Yep, it happens to us all.

I am a firm believer in the power of the mind and that the physical can affect us in a multitude of ways. The state of our physical bodies and physical spaces can have great impact on our thoughts and in turn our behavior. And, no, I did not just make this up. Feng Shui is a great example of this same exact philosophy (and it’s been around a really long time). The idea is simple: spaces affect and reflect our physical, mental and emotional states of being.

This lesson in the mind and space connection should not be swept under the rug (nudge, nudge). It applies to every aspect of our lives including the world of business and marketing. Clean and clutter free work spaces (that includes your computer hard drive, people!) can increase productivity and creativity because your mind is given the chance to focus on the important things, not just the dust bunnies swirling around your monitor.

So take this nugget of wisdom and mull it over a moment:

Put your space in order to regain clarity, rather than trying to order and control your thoughts in an unordered, unorganized, messy space.

Wow. Makes sense right?

I put myself to the test. Feeling overwhelmed and scattered this week I decided to spruce my workspace up a bit. It all began with an image my sister posted to my Facebook wall calling me to action:

“Make your office look like this!” my sister exclaimed. I gave it my best shot in the ten minutes I had available.

The Before Shot:

The after shot:

In the time I had,  I made my space feel open, happy and clean, with a dose of creative inspiration taped up to the wall, resulting in the perfect blank canvas for my mind to get working. I challenge all of the Healthy Marketing Advice blog readers to this clean space, clean mind challenge and I would love to know if you felt a shift in your thinking afterward.

On a closing note, I wanted to share some images of beautiful and inspirational work environments I found online via Pintrest and Office Snap Shots.

A common ailment in business is that professionals or organizational teams do not really know what they want or haven’t formally defined it. Or, they have lost sight of what they want, getting too entangled in details of working IN their business, which could hurt their ability to work ON their business.

Knowing what you want means having clear business goals, then using marketing as a way to support those goals…one before the other. Web marketing can support via a number of tools – blogs, video, websites, online advertising, emails, etc.

Example 1: Say your “want” is to grow your business to sell your business.  If you work on the business all day long and don’t hire help, then your “what you want” is not being supported by your actions.  (FACT: People don’t want to buy companies that are codependent on a leader, they want companies with great marketing potential and set systems that can be handed over.) Saying you can’t afford assistance to help with things like order taking, calls, systems development or marketing management is like saying you can’t afford to really get what you want.

NOTE: Self-diagnosing unhealthy behavior can be ugly, but sometimes ugly has to happen and be broken down to get to breakthroughs.

Example 2: Let’s say your want is to attract ideal clients (not a bunch of people you don’t like or want to work with).  By being clear on what you want, you can make sure your website clearly communicates who you are, what you do and whom you serve (IDEALLY whom you serve) so un-ideal clients don’t even enter the sales funnel.  Don’t waste time marketing to people who are not ideal clients.  Put your time and energy towards people who will matter.

Take a break from the computer and ask yourself what you really want.

I know what I want.  I want to help organizations who are ready to invest in their success.  I have systems that help pre-qualify ideal clients. (See this pre-client questionaire to see how we spell it out so we don’t sell out).

I have no desire to sell WMT, I love being in love with the people I work with and I want the people I partner with to have a healthy life/work balance.  We CAN have a great personal life and a professional work day that involves working with great people.

Success starts with knowing what you want.  When you have that clear, then web marketing can have your back to get to you where you want to go. 

When the tribe first sat down in a circle and agreed to allow only one person to speak at a time – that was the longest step forward in the history of law. ~ Judge Curtis Bok

‎”Council is the practice of speaking and listening from the heart. Through compassionate, heartfelt expression and empathic, non-judgmental listening, Council inspires a non-hierarchical form of deep communication that reveals a group’s vision and purpose.” ~Ojai Foundation leadership, (http://www.ojaifoundation.org/what-is-council)

The way of council circle is THE ethos for our current socially-networked world. This is where each voice has its time and listening is more important than a battle of voices. In council, our pride is in how well we have heard “the Other”. This is humanity’s only hope now.

