Soul-filled Cafe Presents:
Tad Hargrave ~ Marketing for Hippies
Q&A with Tad Hargrave…
In your own words, what is “Marketing for Hippies”? And who is a hippy to you?
Hrmm. I use the term hippy preeeetty broadly. But for me it’s about people who aren’t in business to become filthy rich – they just want to do something good for the community, sustain themselves and make a difference. They’re often holistic practitioners, green business people, organic restaurant owners, permaculture providers and the like.
Why do you teach marketing?
A few reasons I guess. One, it’s because I can’t keep a 9-5 job to save my life. Second, I’ve just always had a knack for it and interest in it. I’m fascinated by it. And third – most importantly – it’s often the missing piece for conscious entrepreneurs. They’ve got a great product. They’re good to their customers. But they can’t seem to articulate what they do. Or they can’t get the word out. And I think it matters if they do because these hippy entrepreneurs represent the most hopeful alternatives we have. And if no one knows about them – then what’s the point? If no one knows about them it’s like they don’t exist. Not to mention that there are so many people dreaming of making a living while making a difference – but they’re stuck in a hamster wheel of a job they hate. They just can’t stand it. But they can’t get out. And they look at people like us. They look at hippy entrepreneurs for hope – but if they see us struggling, broke and miserable . . . then they stay stuck. They don’t take that leap. Our work is not only important for the immediate impacts it has – but for the example it sets.
What are the biggest mistakes you see people make (especially holistic practitioners / green / good-hearted people) that ends up making their marketing gross?
Wow. Good question. Hrmm . . .
The thing that pops out (and I’ve been sooooo guilty of this) is taking other people’s tactics and approaches and trying to force them into our marketing and business. It can happen where we go to a workshop that is packed to the gills. And we think, ‘wow. i’d love to be reaching that many people!’. And then we learn that they did it like Time Share presentations do – they bribed people. They said, ‘for every person you send us, you’ll get $25′. And we feel uneasy. But . . . it works! They said to trust them. So we do it. And then it all. goes. south. We notice it’s actually turning people off. Or we learn a style of pitching our packages at the end of a workshop that’s kind of ‘hard close’ style. Giving numbers and then dropping them, pressuring people to decide now, ‘run to the back of the room’ – encouraging people to put it on their credit cards etc. So we feel uneasy about it but . . . that presenter we saw made millions with it so . . . we do it. But it doesn’t work. Our community is sort of shocked and offended that we’d even try that. Or maybe we’re told we have to come up with a 30 second elevator pitch and we do – but it ends up sounding phony, forced or contrived. Ugh. Or they’re told to raise their rates – and it feels really wrong to them – but they do and it hurts their business. So many things like this.
It’s like clothes than might not fit us or our community. And it’s so painful to experience. Learning marketing (well, anything I suppose) is this ongoing process of trying new things, experimenting and noticing if that feels true for us or not. Is it really an authentic expression of who we are? This isn’t easy. I still find myself experimenting and realizing after that it didn’t feel good.
If we’ve made any of these mistakes, how can we recover from them?
A few things. Part of it is finding alternatives. I offer some, my friend Mark Silver at www.heartofbusiness.com offer some, Jeff and Suzanne at www.spiritualmarketingquest.com offer some. Those are my favourite ‘conscious marketing’ people these days. So, find alternatives. Find a perspective on getting the word out that feels really good to you. 100% good. I know for me that finding an alternative is vital to me being able to let go of the old ways.
Secondly, I think it’s important to develop a practice of pausing with our marketing and seeing if it feels right. I could do better at this than I do. A simple application is to never send out an email to your list til you’ve slept on it and reviewed it in the morning. I’ve never not found ways to make it better and more true to me with a fresh set of eyes.
Thirdly, sometimes we need to have a clean up conversation with people we’ve affected and ‘make good’ where harm’s been done. For example, I endorsed some marketing colleagues in the fall of 2010. I helped them get 30 people in the room for an hour long lunch and learn. And they fucked it up. They did a sixty minute presentation – and the first 57 minutes were great. But, in the last three minutes, they did a hard close on the group. It was received as gross, contrived and pushy. They later, after some defensiveness, cleaned things up with myself and the local hosts. And then I asked them to make good with the people who attended the workshop. And they never have. And that had me decide to end my professional relationship with them for the time being.
If they’d sent out a video message from the two of them (they’re a husband and wife team) and said something like, “Hey there. We fucked up. We put pressure on you. We’re sorry. We’ve really say with it and wow . . . we’ve learned a lot about ourselves. We’re seeing it came from this place of being scared that if we didn’t use those kinds of tactics that no one would say yes to us. We wanted to try something new and we totally get the impact it had on people. So, we’re sending this because we want to clean that up. We’re committed to never doing that kind of hard close again. We feel a bit raw and vulnerable around this but we think the truth sets us free. And to make up for it, we wanted to offer you all a free __________.” or something.
A mantra that’s useful in marketing is, ‘if it’s not a 100% yes, it’s a no’. Look at what you’re doing in your marketing. If there’s any part of it that feels ‘off’ then stop. Pause. Sit with it. Discuss it with people you trust. Sometimes just sitting in silence with it will reveal the answer.
But above all – get educated.
If there were only 3 things that you could tell someone to do to create good marketing and help them reach more people with their gifts, what would those 3 things be?
I’ll give you four . . .
The first component is the niche. The niche is your target market. It’s who you’re going after. This is the center of any marketing. When I talked to Dominic (a word of mouth marketing fellow and founder or dibspace.com), we were both commiserating that whenever we would get confused in terms of helping clients or clients would get fuzzy about a next step, not being sure what to do, it always came back to this. About looking at the niche of who are you going after.
The second component is the irresistible offer. What are you offering to this niche? A lot of people make the mistake in marketing of thinking, “Oh, I’m going to design this product and service,” and then it’s like, “How do I market it?” is a separate step.
I think if we’re going to be successful in business we need to step back and think of the marketing in the design process itself. Meaning, how can we make the product so irresistible inherently, that it’s easy to sell, versus just a generic sort of bland, boring product and service and then figuring out how we can sort of sell the sizzle and not the steak. That’s the second component is the offer.
The third component is the hubs. This was one of the things that really made so much sense to me when I was talking with Dominic. A lot of people at my trainings would say, “Well where do I advertise? Where do I market? How do I find people?”
I never really knew how to answer that. I always give kind of vague answers but now the answer’s really clear for me. Where you find them depends entirely on who you’re looking for. One group of people is going to hang out in one place. Another group’s going to hang out in another place.
It’s not just about where to find them. It’s also about a way to build trust with them. That’s a lot more powerful than other things you may have tried. So that’s the third component, the hubs.
The first is the niche. Second, what are we offering them? Third the hubs, where do we find them?
And fourth, word of mouth strategies. Again you’re already getting passive word of mouth but are there things you can do to accelerate it and get more word of mouth? Yes.
If someone is starting a brand new business (or making a big change to an existing business) what are the first steps you would take them through to help them create good marketing?
Those four things above. Always. Every time. But, these days, I’m often sending them to Alex Baisley to get their lifestyle piece sorted out. I think it’s why the work you do is so important Heather. Because people come to me all the time with . . . it’s like they’ve got this boat. And it’s amazing boat. But they don’t know where they want to sail it. They’ve got this skill of massage but they don’t really know what to do with it. Does that make sense? They’ve got some product or service and they want to ‘get it out there’ but . . . it’s like Mary bakes pies and everyone says, ‘Mary! You bake the best pies! You should open a bakery.’ And so she does. And it destroys her life. It’s not enough to know what you love to do. Mary ‘did what she loved’. But the bakery was the wrong vehicle for her. People often come to me with a few pieces of their larger life’s calling and say, ‘help me market this!’ and I’m like, ‘whoa whoa whoa.’ Because unless the other pieces are woven in it will all fall apart. Other pieces include: what are you passionately interested in? What nourishes and fills you up? What are your quirks? What are you really, really good at? What are you terrible at? Who are the kinds of people you just love to be around? What kind of lifestyle do you want? And which kind of vehicle is the best for you? What’s the best business model and structure. When the entire ecosystem of these things is really considered and honoured – people come up with extraordinary, unique and compelling offerings to the world.
So, in short, the first step I take is to send them to someone like you or Alex.
Once that’s done – then it’s the four things above. That never really changes.
In your own business, have you ever had a marketing “flop”? What was it?
Dear god. So many. I’m having a mini flop right now in Winnipeg – I booked my Marketing 101 for Holistic Practitioners weekend the same dates as another huge holistic thing in town. Oops. I did a mini workshop at Whole Foods in New York for like three people on a pay what you can basis and none of them paid! Part of it was my own terrible follow up on that but grrrr. That almost never happens. What else . . . back in the day I used to work for a personal growth seminar company (almost twenty years ago) and I did a lot of hard, pushy selling on people. That felt gross and wasn’t effective at all.
What have been the most successful parts of your own marketing strategy?
Parties! This is my latest thing. Host parties where you gather your ideal clients and potential hubs in one space and hang out. It could be a potluck, lightly catered etc. I just did one in Calgary a couple of days ago. Simple little house party from 1-4pm on a Tuesday at my colleague Colette Kenney’s house. We had 25 of Calgary’s leading conscious entrepreneurs in one place. It was amazing. The format was mingling until 2pm and then we did a go around circle where everyone got two minutes to introduce themselves, what they’re up to, what’s exciting that’s coming up for them and where they need help. It was beautiful. Then we just kept hanging out.
On the surface, it doesn’t seem like much of a thing. But the impact is that one of Calgary’s biggest hubs for conscious women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship asked me out for coffee to chat afterwards. And now everyone there knows who I am, have met me in person, and during the go around people kept giving me props. So, I come out looking great. Everyone there makes wonderful connections. Win/Win/Win. Can’t recommend these enough. Part of the idea here is to shift from looking for hubs to becoming a hub yourself.
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Tad Hargrave ~ Marketing for Hippies
Tad Hargrave is a hippy who developed a knack for marketing.
Despite years in the non-profit and activist world, he finally had to admit he was a marketing nerd and, in the end, he became a marketing coach for hippies. Maybe it was because he couldn’t stand seeing his hippy friends struggle to promote their amazing, green and holistic projects. Maybe it was because he couldn’t keep a 9-5 job to save his life.
Whatever the reason, for almost a decade, he has been touring his marketing workshops around Canada, bringing refreshing and unorthodox ideas to conscious entrepreneurs and green businesses that help them grow their organizations and businesses (without selling their souls). And, over the years, he has become recognized as a leader in the wider movement towards green and local economies.
He’s also considered a pioneer and leading thinker in the field of ‘Hub Marketing‘ (and is puttering on a book about it). www.marketingforhippies.com
I am an innovative coach and love inspiring you to find soul-satisfying success for your creative endeavors. I am also a writer, author, and "laptop lifestyle" enthusiast.