I read an interesting article in one of the Sunday Times supplements this weekend. It was by Rosie Boycott who had been the Editor of the Daily Express back in 2000, but due to a series of events has ended up as a pig farmer and has never been happier. But what on earth has this got to do with marketing you may ask? Quite a lot actually. Her story is all about who you are and how you run your business, which ultimately can have a massive effect on the way you position and market your business.

To precis Rosie’s story, she was a high powered Fleet Street Editor, who found herself out of  job in 2001. Thinking this would be good for her as she had been tied to a desk for the past 16 years,  she set about trying to enjoy her “time off”, but in reality had no idea what to do with all this time she now had available.  As she says

“I quickly realised that work meant a great deal more to me than simply a means of paying the bills - it was also the way that I defined myself and structured my days…above all it was the way I presented myself to the world, my answer to the question - what do you do?”

Without her work, the life she had lead since she left school, she had no idea what to do. Finding it difficult to re-adjust to her new life her old battle with alcoholism resurfaced and she realised that she needed to find “an inner sense of self and security” that wasn’t defined by her work or the mantra that so many of us live by which is “If I’m not madly busy, I’m not worth anything”.  So in her case she decided to set up a pig farm in 2004 which she loves and gives her the opportunity to be herself and has led to a job as the mayor of London’s food advisor.

So how does Rosie’s story relate to marketing?

It’s simple really, you need to be absolutely clear about what you want out of your business and your life. Don’t just be on some treadmill chasing a goal that you think you should want, think really hard about what you want your business to be and then choose the marketing activities that will help you get there.

Siobhan and I started Brighter Marketing back in 2002 to escape the 9-5 grind, and live a more flexible and balanced lifestyle. However, after a couple of years we kind of got caught up in a millionaires dream,  because everyone we met said that we needed to grow the company and take on more marketing consultants. So without really thinking if it was what we really wanted  we  began to market Brighter Marketing aggressively. The result was rising turnover and profits but there were long hours and weekend working, which was precisely the opposite of why we had gone into business. We took bigger offices and took on staff, but it never felt right and we didn’t know why. After all it was what we wanted wasn’t it, to be multi millionaires with a vast empire?

After a long heart to heart, we realised that what we really wanted was to work with clients, help them to develop great marketing techniques and transfer our marketing knowledge and skills. What’s more neither of us wanted to be millionaires, we just wanted to have a profitable business, that gave us a good income and allowed us to spend time with our families.  Which is finally what we have achieved, we have some great clients, we love our work and we have mostly achieved what many people crave, a good work life balance. We have developed a marketing system that we can turn on and off as demand for our services peak and trough and we use our marketing budget wisely on those marketing activities which will get us results. So does that mean that we’re not successful? Many people would argue that we’re not because we have kept the company to just the two of us. However, on the flip side, we have been in business for seven years and we continue to win business and have long term relationships with our clients.

So take a leaf out of Rosie’s book and don’t let your work or your business define you. You must define who you are and what you want out of life and then the marketing will be easy.