The wisest being in the circle is invisible, created by the drumming, the silence, the tears, the laughter, the stories. In the men’s circle, we each spoke, wept, laughed, shouted and sang into the silence, into the center of the circle. Often, if I chose to remain silent, waiting until it felt right to speak, another would say something that captured what lived within me perfectly. The feedback after deep sharing and deep listening was appreciation for something other than what I shared. This lifted me up and out of my pain, my pride, my sorrow, my victory and put me back together again…lifting me up or humbling me through warmth, through friendship, through a feeling of brotherhood enwrapped in a profound spiritual sense of community.

I remember a circle 5 or 6 years ago. I sat down and began using the words Us, We and You. A long time circle brother gently stopped me. “Nathaniel,” he said, “I can’t see you when you use these words to describe experience. And I want to see you. Please only use I when you talk about your week and the lessons you’ve learned.”

This was a huge evening for me because I really felt in my body the truth of personal responsibility.

My experience of circle is that I gain incredible wisdom in sitting with others, really on a level rarely plumbed in other settings.

One of the cornerstones of Circle is teaching adults and children to appreciate one another in a manner that the recipient can truly feel the appreciation. I say what I really see inside the person, what I love, honor and respect about the person – not their story. I learn not to over appreciate because I know that some of us can only “hold” so much. I avoid speaking about their appearance but more about their essence. Avoid disguised advice in your appreciations like “ It’s important to take care of yourself”. I try not to use superlatives like greatest, best etc. I try to step out of myself and think only of giving the gift of appreciation in a way that the receiver will accept it with ease.

The principles of deep-listening in Council Circle gatherings are necessary for our now increasingly socially-networked world.

Deep Listening principles from the Council tradition are as follows:

1- Maintain eye contact with the person speaking.


2- Be relaxed but present.


3- Be still.


4- Listen from the heart.


5- Be non-judgmental.


6- Allow the story to unfold.


7- Listen carefully and the person speaking will always tell you what they need.


8- It’s not your job to “fix” the person who’s speaking.


9- Common mistakes to avoid:
a) DON’T give advice (unless asked for)
b) DON’T “swap stories” to reassure the person who’s speaking. You may
think your story is “the same” but its THAT PERSON’S moment, not yours.
c) DON’T interpret the meaning of his feelings
d) DON’T interrupt discharge of emotion (laughter, tears, etc.).
Let the emotions flow out into the circle and sit in attendance to
that emotion.
e) DON’T talk very much
f) DON’T ask questions for your own information.
g) DON’T think a lot about how to “help” the person speaking.
h) ONLY ask questions to lead the person deeper into feelings & his own re/solutions.

10- The most common mistake: Trying to show the person working what a good, understanding, perceptive, kind, helpful … person, counselor, leader … you are.
11- Listen, listen, listen! (That’s really what we all need).

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~ RACHEL NAOMI REMEN

The nature of a circle is equality and if we really want to heal the world through circles (whether digital or in-the-flesh), we must learn the way of circle, which was mastered many moons ago in the tribal cultures of the world. This is our only hope as humanity at this time. We do not have time for the dis-organized, tangled world of arguing as seen in the British Parliment. We NEVER have time for the killing off of other ethnicities and the horrible mess afterwards. We don’t have time for hate-speak and fighting.

If I take time, once a week, to sit with my brothers and sisters for 3-4 hours and only listen to their truth and only speak my truth, we will make light-speed progress through a weaving of hearts and minds. Try this today: sit with your friend, your spouse, your parent, your brother or sister, and simply listen to him/her for 30 minutes. Don’t offer advice, don’t interrupt, don’t identify. Just listen. That’s what our world needs right now to allow our collective intelligence true emergence.

I read this quote on the Radiant Organizing blog and took a minute to ponder this from a mental self-image perspective, then quickly turned it into a marketing lesson (Oh, don’t act surprised, I breathe marketing…can’t help it!)

Just as the way we see ourselves will shift the way we are seen by others (ties into the law of attraction) this brilliant quote by brilliant Paulo Cohelo who wrote the brilliant book The Alchemist, there is a brilliant web marketing lesson here….

Your marketing collateral is part of your professional self-esteem – it needs to say that you mean business.  When you hand out your business card or people visit your website, read a brochure, read your blog, follow your tweets, etc – ALL OF THIS NEEDS TO PROJECT YOUR SELF ESTEEM.

In business, we want winners surrounding us.  You convey this live and with your online marketing collateral and even print items!  If your marketing collateral is dated, has spelling errors, is inconsistent in look/feel/message, it conveys a negative self-esteem message.  I am not saying you need to spend a ton on marketing design, but you do need to INVEST in marketing collateral that exudes confidence….and fix collateral that sends a low-self-esteem message.

believe you can, believe you can’t, either way, you’re right -Henry Ford

Your professional face (a la your marketing materials) need to say (all of them) that you are worth believing in.  If you would like a healthy marketing assessment, let me know by posting here or contacting us via email.

Healthy Marketing = Wealthy Organizations!

Marketing Therapy Savior Phrase #1 – “That does not work for me.”
I use this phrase a lot as it leverages the power of choice.  We CAN choose who we work with and how we do business.  I can’t tell you how many times I have to coach clients out of unhealthy relationships (with lousy vendors or web services).  As The Marketing Therapist, I evangelize that breaking up is NOT hard to do when things don’t work!  If  you want success, you have to own it and that starts with cutting the crap!  In the web marketing world, there are a million ways to approach things – choose value (and cheap isn’t always value, it’s service, advisory and scalable investments).  There is so much noise out there with emails, tweets, Facebook updates, text messages and more.  With the many options of who we work with, what we pay and how to run our marketing, stop and ask – does this work for me/my client/my company? If the answer has any version of “no” in the equation, then stop, drop and roll out a better way.  Fix things that are not working – you cannot have marketing change unless you are willing to change!  Own that “this does not work for me” then communicate what you want and need with partners, colleagues and team members.  Marketing work requires management -choose to manage things that add value to the bottom line (education, services, products, analytics, creativity, work executed, etc).

…and I dare you to start using “This does not work for me” or “that does not work for me” in live language.  It stops people dead in their tracks.  It is a phrase that evokes power and really puts you in the drivers seat.  When I say this personally or professionally, it goes undisputed (and I feel like I go from my not-so-tall height of 5′3 to 6′3!).  Who can argue when you say something doesn’t work for you…it’s your perception, that is not very arguable!
Marketing Therapy Savior Phrase #2 – “Help me understand ______.”
This phrase is the biggest helper when you are trying to converse with another party (in business and in life) when you don’t agree, are upset, frazzled or trying to get to a resolution.  This web marketing savior phrase helps keep marketing management focused by omitting any defensiveness by the party you are trying to work with.

“Help me understand” use example:  Let’s say someone is doing something for you that makes you frustrated, upset or overwhelmed as it relates to your marketing.  We tend to judge and fear what we don’t understand.  Instead of saying something that is finger-pointing like “you are always late in getting me these reports” try “help me understand why these reports always come late?”.  It is human nature for people to get defensive – statements that are accusatory often turn into defensiveness, not constructive problem-solving talk …so don’t go down that road!

After you ask “help me understand____” say nothing else and let them reply (either verbally or via email).  The responsibility is on them to educate you —you never know, the “why?” may be something that is really understandable OR can be solvable…they key in marketing management is understanding, “help me understand ____” will get you there.

Marketing Therapy Savior Phrase #3 – “I need help”
Admitting you need help is the first step to marketing recovery.  When it comes to marketing, accepting that we need help can help us do what we do better and also educate us for future work.  This phrase is often the most difficult to put on paper or speak, but I tell you, when this phrase is used, it breaks down barriers (mentally and emotionally) that move you towards more meaningful marketing.

“I need help” use example: Let’s say you are hearing all about social media – you “should do this and you should do that” kind of stuff.  Asking an expert to help you with with an area that is not your unique ability shows the expert that you are ready for help AND makes you open to receive the help.  Do what you do best and pay others to do the rest.

Do you cut your own hair?  Do your own surgeries?  Practice your own law?  …I doubt it.  Ask marketing experts for help (many of us offer free consults) and get ready to get supported.

These phrases become useful only with practice.  Put them on a sticky note and tape them to your computer – practice makes marketing more perfect!