I tend to show up just as a friend. If I feel comfortable with a friend, I tend to show up as my most play more playful self, my deeper self, my authentic self. So if I look at my audience as my true fans are my future friends, authentic friendships, then I'm just going to show up and be myself because if I myself and somebody doesn't resonate with my marketing or with me as a person, then we're not meant to be friends. And that's OK, because there are millions of people out there that could possibly be in my audience. I could possibly be my friends. And same thing with you. There are millions of people out there who could resonate with you as you are without having to puff yourself up or to charm them or to persuade or to, you know, appear as number one in your field. No, all that stuff is so BS and it's not how you would be with an authentic friendship. Imagine you were with authentic friendship. You're trying to say, no, I am the best person you ever have as a friend. And I'm I'm smarter than anybody. You know, it's like your friends and like, come on, what are you doing? Just be you. I like you just for who you are. I like you for the things that I like about you, but you don't have to serve every need that I have. Right. The same thing with marketing. It's like I don't feel like I have to serve every need that you have. But I can come come up with what is my genuine interest and my genuine skill set and present that to you. And that's what you can choose to accept or not, because there are other people you can learn from, just like as a friend, you know, hopefully it's like I'm not your only friend. It's like you hopefully you have other friends who can also meet your needs in other ways. Right. So that's why I can relax. And then authentic friendship, you can relax. And truly allow your genuine, highest expression to shine. And that's what I wish for you in your marketing as well, so that you can no longer think of marketing as a means to an end, a necessary evil. You have to do these tricks and and hacks to get people to follow you and to get people to buy from you. No, I mean, I people are always surprised when they the more they get to know my marketing and my audience. So like, George, you really have an audience that is loyal, that really buys from you because they they like you, not just because you've charmed them or persuaded them into something because I look at marketing as friendship. And so therefore, I have become friendly with a lot of people through my marketing, right, through their content. So the last or actually, I realize I have two more, two more for you. OK, the last two metaphors I've become more and more interested in in the last, you know, year. Well, I would say a couple of years. It's been a transitioning. So the next metaphor is marketing as ministry. And you may have heard me talk about this in recent times. So I now look at marketing as I am blessing my audience with free content that I hope is uplifting, encouraging educational, inspiring, whether or not they ever buy from me. And that that's the hard part, I think, for some of some of you. You're like, I thought marketing was like, I'm supposed to charm and and and become credible and charm people become credible to them so that they'll buy from me. And it's like, no wonder you hate marketing or no wonder you feel like it's something distasteful about it because you have. And there is like a psychic or energetic hook attachment to the things that you're doing to say, well, I'm only giving you this thing for free so that eventually you're going to do something by pay me money or by do something for me. And that's, you know, it's not ministry. Ministry and whether you want to use the word ministry or you want to use the word cause, right, cause based marketing. Is you believe so much in something that you're willing to sacrifice for it. You're you're willing to give of your time, energy and money in order to and I apologize for the. Yeah, I got to turn my my phone is on. Do not disturb. That's very strange. Anyway, so I have to look into that. That's a very strange thing. So when you believe in a cause or a message so much. Then you are willing to give of your time, energy and even money to expand the impact of that cause or that message. So do you believe in your message that much? That even here's the thing, even if you never made another penny in your life from your business, that you would do whatever you can to spread this message or cause. If you can't say yes to that, then you haven't tapped in to the real power of authentic marketing. I have been able to say yes to this. I say, you know what? No matter if I never make another penny in my life, I still want to share the message, the messages that I'm sharing. So in other words, in some of you, it is true for some of you are like, yeah, this was my hobby. This used to be this sharing this message using my hobby and now it's turning into a business. That's wonderful. Keep having the energy of this is my hobby or this is my ministry that this message, this framework, this transformational method or whatever it is that you're selling in your business is so important to get out there that I would do it as a ministry. And when you do that, then your content becomes truly people can feel the generous spirit behind your content and your audience will be completely a different quality than most of the people that in your field, that building an audience that has energetic hooks into them, like always like a tit for tat. You'll just, you know what I mean? You hopefully you feel it from my content that I'm not trying to get something from you. Now, it doesn't mean that I don't sell to you sometimes. I talk about the 80 20 rule, right? 80 percent of my content is blessing, ministry. That's I come from that pure state as much as I can when I'm sharing the stuff. And then 20 percent of the time I humbly offer this is my next product. I'm not a nonprofit. If I was a nonprofit, 20 percent of the time I'd be asking you for money, you know, to donations. But I'm not a nonprofit. So 20 percent of the time I try to present a win-win offer to you to say, hey, this is my humble offer. I put this product together. If you feel it's right for you, then play with me, right? But 80 percent of the time, as you can see, when you see my videos, they're just blessing and trying to educate, uplift, serve. So marking as ministry is good for the soul. It's good for the soul of the person doing the ministry. It's good for me when I do this. And hopefully it's good for your soul as well. All right, so final metaphor and then we'll end this is marketing as my favorite method of discovering my calling. Marketing as a way to discover our calling. And I've actually talked about this off and on for years as well, but now I'm kind of putting that into like this is a metaphor I'm using. So that's why marketing is not a chore. Marketing is the way we discover more of our purpose. Yes, it's not just to persuade people to buy and to, you know, join our thing. No, no, no, marketing is the is is the act of publicly journaling, public exploration of your passions and your interests and your experiences. You publicly explore while you also observe what people get the most impact from from your public explorations. So you make videos, you write articles, you make social media posts, you record podcast, whatever you like to do to get your message out there to explore your experiences and what's been meaning, most meaningful for you, what you've learned as well. You explore those things publicly, you do it publicly, you do public journaling, right, just like I'm doing here. And then you observe of the last 10 videos I made, which one made the most impact of the last 20 articles I wrote, which one had the most impact and over time, as you notice, what has the most impact based on your your most genuine explorations and what has more than you see the the Venn diagram, the intersection between your public explorations and what has the most impact and you've just discovered your calling for life, at least at this time in your life, you discovered your calling, which is to do more of that because it's what you enjoy that's combined with what's making the most impact. And so from that intersection is where your products are born, where your service packages are born. It's that intersection. You have to do the marketing to test what the intersection is. Otherwise, how will you know you're going to get get a career coach? Career coaches are wonderful if they're helping you do that testing. But if you're just getting a career coach or reading a career book, just a journal on your own that, well, I think this makes the most impact or whatever without the benefit of data, real time data. I'm sorry, you're not really finding your purpose because your purpose, your calling, your career purpose, your career calling is that intersection of what you enjoy and brings you alive with what makes the most impact. That's what we do in marketing. That's what marketing is for. So I hope that this is shifting your mind now on what marketing is or why the heck are we resisting it when we can dive into ministry when we can dive into the discovery of a calling. I hope you'll do it with gusto. So I hope this helpful and always looking forward to your comments and your questions below. Thank you for joining me.