Sometimes, I'm a frustrated marketer. Sometimes, the whole 'seeing the forest for the tress' just isn't a good enough analogy to get me through the day. Sometimes, I just want to scream at the top of my lungs. I can blame it on the environment or the people or myself, but I know I shouldn't be blaming anyone or anything at all. So, what IS the truth about the 'frustrated marketer'?
The truth is: we always want more than we have right now. We always want it to be more exciting, more challenging, more engaging, more connected. There is no conceivable limit to great ideas, to great talent, to brainstorming, to making mistakes, to growing, to getting better. There is never enough! And that leaves us frustrated.
Godin said a couple days ago, "If you want to learn to do marketing...then do marketing."
Brogan said a few days ago, "The best compliment I ever receive about my blog is that my posts are short, simple, and actionable."
And Mitch Joel told us that, "I preferred to be on death's door of desperation than take a job that I knew I was going to hate...."
What do they all have in common? Besides being written by international marketing geniuses, they exemplify the vastness and prismatic quality of marketing. That it's probably true no two marketers are the same, much like our own fingerprints or DNA. And I think because of that we always want more ... actually, we probably need it more than anything.
I call my blog home because it lets me be a marketer my way. And I believe all marketers (or at least the one's that really, earnestly care) can't live without the individuality to be their own marketer. They make the conscious choice to differentiate, to take risks, to fail and to achieve.
What can you do to be that marketer?
- Care to the point that if you were without it, breathing would become nonessential.
- Take chances as though failure is no gigantic consequence, but merely an oft-feared but hardly ever revered occurrence.
- Read, listen, or write. Pick the one (or more) that helps you grow and learn.
- Humble yourself.
- And accept that frustration is a necessary evil that only plagues you because you are one marketer that refuses to stop ___________________. [Fill in the blank with what fits best for you!]
