Marketing, intrinsic motivation, happiness and Joy Ninja

It is rare to stumble upon a blog with thoughts that seems to fit so well with mine. This is what happened today when I discovered Emma McCreary’s Joy Ninja.

Reading through Emma’s posts, I suddenly realised why I have always been uncomfortable with conventional marketing and PR.

As I have often said on this blog, conventional business practice seems to assume there is only one “right” way to “do business”, one goal (make lots of money), and one timeframe (ASAP).

Likewise there is one “right” way to do marketing and PR: be seen as belonging to the in-crowd, having the in-conversations, saying the right “professional” things, and partaking of the most common denominator definition of success. And one “right” outcome: get as much attention from as many people as you can.

Emma’s experiment on doing so (when it is not in your intrinsic nature to do so) is telling.

I have invested much of my life into doing what I want to do, what excites me, and what makes me happy. I am happiest and most fulfilled when I am acting out of my intrinsic motivations. When I am being myself.

As far as marketing and PR is concerned, I try to do it in ways that fit with who I am. I don’t take out ads, I don’t cold call, I don’t badger clients to buy. Instead, I share my knowledge and thinking. I share my beliefs about business practice, design and so forth. I believe that this will attract the right clients and the right associates.

This can be so bloody hard to do! It is so easy to slip and fall into doing what I think I “should” be doing. The world out there does push the one right way to do business very strongly because the majority of businesses are doing it.

With marketing, I do sometimes feel the pressure to do it like everyone else. Get on the speaking circuit, get with the popular people, jump on the popular topics, tell people what they want to hear, don’t make them think, motivate instead of educate, focus on getting the money through the door and forget the larger implications…

And yet this is when I am least happy. This is when my world felt the most wrong. Emma described this aptly as “feeling dirty”.

And now, thanks to Emma, I have reached this little bit of clarity. I am happiest when what I do is motivated intrinsically. And if I am happy, then I will attract happy clients and associates to me.

(Thanks also to Stilgherrian for pointing me her way.)

2 comments on “Marketing, intrinsic motivation, happiness and Joy Ninja”

1. Emma said:
   

   Yay, I’m so happy I inspired that clarity for you! I feel the same way about marketing – I’ve never done anything like cold calling, and yet I manage to get by just fine. Yes, I think I felt some of that “should” pressure around blogging and being popular and how to do it, and I forgot temporarily that just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean it will float my boat. =)

   I like reading your distinction between “motivate” and “educate” – I’ve never thought of those as two different but related concepts. I have a sense of unease around the idea of “motivating” somebody as in “motivational speaker”. Motivation feels like a sacred thing within a person, not something I want to try to change. It feels like “persuade” or “convince”, other things I don’t like doing. I’d rather just share my experience and ideas, and everyone gets to think their own thoughts about it! I love when I *inspire* people, but I don’t ever want to *convince* them – that is, I want to help people discover their own truth, if I can, not hand them mine and convince them it should fit.

   I’m having some thoughts on leadership here. We are handed a follower vs. leader script. I don’t want to be a follower…but I don’t want to be a “leader” either, in the way it is often conceived, as in someone who other people follow. I don’t want followers – I want to be part of a community of thinking living people who are leading themselves. The standard model of “have good ideas, write a book, get followers, be an expert, give talks, be popular” – that’s not a model I want to fit myself into, I don’t think I’d be happy in it. I don’t want to be at the top of a pyramid, it’s no better than being at the bottom of a pyramid. I’d rather be in a circle, or network–something holistic, evolving, etc. A conversation, not a lecture. =)

   Cheers,
   Emma

   
   10 March 2008 at 3:30 pm
2. Zern said:
   

   I can feel two longer blog posts coming up: Motivation vs Education in a marketing/comms context; and Follower vs Leader in a business practice context…

   I like your ring idea. It is some much more in tune with reality. The pyramid idea fits the traditional top-down, dominate-and-control mode of management. The circle acknowledges our interconnectedness, individuality, and respects/trusts everyone to do the right thing and be responsible for their own actions. The ring is perhaps the new model for doing business – where large corporations are replaced by tiny individual businesses…

   I have similar reservations about the model you have outlined of becoming an expert etc. Not that there is anything wrong with the model, it is just not quite me.

   Motivation in the conventional sense is something applied externally and often creates dependency on the motivator. Good for the motivator’s business!

   Education builds internal motivation. But the recipient has to do all the work to internalise and integrate the learnings with their selves.

   Thanks for the thoughts Emma.

   
   10 March 2008 at 11:00 pm

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