• There is a disease at work in our marketing. It’s afflicting everything we do. It is chronic short-termism.

    The desperation to succeed at my new launch, so that my ego doesn’t get kicked in the teeth, and my bank balance doesn’t dip into the stress zone. The eagerness to get as many people to sign up on my list as I can, so that I don’t have to deal with my loneliness and insecurity.

    The disease of short-termism narrows our eyes onto the immediate need in front of us. And it can come with a whole host of side effects…

    • egoic manipulation
    • failing integrity
    • cringing inauthenticity
    • slimy sales
    • clichéd copy-writing
    • uninspired offers.

    The antidote is realizing the bigger game you’re playing.

    The game where you create a thriving tribe. One that endures. One that will ultimately go way beyond you and your work. One that is here for decades to come.

    There’s an African proverb that says: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

    A tribe will go far, reach far, and make an impact we can’t even conceptualize from where we are.

    When you cultivate a thriving tribe, you create a thriving ecosystem. When you devote yourself to the service of your tribe’s growth, they will grow. When your tribe grows, they will serve you in return, and support your leadership of them.

    A thriving tribe is not only the basis of a truly successful business, it is the basis of a truly successful movement. One where your business can spawn business for others. One where collaboration and cross-pollination feed something entirely new.

    So, here are 4 principles that you want to cultivate, as you cultivate your tribe. 4 principles that when cultivated, will create a thriving tribe.

    1. Intimacy

    I feel you. I feel connected to you. I feel close to you.

    Intimacy is making the inmost known. It’s the closeness that is created when we show ourselves to one another.

    When we are intimate with one another, we are weaving a pattern of interconnectedness. When we are intimate, we create community.

    You create intimacy with your tribe when you show yourself. You start the dance of intimacy when you take the first step.

    When you are truly vulnerable, your tribe will be truly vulnerable in return.

    My most uncomfortably revealing articles have been the ones that people have emailed me about the most, sharing their own tender stories. Intimately showing your inner world creates a space for others to intimately show theirs.

    Intimacy is about the space between us. Intimacy is the sensation of deep connection. People no longer want adequate. People no longer want useful. People want deep meaning.

    Create deep intimacy with your tribe, and you create something meaningful to which people can belong. Create intimacy, and you create belongingness.

    2. Authority

    I’ve witnessed your expertise. I’ve felt your power. I’ve followed your advice, and it worked.

    Authority is what you must practice, if you are to lead your tribe.

    Authority is what is created when you speak your wisdom and serve those who have gathered. Authority is what is revealed when you tap into your natural power.

    Authority is authoring new wisdom.

    As you continually discover more of what you have to say, and your tribe are continually helped by your teaching, your authority will be established.

    Authority is not power over someone. Authority is not assumed or abused.

    Authority is what people recognize in you, when you consistently step into your own genius, and create wisdom and insight that helps them.

    Your tribe give you authority only when you demonstrate your competence to lead them. You step into that authority, when you trust in your ability to create life.

    Authority is what enables people to follow you. A leader leads through wisdom and power. Disseminate your wisdom. Channel your power. Lead your tribe.

    3. Trust

    I know you. I believe you. I can rely on you. I trust you.

    Trust is what all marketing should be designed to create. Trust is what very little marketing actually does create. Most marketing erodes trust, fast.

    If I’m focused solely on maximizing sales for my new thing, then all I need to do is create enough trust that I get you to click buy. After that, I don’t care.

    Trust takes time to create. Because trust is what I feel when I’ve related with you over time, and believe I can rely on your integrity.

    If your actions are in alignment with your espousal, if you walk what you talk, and you do it consistently, you’re enabling me to create trust for you.

    When your tribe trusts you, you don’t need to use marketing psychology to persuade them to buy your new thing. You can just tell them about it, and they’ll buy it if serves them.

    When your tribe trusts you, you don’t need to shout loudly about how amazing your latest offering is, and why it’s going to change their life. You can simply share your heart, and they’ll listen.

    Trust is the antidote to a loud and crowded marketplace. When you have a tribe that deeply trusts you, you can whisper rather than shout. You can offer rather than push. You can create rather than take.

    4. Permission

    Change me. I give you full permission.

    Permission is the agreement to let things through.

    Permission is what your tribe gifts to you when they believe in your authority. Permission is what they activate when they trust you, when they know you, when they choose to follow you.

    Permission is the agreement to be permeable. When something is permeable, it lets things through it.

    A permeable membrane is one that lets water through. A permeable tribe is one that lets you impact them deeply.

    They give you permission to change them.

    They give you permission to love them so fully that they cannot remain the same. They give you permission to challenge their assumed smallness. They give you permission to beckon to their wholeness.

    Permission is what opens up a giant space. One in which we can all change one another. One in which the tribe can establish a whole new way. One in which we can transform things. Forever.

    You Can’t Fail

    Your work is your Work. Your work is to create what you’re here to create. That’s not a short term game, that’s a life-time game, at least.

    You can’t fail at it. You can only turn away from it.

    Go and feed your gathering tribe. They’re hungry for your wisdom. They’re aching for your power. They want to trust you. They’re eager to know you, get intimate with you.

    Go and serve them today, so that they give you even deeper permission to change them tomorrow.

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • You’re creating something new. Or thinking about it.

    How do you launch it? How do you create a powerful promotion strategy for it? How do you get the word out? How do you make sure your new thing is a success?

    Marketing. It’s unavoidable. It’s necessary. It’s changing.

    The rules are changing. The game is changing. The old ways aren’t working any more. Have you noticed?

    There’s a new way. It’s not easier, but it’s so much more powerful.

    The tried and tested marketing model

    Here’s how the old way goes…

    1. Define your ideal customer
    2. Make something you believe that customer would pay for
    3. Wrap that something in marketing that will hit that customer target
    4. Sit back and watch your sales grow

    It’s been around a while. It seems entirely logical. And it’s what most people teach (and profess to use).

    And it works really well…

    …if (and this is a big fat hairy if), you already know who your customer is.

    And I don’t mean theoretically (like you sketched it out on some funky worksheet), I mean you actually, literally, really, experientially know who they are. Because you’ve sold stuff to them already.

    I once created a brand new 3-month coaching program in two weeks, concept to launch. We sold it out with 2 emails, in 3 days. Nailed. We were stoked.

    But. We already knew our customer really well. We’d run an online conference 18 months previously, with the exact same customer, so we knew who they were. Precisely.

    What happens if you don’t know your customer?

    Indeed.

    And further, what happens if you don’t know what the product is either?

    The old method works really well because it’s operating within small margins of error. Existing companies use it to great effect when they research a new product, because they have years of experience with their customers.

    The assumptions aren’t too hairy. It’s not a leap into unknown abyss, it’s a calculated step down a well mapped corridor.

    But when you’re creating something radically new, when you’re birthing something that’s on the edge of your own comprehension, when you’re working out what-in-the-hell-it-actually-is as you go, the old marketing method doesn’t work.

    In fact, it’s spectacularly ineffective.

    Because making something genuinely new is inherently unpredictable and risky. And despite your best efforts to map it all out using marketing blueprints, you can’t predict the unpredictable. You can’t make the risky safe.

    The claim that you can use old predictive marketing for genuinely new entrepreneurial creations is one of the most widely spread myths I see in business. It doesn’t work.

    Here’s what to do instead

    It’s really simple (but not easy).

    1. Reveal yourself – who you really are – and what you really care about, radically
    2. Create your work, say what you have to say, and share it, continually
    3. Allow your natural, organic, authentic tribe to show up
    4. Make things that serve them, and grow the tribe

    Your natural tribe is just that. Natural. It already exists. They’re already out there. You don’t get to choose them. Just like you don’t get to pick your family. You get to discover them, as you discover yourself.

    When you reveal your own essential shape, then you create space for the reciprocal shapes to find you.

    The more you reveal yourself, the more your tribe will reveal itself to you. The more you discover yourself, the more your tribe will discover you.

    And then you just make stuff that supports the tribe to grow, and your business grow.

    There’s nothing standing in your way

    The powerful thing about this new way? There isn’t a whole lot of preparation necessary.

    You don’t need a plan (there is no plan).

    You don’t need a website (just share your stuff on facebook).

    You don’t need a product (you’re the product).

    So, when there’s not much in the way, it tends to illuminate the inevitable excuses that we’re making to ourselves. The excuses that obscure the fact that we’re afraid.

    It’s scary to disclose yourself.

    But that’s the game. It’s powerful, it’s new, it’s real.

    How can you start playing?

    Ewan Townhead

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  • I was at dinner a few nights ago with a friend. We’d just spent a day with the spiritual teacher Adyashanti. We’d both been deeply moved by the experience, and by him.

    As we talked about life, love and religion, I happened to mention that I’d felt increasingly drawn to Christianity over the last couple of years. He was a little surprised, and wanted to know more.

    I want to share with you what I shared with him. It’s a story that is achingly close to my heart, and one I feel quite uncomfortable speaking about.

    Even with a close friend, I felt awkward speaking the name Jesus, aware of the cultural connotations that the word has for so many of us.

