Genuinely caring is your marketing superpower.

So much marketing advice out there tells you to focus exclusively on your customer or your audience. And it feels like, more often than not, they’re asking the wrong questions too. How to get more customers? How to grow revenue? How to increase productivity? 

This approach works for some people. Why are you in business? When the honest answer is to make money, then this is your approach. But what about the rest of us? These types of questions cannot co-exist with purpose-driven work. Because when you’re aiming at questions like this, you’re already lost. Your compass is money. And that is going to shine through in everything you do, no matter how hard you try to hide it.

So it’s no wonder that the idea of sales, of branding and marketing, turns so many of us off.

Is it possible to have marketing tools that really work but don’t leave you feeling sleazy? What would it look like to have build a brand and marketing around both who you are and who you seek to serve? Can something be genuine even when there’s a sale involved? These questions were the start of Creative Voices and The Journey Framework. 

After years of development, what we came up with is a completely new approach. One that takes what you do best — your care for your work — and makes it your superpower. This approach is for the people who want to share their work, who want to make lives better in some way, but just cannot stomach the idea of being slick, slimy or salesy to do it. 

The ultimate goal of branding and marketing is for a transaction to take place, to get people to do something. This can be a sale, a donation, or a signature on a petition. But ask people what sales makes them think of and the most common answer is the used car salesman. The word greasy is often dropped in there somewhere too, just make sure you get the idea. 

Is it possible to have marketing tools that really work but don’t leave you feeling sleazy?

So it’s no wonder that the idea of sales, of branding and marketing, turns so many of us off. Some of us hold back, we promote our work less than we need to out of fear of feeling or seeming this way.

But for others, it means they stay away completely. Sure they might have a good idea, something they care about, something they want to see in the world, a change they hope to make. They may even go to sleep and wake up thinking about it. But the nature of sales, marketing, and branding makes them hesitate. They hold back. 

I would argue that the people who are holding back are the very ones we need out there. These are the people that we can trust to ask hard questions and thoughtfully weigh complexities. These are the people who are kind, intelligent, and genuinely care. The people who want to be good, maybe amazing. These people start the types of businesses I want to see more of in the world. These are the people I want to buy from and have emails from in my inbox. These are the artists I want in my life, the non-profits I want to support. 

The world is bigger than it’s ever been. There is more noise and marketing messages in our minute-to-minute lives than ever before. It’s harder than ever to stand out and find a foothold in an increasingly industrialized marketplace. You don’t have to look far to see lots of headlines like this. It can make you feel hopeless, like the opportunity has already passed you by. But the truth is that the noise is also an opportunity in disguise. 

I would argue that the people who are holding back are the very ones we need out there.

For the person willing to show up, be generous, be personable and a little vulnerable, this is a huge opportunity. There is more content than ever before, but not necessarily quality content. And so many people get duped by shortcuts and promises of ease and passive income, they inadvertently contribute to the garbage content out there. It’s not saying anything. 

How many blogs are going to be written by AI in the coming years? The goals being speed and quantity, not quality or connection. And with it, I predict a huge upswing in lukewarm content. More garbage emails and useless blog posts and articles. So much mediocrity that the real thing is going to stand out like a diamond in a coal heap. Creative Voices set out to help you tap into what makes you awesome and build your brand and marketing on that foundation of authenticity. This is how you set yourself free from feeling like the used car salesman. But in a world starved for meaning and connection, this is not only marketing done different but marketing that stands out. You have something to say. 

Be the person who has something to say.

Creative Voices can’t make the decision for you, can’t make you decide to really go for it, can’t give you the gumption to take that first step. That’s all you. But we can take a road block out of the way: not having to choose between what you’re proud of and what puts food on the table. We can help you tap into your purpose and your why, find your people, and create an experience they’ll love. Because that’s what brand and marketing should be. And when that happens, there’s one more good person lending their voice to the messy marketplace. There’s one more great option for where we can spend our money. 

This is the world I want to live in, the one with you in it.

ABOUT OUR FREE MEANINGFUL WORK MINI CLASS

We want you to have meaningful work in your life. That can be paid work, volunteer work, running your own show, or working for someone else. Work is one of the best tools we have for feeling engaged in our lives. This free mini-class includes 10 video lessons plus a workbook for diving deeper.