“I could never do that.”
I was in a ballroom of 150 people, and the entrepreneur on stage was freaking magnetic.
For a whole weekend at her annual conference in January, she had galvanized and entertained a conference full of people.
People felt energized and inspired…
… And she sold half of her year’s revenue that week. Much of it that day.
I was in the room, feeling pride (as one of the event support organizers), and also a not-small twinge of jealousy.
Her business model and marketing was built around exactly who she is: courses, events, new ideas she could pop up. She thrives on novelty, on performing in the room, on living for the moment. And, because of the nature of her model, she isn't working every Friday and Saturday on a weekly podcast and newsletter. Her marketing has peaks — which also means valleys where she can take time off from creative output.
I on the other hand?
I’m not particularly great at selling in the room and pulling people closer as a charismatic presence. My social posts don’t generate thousands of dollars in a sitting. I don’t do big launches or dramatic reveals. I don’t have the energy for it (or frankly, the time to pull that off).
The idea of building an entire year’s pipeline on a single weekend of performing? Having to generate that kind of energy — for the whole month leading up to the event, then again on stage for two days straight?
I could never.
“I could never do that.”
That same entrepreneur looked at my marketing with a similar not-small twinge of jealousy.
My anchor marketing is a long-form email, usually built around a framework, every Sunday at 10am. For years, I ran a monthly free class. Every month, I’m on some podcast or guest teaching somewhere. I run the same programs year in, year out, and I don’t get bored (I get better). My last launches have been, as I’ve taken to calling them, “cozy” — more emails than usual but without a whole lot of performance, and they've sold well.
She looked at the consistency, the predictability, the steady drumbeat of it all with something like envy. She’d tried. It just wasn’t her.
The idea of showing up the same way, week after week, without a stage or a camera or a performance?
She could never.
No two businesses are alike.
No two business owners are alike. And no two marketing processes are alike.
My entrepreneurial friend? Pure Fire. Born to perform, craves novelty, needs the room to come alive in. Her annual event is her marketing strategy — and it’s perfect, because it’s perfectly her.
Me? I’m Earth and Air. I love rhythms. I thrive on the predictability of stable programs, a long-term client roster, and the slow work of sharpening quality over time. And I love the written word, where I can ruminate over my ideas on my time and let them travel into the world without me.
Swapping our strategies would be, for both of us, a disaster.
My clients — and their best marketing strategies — span the energetic spectrum.
Some have such a soothing presence that any conversation they’re in ends with someone asking, “How can I pay you?”
Others are exceptional thinkers and writers, but their work doesn’t come on a weekly publishing schedule — and it’s so good it doesn’t need to.
Some are born community builders. Some shine in podcast and radio formats. Others are made for group teaching, and others create such a specific body of work that people find them through search alone.
And when it works? It’s because they leaned into their natural strengths instead of mirroring someone else’s.
You can’t opt out of marketing entirely — you still have to get in front of new people.
But how you do that? That’s entirely dependent on you: your energetic profile, your skillset, and how you naturally engage when you’re at your best.
Design from there.
What would your marketing look like if you built it around what you could do—consistently, sustainably, and well—instead of what you think you should be able to do?