    But as I finished my story, he told me how much more permission he now felt to embrace the spiritual depth of Christianity, and let go of the old associations he had from his own upbringing. He said to me…

    “What if, by you telling this story, someone else’s estranged relationship to Christianity can be healed or reborn?”

    He was right. What if? So here’s the story of my friendship with Jesus.

    I Grew Up Atheist

    Atheism, if you didn’t know, is a contemporary religion that doesn’t have any Gods. The atheists typically don’t like the Christians. And so as a child, I didn’t have any friends who went to church or who had read the bible.

    Even at school I was protected from the Christians for the most part. We’d have the occasional shallow bible reading from Miss Bathmaker. But even as a 7 year old, I knew what she was teaching us wasn’t true.

    Growing up, Christianity was the old dusty religion that we’d replaced with something much more rational and humanistic.

    In fact, for most of my life, spirituality in general was hard for me to accept.

    Even when the work of philosopher Ken Wilber changed my life at the age of 23, it was his teachings on spirituality that I found hard to swallow. I would digest the philosophy and psychology at an alarming rate. But all the Buddha and Brahman stuff? That felt weird and alien. I didn’t know what to do with it.

    It was the practice of Chi Kung that really opened me up spiritually. I practiced it on and off for 4 years. But while I would study with my own teacher, to this day I have never read a single book on the Shaolin Arts. I didn’t want anything to do with the philosophy.

    And then, a few years ago I started feeling this curiosity for Christianity. It would come out in mild ways at first. And then 2 years ago, it got serious. I was going through one of the darkest periods of my life, and felt a call to study Christianity. I remember hours spent sitting in front of the wood burner at my dad’s country farmhouse, reading about Jesus.

    I talk to Jesus

    Not every day, but often.

    Often when I’m meditating, I’ll call forth his image. He normally stands in front, and slightly above me, a little way off. Recently he started standing slap bang right in front of me. He has a beard. He’s wearing white. He has some kind of pattern around his collar. He’s a big man. Strong.

    I’ll ask him things. I ask him for help. I ask him what God is asking of me.

    He’s so compassionate with my struggles. His heart is always so open. When I’m upset, bowing my head under the pressure, I’ll look up and he’s crying too. He feels my pain as I feel it.

    He’s ruthless with me. A few days ago he slapped me around the face. He told me to wake up. He told me to wake up and stop turning away.

    For the last 7 months he’s kept saying the same thing to me over and over.

    “You must speak.”

    No-one taught me how to do any of this. It just started happening.

    I’m not a Christian

    But I love going into old churches and cathedrals. I’ll sit in the pews and meditate. I’ll surrender to the chorus of the place, let it infiltrate me, carry me.

    A few months ago I was in London. had a few hours before my flight back and decided to go to St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’d never been there before.

    I sat underneath the great dome and I gave myself to the place. I was taken up and out. A great expansion reaching up to the dome, and further. As my awareness floated higher, my heart was grinding itself against my ribs. A profound feeling of love. Loved by him.

    Loved by the man who changed everything, and who never wanted any temples, churches or religions to be created in his name.

    Jesus was a human warrior of the heart

    It feels quite vulnerable to write this to you.

    Not simply because of the closeness of this story and this man to my heart. But because even now, I can feel the part of me that associates Jesus with weirdos. I see in my mind’s eye a different man who ‘loves Jesus’.

    A stubborn and judgmental religious man. A nut. A bigoted evangelist. Some Bible bashing zealot who will condemn you unless you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

    Except the Jesus that man speaks of is not my Jesus.

    My Jesus was a human who lived and died. He was a brilliant thinker, and a spiritual revolutionary. He was the least zealous spiritual leader of his time. He was a man who taught that awakening is not about escaping the world of form, but embracing it.

    He was a man who bucked against his destiny. Sometimes pleading to be absolved of the responsibility he felt, and the pain he was asked to endure.

    He was a man who got angry and spoke out, condemning those who abused power for their own egoic gain.

    He was a man who taught that the heart is the center of life. He was a man that loved others with his own human heart, deeply and profoundly. He was a man that loved a woman profoundly.

    I have tears even as I write this.

    He told me once that he felt sad that the stories of him had edited out his great love, Mary, with whom he taught and entwined. The woman who was the other half of his awakening and of his teaching.

    My Jesus is not a man who will judge you if you do not do as the bible says.

    He’s laughing as I write that. That’s so very far from who he was.

    What I’ve learned from him

    As I’ve strived to bring my work into the world, there’s one thing that I’ve been continually challenged by, one trial that has faced me down in a myriad of forms. Doubt. The great doubt.

    Can I really do this?

    Am I truly worthy?

    Who am I to say this?

    I’ve walked into new territories where the maps have been sketchy at best. I’ve felt continually pulled back by the gravitational force of safety and conformity. And I’ve questioned my work, deeply, time and time and time again.

    I could not have come through all the trials I’ve faced without a faith in something larger than myself. I could not have stepped out vulnerably into the unknown without a trust in a force greater than I.

    Jesus has been a divine guide for me. A true representative of God. And a man, who lived, loved and lost. He’s always there for me if I want to ask him something.

    I just asked him what he thought of me writing this piece. He said he likes it.

    He said he likes me speaking.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Marketing isn’t about advertising anymore. You can’t build a product and then hope to ‘find an audience’ for it. Mad Men is truly over.

    The new marketing is being who you are, attracting your natural tribe, and then creating products that deeply serve them.

    As Seth Godin says, “You don’t find customers for your products, you find products for your customers.”

    So how do you gather a tribe? How do you find more of the people you’re here to serve? Well, I’ve drawn out 5 ways for you.

    I was resistant to writing this piece

    I confess, I’ve avoided more practical articles like this so far. I’m not totally sure why. Part of me has assumed that this blog had a more philosophical identity. But I also know that’s my comfort zone.

    So, this is me walking my talk, and choosing to create new stuff despite feeling resistance.

    I’ve done a lot of marketing the last few years. I know the conventions really well. I know that a small business that doesn’t focus strongly on marketing is going to struggle. I also know that non-vomit-inducing marketing is hard to come by.

    And yet, I think the new marketing really does transcend (and exclude) vomit.

    So, let’s get stuck in. How do you grown your tribe? Here are 5 ways…

    1.     Share your wisdom (consistently)

    This really is the bed rock. That’s why everyone’s dog has written about it. You want to grow your tribe? You need to show up and share what you’ve got, so they can find you. No sharing, no gathering.

    Share your wisdom. Whatever it is that you think can help folks, give it. Don’t hold back the good stuff for some vague future product. Lay it all out.

    It’s a process of self-revealing. When you disclose who you naturally are, your natural tribe will naturally find you.

    And if you want to do this effectively, you’re going to want to be consistent.

    Whatever it is you’re putting out, put it out regularly. As you get better at saying what you have to say, and people get more trusting that you’re going to keep saying it, your tribe will increasingly grow.

    2.  Say the things you don’t want to say

    Show yourself. Radically. Share the thing that you don’t want to share. If you’re not quivering as you click ‘publish’ you probably played it too safe.

    No-one changed things without making a ruckus. No-one followed a leader that wasn’t radical. You can’t create a new tribe without dividing opinion.

    What are the things you don’t want to share? What are the things that seem inappropriate? What do you fear will piss people off? What do you worry might ruin your reputation?

    If it’s deeply important to you, you feel it in your heart, and you know it needs to be said; say it.

    Losing 10% of your community because of a controversial share is a good thing if the other 90% love you even more deeply for it.

    3.  Say the things you do want to say

    Share what you care about. Yes, you’re here to help and serve. But if you don’t fundamentally feel excited about what you’re sharing, people will feel it, and they’ll turn off.

    Forget your ‘target market’. Ignore the strategic leverage. Share what you know you’re here to share. Say what you want to say.

    What would you talk about if you could talk about anything? What would you talk about if you didn’t have to do anything except drink strawberry smoothies through a straw for the rest of your life?

    Talk about that, and see who shows up. That’s your tribe.

    4.   Signpost the route

    “Build it, and they will come.” Except they don’t.

    You need to show people how to find you. You need to signpost the route. Maybe you prefer an understated little sign with a personal message. Maybe you prefer a big flashing neon monster.

    But you do have to sign post it.

    “Tribe this way. We’re into preserving the endangered Tualamanian nose flute. If you want to join come this way.”

    Facebook. Workshops. Email. LinkedIn. Meetups. Parties. Wherever you think your people hang out, mark a trail back to your tribal home. And welcome them when they arrive.

    5.  Interrupt people

    When I’m designing marketing strategies for my business or clients, the end goal is always creating trust and intimacy. It’s about getting into genuine relationship with them, for the long term.

    That’s the most effective long term strategy I know. And it’s what feels good in my heart, and my bones.

    But to get into relationship, you’ve got to make contact.

    Today’s market place is like a packed room at a party. It’s loud, fast and fickle. If you stand alone in the corner (like I prefer to do at parties) and hope people wander over and strike up a conversation with you, it’s going to be a slow and lonely process.

    You need to interrupt people.

    Which is why, for the first time ever in four years in this game, I decided to use a (hopefully tasteful) popup. Scroll a little further down and you’ll find it.

    Interrupt them. Make contact. Touch them. Then you can build a relationship, which grows your tribe.

    Ewan Townhead

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