Pattern Shift
Hi! My name is Saskia de Feijter and welcome to the Pattern Shift podcast. In this podcast, I support overwhelmed small business owners in the fiber and needlecraft industry, helping them set up and organize their businesses for growth and personal well-being. Together, we can be a force for good and a counterbalance to fast fashion, helping makers craft garments and accessories slowly and more sustainably. You can be part of that change and make a profit in the process.
Pattern Shift
#72 Reframing Your Marketing with Simon Batchelar: Ethical and Unconventional Approaches for Crafters
What if marketing wasn't about pushing sales, but about engaging and empowering your audience? Ponder that as you join Simon Batchelor and myself on this riveting journey down the road less taken in marketing strategies. Together, we'll uncover the secrets of ethical and effective marketing, painting a picture of a world where marketing is not only authentic and fun but also resonates deeply with the audience, encouraging them to become active participants in the buying process.
Our conversation covers a spectacular range of topics, from the power of customer-centric marketing to the challenges and realities of social media marketing. We'll challenge the traditional goal-focused marketing perspectives, introducing the concept of viewing marketing from the client's eyes. Simon and I dig deep into brand portrayal, content creation, and the game of numbers that is social media. We'll guide you on how to navigate this minefield, highlighting the importance of genuine engagement and community building over simply growing your follower count.
In the latter half, we shift focus to the power of email marketing, discussing how this often-overlooked strategy can provide a more direct and personal link to your audience compared to social media. We'll also delve into the intriguing concepts of the 'helping others industry' and the 'kindness economy', exploring how these relate to ethical marke
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Are we overthinking it? How do we connect to our audience in a way that feels good and still is effective? My name is Saskia the fighter, and today I talk to Simon Batchelor. They've written the amazingly helpful reframing marketing a three-step plan for effective and ethical marketing. This book is on top of my business pile at the moment, and so I just had to invite them to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Day-to-day life as a creative business owner can be very lonely and overwhelming, leaving no time to actually grow your business. The patent shift podcast gives you business insights and actionable tips to help you rise out of that day-to-day swamp and start to become more visible and move your business forward. Find out how you can be part of helping crafters move away from fast fashion and become a value-based business owner who's on top of things, running a business that's more sustainable for themselves and our planet. In this nearly hour-long episode, I talked to Simon about ethical marketing communicating to your audience in a way that automatically makes us feel good because it connects back to our own personal values and needs. Simon and myself investigate how we can make the process fun In a way that's all very natural when you focus on making authentic content that feels good to you adapting your choices, from getting feedback, from choosing marketing tools that actually work for you and that you like using. You don't need to be everywhere all at once, you know.
Speaker 1:Now, before we start the interview, don't forget to sign up for the patent shift updates and the Yvel Business Circle Creative Business Tips and Insights. You can do that via the show notes. Go ahead, it only takes a minute and you can do it while you're listening. So no excuses. I cannot wait to see your name pop up on my list and in our community so we can start connecting you to those other business owners. I'd love to see you there, enjoy. I'm super excited to talk to you because your book, reframing Marketing a three-step plan for effective and ethical marketing, is on my shelf and it is actually on the pile of my most loved and useful books that I use in my work. So I'm so happy that you are here to talk to me and to us about ethical marketing.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm pleased to hear that my book has made it to the top of your bookshelf.
Speaker 1:So let's start with the most important question what is marketing?
Speaker 2:I think marketing really is essentially getting people curious about what it is that you're doing, because marketing is sometimes presented as an opportunity to get people to buy what you're selling, and sometimes it is presented as a way to persuade or manipulate people into making a decision or a purchase that they weren't necessarily considering. Both of those are, I guess, true in some senses, but for me personally, marketing is really about getting people thinking, getting people curious and, hopefully, getting people excited about something they either didn't know before or are suddenly become interested in or aware of. I think is probably the word I'm looking for there.
Speaker 1:And you talk in your book about ethical marketing. How's that different? There's a whole book about it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ultimately, I think the kind of the best way of describing ethical marketing being in its differentiation to marketing is that the aim is to get people to a point where they feel that they've made the decision to say yes themselves. I think that's the broadest term. You are helping them get to a place where they know what they need to know to make an informed decision about whether what their next step is is the right one for them.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, yeah, and so for me, focusing on ethical marketing completely solves the feeling icky around the selling 100% doesn't bother me anymore.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of marketing in its traditional sense is just focused on the end point, which is the sale. So a lot of industrial era thinking around marketing is all about how can I sell 10 of these units, how can I shift this number of boxes at a decent margin to some people, and essentially it's all around selling average stuff to average people who don't really care about what they're buying and don't really need or want what they're being sold. We can do that all day long. There's a lot of big companies that can help you do that. But if we flip that around to the people listening, no one here, I presume, has an interest in doing that, because that's why you're doing what you're doing. You've made a conscious choice to do what you do differently.
