I hope you enjoy a slight variation in today’s blog post. Here are some thoughts on a recent Workshop I participated in.
January 2019
In January 2019, I started an epic marathon and just last week, I finished it. Phew!
Not too bad for my first marathon – but it wasn’t running, it was The Marketing Seminar (TMS), an Akimbo Workshop, created by Seth Godin and happened to be my 4th Akimbo Workshop within one year.
This iteration happened to be the sixth offering of TMS and followed the release of This is Marketing, Seth’s 19th (best-selling) book.
It includes 60 deep, thought provoking lessons. And I signed up on purpose!
Part of my celebration is to write this post, as gently nudged by my (new) partners in crime, Staci Boden and Dave Bates – two wonderfully kind and generous people.
Without further ado…here are my thoughts on Marketing.
Marketing in the 21st Century focuses on making change happen. To do this, you need to know what change you seek to make.
The key questions to start with (always):
- Who’s it for?
- What’s it for?
- What change are you seeking to make?
To clarify what your position is, you’ll need to have answers to these questions. Zooming in to the smallest viable audience is typically a great place to start.
Marketing is more than SEO or short advertisement focused emails. These are all too common and often many people gravitate to them – the shortfall is that they steal attention and time – two resources that are in short supply.
So if it isn’t SEO, what is Marketing consist of? It is earning trust, seeking enrollment, creating tension, showing up consistently, and bringing the generosity. Combined with learning more about these themes, TMS provided an opportunity to add clarity to my project. (This website was created and designed while in the second half of the Workshop, again nudged by friends in the Workshop.)
Adding clarity to one’s own project is one of the most profound aspects of TMS. Interestingly enough, I went in with one idea and it evolved to something better. Better in terms of the change I seek to make. We learn to make things better by making better things.
In big part, the design of the learning space (or container) is what stands out. As an educator, here are some critical components:
- Quality of the lessons (trust in Seth Godin as a teacher/leader in Marketing)
- Cadence of the lessons dropping (they do not all come out at once)
- Format of promoting participation – both to find the others and to work with people outside of your specific industry
- Posture of the Coaches and students (and Remarkables)
The questions themselves helped create new ideas but the power of the Workshop is the cohort – the peer to peer participation and connection that helps us make significant progress. It’s a community of like-minded people.
“People like us, do things like this.”
-Seth Godin
July 2019
It was an amazing seven months – 200 days – and I’m grateful for all the great people I was fortunate to meet and learn from. Thank you!
Stay tuned for a new education Podcast and come back for more posts here.
I’m looking forward to being part of future Akimbo Workshops. I’d love to see you there and I cannot wait to meet you.
Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash