The lizard brain, marketing and considering whether I’m a raving idealist with no clue
Last week I experimented with a TV free week (loved it and want to keep doing it!) and unsurprisingly found a whole bunch of time for podcast listening and reading.
Much of what I was tuning into was about recognising resistance, and how to overcome it (or move through it) to release your creativity and get on with doing that thing you really want to do (or thought you wanted to do before the horrible, hulking monster of resistance showed up).
Helpful stuff.
The real surprise was the connection between the nature of resistance and the work I do, which is helping people market (otherwise known as getting the word out about) the wonderful thing they have to offer to the world.
Enter the lizard brain
In this great conversation between Seth Godin and Merlin Mann*, Seth said that he appreciates his resistance (AKA lizard brain) because it so clearly shows him what not to do.
See, the lizard brain wants you to fit in, to avoid potential failure and embarrassment.
What the lizard brain doesn’t realise is that the rules have changed. If you want to survive now, fitting in is that last thing you should do.
The lizard brain doesn’t realise that the cost of creative failure is NOTHING. You can just try again (and probably be a little wiser for the experience).
Choosing creation over safety
So, whatever the resistance tells Seth to do — like omit from one of his books a contentious section that would probably anger a bunch of people — he does the opposite.
Seth and Merlin talked about Bob Dylan and how he consistently made choices driven by his own creative inspiration, choices that often alienated his fans and got him booed off stage. The man obviously has no lizard brain.
How does this gel with traditional business marketing strategy?
You know, the process of identifying your customer’s needs (or pain points) and then delivering what they want? Of being completely customer focussed?
It doesn’t.
Seth himself says in the interview that the calculating, the ‘close-to-the-customer bullshit’, the focus grouping, the mindset of typical marketing is all about indulging the resistance — how can I avoid being made fun of?
I think you can dig within that and find many passionate business people who know – deeply, quietly know – what they want to bring to the world and how they want to bring it. But their lizard brains are spewing out all the online marketing guru mantras: magnetic headlines! engagement strategy! be accessbile! be an expert! highlighter sales pages! sales funnels! the almighty list!
I’m not saying that all of those tools are inherently bad. That you can’t put them to some good use.
But the lizard brain is screaming that you have to do all this stuff and that you have to do it NOW. And it completely overwhelms that deep, quiet knowing within you.
Which is exactly what the lizard brain wants, because if you follow what everyone else says and fail, well at least it was the pack that got it wrong and not you.
How sad is that?
Which is why I talk about marketing taking place at the core of your business, which is the meeting place between you and your ideal people. Meaning you are absolutely present.
My own lizard brain gets antsy when I go further down this path.
It’s antsy right now.
How can I be thinking this stuff that seems counter to, or at least not aligned with, the mainstay of the marketing and copywriting world?**
And, perhaps even worse, how do I dare say it out loud when I cannot even articulate a neat 7 step process that encapsulates my reasoning and proves how it works? How can I talk about this when my own ideas are still forming and changing?
Shouldn’t I just stick with the pack, where it’s safer?
This is a gut thing. Not a logic thing. I feel in my bones that this is the right direction. That this is how we get the word out about whatever great thing we are doing. That this is how we do our great thing.
And if I’m wrong?
Well, I don’t think this idea can be completely wrong – because I see it working for people who are doing great things. (And ‘great’ doesn’t necesarily mean big, it means things that are done with care and creativity, to make a genuine contribtuion, to help others.)
But if I am proven to be a raving idealist with no concept of how success actually happens in the ‘real world’?
(Thanks for jumping in there lizard brain. You’re a peach.)
Then I guess my idea will have failed in the ‘real world’. And I’ll learn. And I’ll dream. And I’ll create again.
*The interview is about Seth’s new book Linchpin which I haven’t yet read (it’s on order). But I have no doubt it will break my mind open even further about all this stuff.
** Yes, there are notable exceptions to the traditional marketing mould – like Mark Silver’s Heart of Business.