Speaker 2:A lot of the marketing advice just simply doesn't work because ultimately it's bullshit in the sense that it's just selling people what they don't want. If we make the first flip, which is what most marketing can't do, and it's just to think about where the client is now, where is that person who you'd like to get to know more right now? What are they thinking, feeling and doing? And even taking that one step is probably more than most people who do marketing would ever do, because you're considering from the client's perspective, their starting point, and a lot of the time, especially if you're selling something that isn't necessarily a kind of a necessity or it isn't something that people would actively seek on their own, then you're not actually even trying to make a sale. It's that thing of.
Speaker 2:I work a lot with coaches and the biggest difficulty of trying to get people interested in coaching is that most people don't know what a coach is, so you're not actually marketing about the coaching work at all, because that's way too far down the journey. What you actually want to do is start off by saying if you're thinking, feeling and doing things like this, then did you know you can think, feel and do things like this, and for a lot of people that will be that a hard moment. That, yeah, that is interesting, I never thought of it like that and that sometimes can be the link that starts that journey of interest, of curiosity, of discovery. That then leads them to go on and either follow that path more or go. Maybe that's not for me and they go off and look at something else shining on the internet, but a lot of the time people don't know what they don't know.
Speaker 2:So, if you take marketing as in, how can I help someone who doesn't even know what even the world I operate in? How do you just tell them that that world exists? Because a lot of people don't even know there's an alternative or a different way of doing things or thinking, purely because no one's ever talked to them about that or they didn't even know it existed. So they can't get involved with it or get interested in it if they don't know it exists. Sometimes it's just about linking two things together that are incredibly obvious to you, perhaps because you do them all day, every day and going, hey, did you know these two things are linked? And someone goes, yeah, it's interesting, I did not know that. And from there a whole discovery journey will then carry on.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and this I'm thinking about something that you wrote that is marketing simple, but it's not always easy. So this reminds me of that, because just stepping out of your daily reality and thinking about what your client thinks, even if you don't have that much experience let's say you're a yarn dyer somebody they buy undyed yarns and they make these wonderful, creative looking, colorful yarns and it's all dyed by hand and it's very specific to them, and a brand called Ovis Etc and the owner is very much into the base of the yarn being one of the most sustainable choices that you can make within yarns.
Speaker 1:But she started to talk about what are the specific traits of sock yarn giving people the information that, for her, is so simple, such a duh moment, but you never know who's landing on your websites. I just recently posted on LinkedIn what is marketing, what is branding, what is selling? Actually, because it's the same thing. I think that the people I work with, the clients I work with, should have an understanding of what that is, but I also know that they do not always have that understanding and they might be a little bit ashamed of it. They don't want to ask because they didn't have that business education and how does that connect to your ideal customer?
Speaker 2:So I think the first part I wanted to make, which was jumping back to branding, and I think branding is very important. But to think about branding in a different way. There is a quote and I can't remember who it is, but one day I'll find out and essentially your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room, and that's all I think your brand is. So it's not necessarily a visual identity. Your logo is one thing, and that's where people sometimes think branding finishes, but it's not really about it.
Speaker 2:It's basically your vibe. If you were going to describe you to someone else, the way they describe it is your brand, so for me, that's a great place to start with. Marketing is how do you want people to describe you to other people? And even if you just start talking about that a bit more, that's a great place to start, because the worst case scenario with that kind of marketing is that someone is able to recommend you to more people, which is a great thing to do, right.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But some people get really nervous about it. Well, I don't know if I should talk about that more or less, or even start talking about it, because I've been posting for six years. Why would I suddenly go hey everybody, so my deal is this, this is what I'm doing, this is why I do it. This is my story. Why would I suddenly do that after six years? Because you want to help people recommend you. So I think that's a really fun place to start with. Marketing is just to take that step back and say Hmm, if I show this feed to someone who doesn't know anything about me or anything about my brand, well, how would they describe it? That's your brand, you know. If you just take your Instagram account and show it to someone not just anybody, but like someone who's got a vague interest obviously just show it to the bus driver and ask them that's not going to be, it's no use, unless they're knitting.
Speaker 1:They could be.
Speaker 2:They could be, we don't know.
Speaker 1:We don't know. We don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Um, I think, then, in terms of another thing to think about is that most people who go to your website already know what you do and they already have some idea of who you are, particularly in the more niche markets. Should we say I wouldn't focus too much on your website about explaining to the complete novice about anything?
Speaker 2:because those people are not going to end up on your website. If someone types in what is knitting, they're not going to land on your blog about knitting. They're going to end up on Wikipedia. So you don't need to explain what that is. It's like for most people. Their website is for people who are already at that. I want to know more level, so that's good, that is so. I think that sort of did that go near the way you were thinking.
Speaker 1:I think, yes, I think I wanted to go to. What if this is, this episode is all they have they'll ever have? On taking a step forward within their marketing, whether some easy things they can do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I guess it's that thing of if someone. So, if we think about the dyed yarn example, what is someone who is not buying hand dyed yarn currently doing? Where are they getting that yarn from? Why are they getting their yarn there and why are they not getting hand dyed yarn? What are their preconceptions about hand dyed yarn and how might you be able to show how these two things are very similar in some ways but they're very different in other ways? And that kind of content is the kind of content that's very shareable. That's the kind of content that's recommended. That's where the kind of content as long as you keep it super simple, that's the kind of content that'll get watched and shared and interacted with, because you'll get that. I never knew that.
Speaker 2:So, you could say one of the things I often think about. I think one of the things is the amount of time that goes into all of this work, and sometimes that can be fun to be like. Let me show you what goes into making this, and behind the scenes stuff is always what really interests people, I think, so even some of that can be really interesting. If you're not already doing that kind of content, it doesn't really matter how messy the ringroom is. Some behind the content scenes stuff is always welcome. People love that. I follow a guy on Instagram who is a hand sign painter.
Speaker 2:Yes, and he did the side of a hot dog stand in LA and it got 14 million views because just watching this guy with an impossibly long brush like paint lines is so aesthetically pleasing. It's literally just him up on a ladder painting the side of a building and it's like you wouldn't think that kind of content, anyone would watch it. And now he's got millions of followers. Not saying everyone's going to get millions of followers, but the point being of the uninteresting is sometimes the most interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're talking exactly to the point that I made in an earlier episode that making content, you don't have to become a podcaster, you don't have to become a YouTuber, and if you do, there's easy and small ways to do it. That can be very effective and I think it goes all back to how are you different than the next business owner? How's your product different? And really finding, especially in this niche, finding a way to show your character and personality. Probably half of the book ups or missteps, depending on what kind of language you like.
Speaker 1:I make in this podcast a lot of them just going to be in here because I don't mind. I don't mind being messy, that's just who I am. I think people that feel the same way are attracted to that, and perhaps some people that are completely different come and just look at me as if I'm in the zoo, like she's so weird. This is interesting, but that's the best way that you can keep doing this and keep being consistent because you're being yourself. We're talking about making content. We're talking about websites. How do you feel about social media?
Speaker 2:I like social media to a point and then I think it's just weird. I think again, it's that thing of the classic marketing of you don't have to be on every channel. I'm a passionate believer in the fact that most social media content is complete nonsense, a waste of everyone's time and the world's resources.
Speaker 1:It's just not necessary.
Speaker 2:However, there are audiences of people out there who don't know that. They don't know that they actually are really interested in spinning crochet sign painting. Who knows pottery like shit pottery. Have you ever looked at that on Instagram.
Speaker 1:No, but I'm interested now.
Speaker 2:It is people trying to learn pottery, and it's just. There's no faces, it's literally just hands getting pots wrong.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know where my mind's where Shit Potterian. It's probably happening somewhere.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say. Someone somewhere right now has been like no one will watch my YouTube videos and suddenly the views are going up because Sestia's found it. But what I mean is like so basically, the thing with social media is it is ultimately a big game. That's all it is. It's a fun game of you versus AI and sometimes you win the AI game and sometimes you don't win the AI game, and it can be exhausting and it will take everything you've got to give it.
Speaker 2:It's a game that you shouldn't really, I don't think anybody should be taking too seriously, because there are a limited number of people in the world who can be bothered to become an influencer and, let's face it, most of them are already those people. For everyone else, it can be quite a fun way of demonstrating, sharing, explaining, inspiring people, and I think that's really good. But ultimately, the numbers that are connected to social media are bullshit, to be honest. It's like people say, oh, I don't have enough followers. If you want more followers, you can buy followers. Followers aren't cheap. They're about $30 for about a million followers. It's not much. It doesn't mean anybody's going to watch your video.
Speaker 1:No, and it doesn't mean that they're going to buy from you if they're dead. That's the thing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Ideally, most people would be overwhelmed if 100 people said yes, yes, that's. Most people's worst nightmare is if 100 people all ordered on the same day. Most businesses would like oh my water's happy, yeah, right. So realistically, if you've got 100 followers and 10 of them place an order, in fact even if 12 of them place an order, one a month for the rest of the year, is that enough? Is that what you need? And if you go like a couple more than that, great, okay, you've got some place to go.
Speaker 1:Think the other way around how many actual orders do you need, and how does it compare to the amount of followers that are missing your messages, making you feel like a broken record because you know that they're not seeing what you're posting? And yeah, but also, when I talk about social media, I have made decisions for me personally, but I talk and guide and teach people a little bit broader. What I choose is not necessarily what somebody else would choose, but what I say is at least be conscious about what you are doing and why you are doing it, and how much time you're spending and I think that's one of the easiest arguments to make is like how much time do you spend on social media and how much actual business are you getting from it? Because, in the end, we're businesses and we're not hobbyists not anymore or we do that in our free time, but we also want to earn some money with this. Otherwise, we would just be sitting and knitting. So, yeah, the thing, though and this is what I'm curious about, so just to give you some background information, I have on my shelf three books, this thing, this wide and they're my Instagram accounts printed out before I close them, and I had at the top, I think, 7,000 followers, and then I was.
Speaker 1:It took a while. It was a whole process. I'm still working on putting that process into words so that people might use it if they want to. But turns out it's pretty hard to find people, to have your voice being heard through all the other voices, and so I thought I'm just going to literally have my voice out there and start a podcast, but then still people are focused on the Instagram. That's actually where my people are and I'm not there. What would you say if I? I'm just completely blank. I don't. If I go back on Instagram, I have to start from scratch. What would you say? What would I do?
Speaker 2:So I think with Instagram it's the thing is is because, ultimately, instagram is owned by Matt. She used to be Facebook. Obviously those Instagram is very. Instagram is increasingly becoming pay to play. Once it's sniffed out and worked out that you're a business, it will work out that you've probably got your business credit card and once it's worked that out, it will start to suggest a boost, try and boost this post, do this, do this, and once you hit that boost button, your organic reach, ie the reach you get for free, is gone because it knows that you will then pay.
Speaker 2:To my mind, you have to be serious about making that work and it has to be part of the strategy because, rightly or wrongly, whatever Instagram or TikTok those platforms do, they do have a good discoverability. When you start, you will get a boost because they need you to get hooked on those numbers but, as you say, it is that investment versus return.
Speaker 2:So if you're spending an hour a day making a real doing of this, doing of that, that's cool, but also, is that an hour a day you could be doing something else. Is that an hour a day you could spend in a community adding to people's conversations? Could you spend that time on Reddit answering questions? Is there a free community with much better engagement from actual humans where your time could be better spent? Reddit, for all its flaws, does have one of the most passionate communities or sorry, engaged communities on the internet, because bots get downvoted super quick and sales get downvoted super quick. Real, helpful, useful humans rise to the top and are seen and are visible.
Speaker 2:So I would say there's potentially a lot of other places that an hour a day could be better spent, because ultimately, even if you get a lot of eyeballs on Instagram, you are still next to Sheen, h&m, amazon. I get a lot of fucking Amazon. What else do I get? You're going to get lots of other businesses that you might want to, not want to be next to and not just in the feed and still scrolling those ads will appear because people who, like you know clothing as the broad term the AI is. You respond to this combination of pixels, so I'm going to show you this other combination of pixels that other people like that responded to. You're going to get that blend of different brands.
Speaker 2:So I guess that's a very long-winded way of saying I think your people might be on Instagram perhaps, but I think they're probably also in other places. It's just that it's about finding out where they are and whether you want to hang out there too. So, for example, I sell to other business owners in my agency quite a lot, and quite a lot of those people play golf, but I can't stand golf. So I could probably join a golf club and pretend to give a shit about golf and go on a six mile walk and, like some fucking club trend and all this shit, play the silly game, but it's going to drain me.
Speaker 1:How about the bar at the golf club?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could hang around at the bar at the golf club, but do you want to be back? That's the same thing to me. If being on Instagram is just going to drain you, it doesn't matter if it's full of the kind of people you think you want.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Is it worth pretending to like golf?
Speaker 1:Yes, I love this. Coincidentally, I just started watching the documentary on golf on Netflix because my parents okay, here's a little bit of information behind the scenes of my life when I was young, my parents made me do golf and I hated it because I was the black sheep, pearl jam loving, not that kind of person. And I went and I didn't complain that much because there was a very cute guy that was also on the driving range. So that was my reason for doing it for a while, but I just don't know. No golf.
Speaker 1:Anyways, everybody that plays golf, we still love you. We love you. We know there's more to you than just that silly game. It's what's up. That's a nice segue into a newsletter and subscribing and all of that. So we talked about let me, we talked about making content, the website, social media, and now we're landing on a mailing list. I think a mailing list is the best thing since sliced bread. That's. That's my opinion. I still struggle not to use the words newsletter and talk about emails. Emails, because they don't have to be newsletters. There's, it's just one way of communicating to your audience, to your customer, what you are all about, and I just, I just love them and I think everybody should have one and I did a little bit of research. I went to a yarn festival and I brought with me some business cards and it just went online and looked at all their websites and took notes and lots of them do not have newsletters and some of them are quite professional but they just lean into the Instagram and with everything every single thing.
Speaker 1:So please, simon, tell us about the newsletter and why everybody should have one.
Speaker 2:So for my money, email is. So email is this funny thing. It's like your mobile number, in that it's probably the second bit of information that people least like giving. Mobile number is the first, I would say email address is the second and then all the social media. But, like, the reason for that is because it's direct attention. So most people, I would say, don't have filters on their inbox. It's just a long stream of emails that come in. Obviously, if you're using Gmail, you may have the tabs thing. It tries to self sort.
Speaker 2:But ultimately the thing with email is it's generally direct access to someone's attention for a minute, a couple of minutes, whatever it might be, and that is not available on social media. If you post, you can't really say with any certainty that anybody is going to consistently see that, unless they're really a fan, in which case they probably will. But that's a different story To me. The other thing about email is it's someone signalling that they want to know more Because they have to opt in. Not only is it direct access to their attention, it's permission as well, saying someone saying please interrupt my day with your wonderful news or your interesting email. And the best thing is that they can also signal to you that they're done with that for now by unsubscribing, and that's cool too.
Speaker 2:Yes, I often think that unsubscribes are bad, but actually unsubscribes are really good for two reasons. One, it makes your open rates a bit more accurate because you're not just sending it to a list of people who don't open it. And B, it saves you a bit of money because they charge you per active person generally these days. So actually people unsubscribing you don't want to hear from you is a good thing. So I guess really mailing lists are very, very good in the sense that you own them, as in, you own the list, even if you're putting the list on something like MailChimp or Flowdesk.
Speaker 2:Yes, flowdesk, there are. There's too many to be mentioned. Yeah, you know what I mean. You can export that list out. It is your list of people. They are your friends, as it were, and you own that list, whereas your followers on Instagram, on TikTok you don't own those followers. They are TikToks people and you are basically renting access to them. It's like a good asset to have, and if you can get a consistent readership and you can get consistent engagement with your emails, then I think that often can be more effective than social media anyway, because you can still send people videos, you can still send people links to your blog, you can still send links to other articles, to products, to whatever you want. Same as social media. You can basically whatever content you're thinking of making for social, you can send in an email. It's the same thing really. Obviously, the frequency and the length of the email is something to play with, but it doesn't have to be a monthly epic 5,000 word tone that you bombard or you know people with it.
Speaker 2:It can just be here's a little thing once a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I like to think of an email list, a party list, where you those are the people that you invite to your party and if they choose to RSVP, they open and they read it and they come and they dress up for it because they're your people, they like what you do. And if they do not RSVP for a couple of times and you keep inviting them to your party and they feel like I don't really want to go to this party and they feel guilty about it and they're like I'm just going to not be friends with them anymore and they'll talk about that. I don't know how far I can take this metaphor, but that's pretty good. That's pretty good. And when you invite people to your party and social media, everybody knows that's going to be messy, because all the people are going to come to and they're not going to come to party, they're going to come to mess up the place. So, yes, that's how I like to make the difference between the two. I think that last part needs a little bit of work.
Speaker 2:It's a good start, though I like it.
Speaker 1:It's a good start. It's a good start, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the thing with email is there are limitations in email and I think another thing you can do is to do like broadcast groups. It can be quite good. That sometimes works for people. Sometimes people just really don't like doing email at all and that's fair enough, and some people just don't have it on their phone. They're just a very anti-email which is fair enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can use something like Signal or Telegram or even WhatsApp now to do broadcast groups, and people can be quite keen on those because it's anonymized, so as the sender, you can't see the details of the person that you're sending to, so, from a privacy point of view, it's quite cool and that's quite good, because you can send little videos, you can send links. It's like having your own private social media network, and that can be quite a nice little community. If you want to turn it into a community, though, you would need to turn it into a chat, which is a bit more open, but the broadcast group is a nice way of doing a kind of here's what I'm up to today or here's a thing. But yeah, it might be worth considering as an alternative to email.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cool. That's actually the reason that I started my community to just have a way of sending videos, messages, everything you can do on social media, but just in this safe environment of people that you know will be kind and open and inspiring. Let me step back a little bit. So we've talked about some different ways that we can start to do some good marketing in easy ways and try to talk about how it doesn't have to be a huge big marketing plan. It can be small steps that you adjust in your daily or your weekly routines to become a little bit better at reaching your audience. What would you say makes an excellent marketer? Oh, an excellent ethical marketer.
Speaker 2:I would say someone who gets people thinking, so someone who can get someone to think God, I've not thought of it like that before, or I did not know that I think that is someone who can consistently deliver moments like that for people. That's where you become a real expert marketer, I think, because you you essentially open that journey for people to then go on, and I think that then is very clearly signposting who this is for and who this isn't for, and I think that really separates people out, because you're just looking to inspire and get people curious, and I think that there's not many people doing it. So when I do see people doing it, I'm all over it.
Speaker 1:Wow, that was a lot, but also not a lot.
Speaker 2:It's a good start right.
Speaker 1:It's a good start. Yes, definitely. And so, other than, obviously, your own book, what would you say that small businesses, whether they're starting or a little bit more experienced, what are good places to go? Books, writers, what are your heroes? Who are your heroes?
Speaker 2:I'm a big fan of Seth Godin's podcast akimbo, aka MBO as he says at the beginning of every episode that we all remember. He's basically one of the I'm going to lovingly use this term. He's one of the grandfathers of marketing in my sense, as in. He's been around since before the internet and most of those people have given up and gone to live on a golf resort by now, whereas Seth Godin is still going and he's doing some good work and he's passionate about helping people understand more about climate change and ethical marketing and better leadership and more human-centered solutions to a lot of the problems that we face and Earth. He just shares incredibly generously and his podcast is about 20 minutes long. He calls them riffs or rants and he just talks for about 15 minutes and then answers questions and it consistently inspires me to think differently about all sorts of things, not just marketing just about the world of business, the world of which we live, I would say Just life, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's a really like gentle weekly podcast. It's good fun. He doesn't take it too seriously. You can hear his dog walking around in the background. It's not like some highly polished-.
Speaker 1:He's got a good voice too. Yeah, yeah, he does. He does Not Strong glasses game as well. Talking about Seth Godin and what he talks about connecting your personal values to your marketing, and how do you feel about that? Personal values, business values, marketing how do you incorporate it in your story?
Speaker 2:I think there is a place where the reason why you do what you do and the things you believe and the things you do in your day to day make a difference to what it is you're bringing to the world in your products, your service, whatever it is, and that is worth talking about. There are probably other things that you think about, believe and do that are in the same ballpark but not directly connected to what you think and do and maybe they might be a bit fringe to bring in. They might be a little bit that might put people off for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1:Colorful leggings.
Speaker 2:That's definitely one, because that's all about expressing yourself and but that's like a. It's that thing of. There are definitely some things that are going to make your brand your kind of vibe. I think is what it's about bringing. So if that helps express the work that you do better, then it's worth bringing, but if you're not so sure about it, you don't have to bring that to start with.
Speaker 2:You just come out as you evolve and share and when people say, like one of the most common questions I get is how much do I need to post? Like how often do I need to post? And I say, don't focus so much on how much. But essentially the guide I always give is that the first 50 posts are a warm up. That's you just experimenting, trying seeing what happens, throwing an idea out there, try something a bit different. And two things happen after you get to 50 post. Number one is that it becomes more consistent, becomes more fun, it becomes more enjoyable because you're just doing it to get to 50. You're just like it doesn't matter if I don't cover everything in post 20, because I've got to do post 21, so I can do it in post 21. Whereas if you're only focusing on doing one post, you're trying to take your entire business and squash it into 30 seconds. That's never going to work.
Speaker 2:Whereas if you, I'm going to do 50 posts. That's a whole year of fun, of experimenting, of just mucking about and seeing what works. The second thing that happens is you stop counting. No one's ever messaged me and said Simon, I've done my 50th post, now what? Everyone's just so consistently doing it and showing up and having fun with it that they just go off and do marketing. So I think that's the real way of making sure that you show up in your marketing is to just keep going Absolutely, because you'll do something, you'll make a video and you'll be like this everyone's going to love this this idea is just.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited. And you hit post and four people watch it and you're like, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then another one. You'd be like I mean a real hurry, I've got to go somewhere, and you do it, and you rush it, button everybody. Oh my God, I love this. Why do I want more of this? Love, love, love. And you're like I didn't even really think about that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love this. I love this. I love that you said fun and being consistent. And, as an example, this podcast started as a smaller life, making decisions on doing things quietly, more intentional, more consciously, all within the crafts and the same kind of group of people, but it was intended for. It's actually the same. The thing that changed is that what I love doing is helping small businesses get to the point where they can get to the fun in growing their businesses and selling their products. And because I love doing that, I focus the podcast more into that direction and hopefully inspiring them to have fun doing the things that they're doing, connecting it to their personal needs so that it'll stay fun, and their values, which I think is very important to.
Speaker 1:In this day and age, when you have a business, you really have to think about those things. And I was just watching a YouTube video and it was with Simon Sinek and he was talking about the help others industry. We need the help others industry and I also had an email from a mailing list from Mary Portas who's talking about the kindness economy, and I think the helping others industry and the kindness economy just really connects to this whole idea of ethical marketing and its industry, its economy, its marketing. It's all the same words. But the way that we that we I'm thinking of decorate that Christmas tree, that's a little bit early. Somebody helped me find the right word. I was onto something. But the way that we shape our work can be done in a way that really truly connects to ourselves and to a fun and a good way of doing things, and doesn't have to be all that hard either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that is. The secret to it is that, and I guess the bit that Noel really talks about is that the first few feel hard, the first few are weird, and I'm really sure I want to share this. Is this really what I want to do? And everybody feels that, and I think that's the bit that people don't talk about enough. But I think the thing that people only really ever see is the bit where it is fun for that person and they're like well, they know that having a really good time making that real, or they make doing that look so easy and it's because they've done 50 of them, they've done 100 of them, they've done 1000, whatever.
Speaker 2:But actually very few people see number one to 10. And they definitely don't want them in order and there's all this sort of misconception about it. But I think if you can get past that first post, if you can get past five, if you can get past 10, it's like there in the UK we have the couch to 5K, they call it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've heard of it, yeah it might be I don't know if the same name, but essentially couch to 5K. It's like the first thing is to just run to the end of your road and home. Yeah, it's like that's. It is a you got to find your shoes and then you got to put them on and then you're going to get out the door and then it's actually after that it's just incremental.
Speaker 2:So I think with Instagram or LinkedIn or Reddit, the first thing is finding your phone, the second thing is lining up a shot, third thing is making a post posting. It's the easy bit. Actually, it's the help. What can I do? And I think that the listeners here were going to be in a creative mind space more than Matt, perhaps some of the clients that I work with. So I feel like it's. It doesn't have to be aesthetic, it doesn't have to be trying to complete the Pinterest. Look it's. It's just what can I show someone about?
Speaker 1:a way, it's better if it's not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because then you're not like everyone else. Yeah, so I think it becomes fun. But it becomes fun once you find it fun.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think you will find it fun when someone comments on it and goes that's great, or oh, I didn't know that, or you'll see, oh, they've shared it or posted it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was in here is open to what the reactions are to what you're doing and then take notes and then then use that.
Speaker 1:I just can't seem to end this conversation because I just look, it's very much. It's one more thing. So in the, in the program that I teach I have, I took one making magazine, a magazine for textile crafts, and I took pictures of all the advertisements and I showed them in the in the curriculum. I'm like, okay, what do you see? And they were all skeins of yarn with dried flowers on either a wooden or a marble background, especially with tea or coffee. Yes, it's all the same, it's all the same. And how can you stand? It's all looks beautiful, but people just scan over it. So if you can find a way that, unless you're the OG of the coffee scheme, if you, if that's what you came up with and you could just stick to it, just hold them.
Speaker 2:If your coffee shop sells yarn, you have permission to do coffee and yarn. Anybody else get out of town.
Speaker 1:No, just try something else.
Speaker 2:Try harder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, try harder yeah.
Speaker 2:C minus, try harder.
Speaker 1:Do we care about? Ended on this note, literally on this great. That's not to that I'm shaming other people's marketing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's. I think that the but I think what you've done there is highlight why marketing is simple, but it's not always easy.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And it's simple because all you've got to do is not do what everyone else is doing. It's that thing is just like what are the questions that nobody else is answering? And if they're not answering them because they're too simple, it's they're not too simple, it's just people point, just think it's too simple. So what are what are those questions? You know, if you often knit in your car while you're waiting to pick up your kids, then front of the traffic lights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then why not just show that? It's like if you're doing stuff in places that are normally not what you would call photogenic or Instagramable, then that's a great place to start, because someone else might be like oh I've often thought about that but I didn't realize you could do that, or obviously you don't want to be doing it while striving, that was definitely going to get some get some attention for the wrong reasons. But there's definitely that thing of and I didn't know, like I didn't think I was allowed to do it, you know, and or I didn't think people like me were allowed to do this. That's a big thing and I think representation and being visible and being seen doing it is a huge part of the craft, because if everything looks like coffee shops and wooden desks and blah, blah, blah and you're like like coffee, then you've like obviously, well, isn't for me.
Speaker 1:I just drink absence when I knit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, yeah, it's silly little things that I think sometimes everybody's focused on this aesthetic and if you don't get that aesthetic then it's not for you and that can be quite exclusionary. So even just by showing someone, I just knit while my kids are watching telly, or I knit during meetings, like zooms or whatever, just secret underdesk knitting Exactly that could be a fun little thing to start, and that's the kind of content that people are going to aren't going to notice.
Speaker 2:But I think, yeah, ultimately it's. It's just about trying to work out what is it that you think would get the kind of people who you think would be interested in what you're doing interested in what you're doing and it doesn't have to be trying to solve all the problems, it doesn't have to be trying to show them all the things. That can just be a hey look, sometimes I do this and sometimes I do that, and eventually those people will go. I think I could do that. I'd like to know more about that. There we go.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Simon. Oh my gosh, I really need to talk to my teams Because I asked it. Today is my birthday and I got these amazing headphones, which is great, but next birthday I need an on air sign.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because they just are so literal. They're like if I say I'm in a zoom call from three to four, it's now four, four, four, 16, they'll just come and knock on my door. Yeah, okay, so I'm going to turn this into a more natural ending, or I'll leave this in Never know See what happens, but this is original content.
Speaker 1:This is reality. I record my podcast in the house. I have two teams. They come home around this time and it's usually around the time where I do my interviews I send them a message Don't come into my room. And this time this is what happens, because they need a snack and that's probably all there is to it. It's not somebody's not bleeding, there's no fire, they just need a snack. That is the reality of a professional person. Anyways, simon, thank you so much. I think you are very, very helpful in answering my question. And how do we cure ourselves from the icky feeling of marketing can bring us, and how can we make it easier and how can we get inspired to do things a little bit differently? So thank you so much. And again, reframing marketing is Simon's book and it's amazing and I think everybody should get it and obviously I'll share it.
Speaker 2:Thank, you very much. I have a nice, really good fun.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear about your thoughts and ideas around this episode. Please go to patentshiftfm and leave me a voice message or comment below the show notes. Do you want more actionable business tips and insights that speak your language? None of that icky, businessy lingo. But, coming from a slow fashion business expert, invite size chunks. Stay a bit longer on patentshiftfm while you're there and sign up for our bi-weekly mails and information about the platform I've built so that makers and sellers can connect and build a solid base against fast fashion. Because ffff, fast fashion right. Until next time, and remember every stitch counts as we work together and create a patent shift for you, your business, the crafters and the fashion industry. Bye.