172. Integrated Values, Grounded Growth, and Marketing with Amy Jacobus
Refining and Implementing Explicit Values
When you decide that you want to make an impact and create change with your brand and your platform, you have to get clear on your values.
And those values have to be explicit to you, your team, your clients, and your audience.
Co-creating values and definitions with your team builds strength, resilience, and commitment to those shared values and the way you want to create impact. And it’s a continual process of growth and refinement.
Amy Jacobus reconnects with Erica to reflect on how refining and implementing her values throughout her company has impacted her business, and how it continues to grow and shape her brand.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How reconsidering her normal allows Amy to create sustainable, and effective marketing plans for her clients
How making her values explicit has impacted Amy’s relationships with her team and her clients
Why you have to be willing to question, reconsider, and shift your values over time
How reconsidering the norms of your industry helps you align with your values
Smart, Human Marketing
Amy Jacobus is obsessed with helping coaches, creatives and consultants increase their impact with smart, human marketing online. Her Grounded Growth consulting is a comprehensive framework for creating an evergreen brand guide + actionable marketing plan. Her signature group program, Grounded Marketing Mentorship, provides applicable strategies for web, email, social media and content marketing to clients in real time. Amy has designed courses, facilitated workshops and participated in panel discussions for University of Denver, LEAP at St. Mary’s College, Barnard College, New York Foundation for the Arts, Gibney Dance, The Artist Co-op and Pentacle, among others.
Reconsidering Norms in Marketing
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Amy Jacobus (she/her) says that as she reconsiders her normal, “I have to consistently remind myself that the way I do things may not be the way someone else does things…To reconsider my normal, for me, is to think about everyone else’s normal and how that’s different than mine.”
Erica adds that “the normal is a piece that really is meant to homogenize us…And I think just having that awareness that we all have some type of normal, and being able to question, okay, but why is this here? Why are we assuming that this is the end-all, be-all?”
Amy says that in her work in marketing, there are many professionals who share various guides to taking your business to the next level of success, but those guides don’t account for the fact that marketing can’t be a one-size-fits-all process.
“People have different goals, people have different audiences, people have different skill sets and strengths.”
Her process is to find out what is unique about each of her clients and to “create a plan that actually fits how you want to show up and how you best show up versus following everyone else’s plan…[Because] you’re not going to actually do the work of marketing if you hate every second of it.”
Amy says this individualized approach stems from her company’s project values of strategic thinking and an integrative approach.
Strategic thinking means making a marketing plan that accounts for a longer-term picture and what is sustainable for the client.
“Sustainable often comes down to not only capacity, but also willingness or enthusiasm or enjoyment. I want you to actually like your marketing.”
From there, they integrate best practices in the field and use those as a guide. But, “It has to work for you or you just won’t show up to do it. You’ll burn out.”
The Impact of Making Your Values Explicit
Erica says that, from her perspective, Amy has always been confident in what she's doing, why she’s doing it, and why it works, and her values played into that. But she asks Amy how her values have evolved to get her to the point she is at now, where she has a clear grasp on how her values impact her work.
Amy says that in her work with Erica and India, she learned to make sure that “in order for these values to really have impact on the way that we work, they need to be explicit, not assumed. So that means internally with my team, but also externally with my clients.”
She says the process of co-designing the company values with her team rather than having them come top-down from her, made them stronger for the whole team.
“Once we redefined those values, they became stronger because they became more interwoven in everything that we do…The whole team has ownership over them. And even our clients accept some ownership when we’re working together.”
The company’s values are explicit in client contracts, but Amy says they also came to realize that “some of them were pretty rigidly defined by our own standards and our own normal, but…our clients may not have the same feeling about this. So how do we open up this value…and [have it] become more about establishing a relationship versus establishing a standard.”
Erica says that building a business that is rooted in relationship building creates a very different way of operating than a model that is more transactional. “It does really provide a very different space for collaborating on what’s gonna happen,” which is particularly important with marketing, which is a collaborative process by nature.
Amy agrees and says, “You have to be a part of it…It’s about personality. It has to be a little bit about who you are and why you’re here, in addition to the work that you do. And frankly, those are the reasons someone chooses you over the other consultant down the road, because they feel some kind of deeper connection with your approach.”
Allowing Your Values to Evolve
Creating an explicit set of values for her company has also impacted the relationships between Amy and her team. “We have a set of values for ourselves that we take really seriously in our relationships with one another and how we support each other in the business.”
A key facet of those values is “prioritization of humanity.” She says there is an emphasis on clarity, communication, and expectation setting, and also bringing a sense of empathy with each other.
Erica says it’s so important to recognize each other’s humanity and that we’re not two different entities of professional versus off work. “We’re still showing up as us, the individual, not just the person that does this job.”
Amy acknowledges that of course she and others on her team will make mistakes, but having their values explicitly stated is “helpful to have that guide to continuously return to…[and] to talk about them and ask, are these still true for us? And how are they showing up and how are they not showing up? And how can we do better?”
Erica agrees that it is essential to allow yourself to evolve, be responsive, and shift as necessary. “That’s a part of how willing we are as humans to not only learn, but also to be willing to unlearn and be wrong.”
Amy adds, “It can be really challenging because we can be really stubborn. But it is so important to just continuously ask questions of yourself, of your business, of your team, of all of it.”
As an example, she says that one of her original client values was about dependable project management, but she had to bring in flexibility to that value because some of their processes don’t work for everyone and they needed to be able to make accommodations.
Now, “we’re still staying organized and dependable and keeping the project moving, but we’re making sure that it moves in a way that works for you instead of causing you distress.”
Reconsidering Industry Norms
In terms of wider industry norms, Amy says she would love for marketers to move away from strategies that focus on a prospective client’s pain points.
“All it does is make someone feel bad about themselves in that moment…Am I really trying to capitalize on someone’s pain or frustration or fear in this moment? Or am I trying to help them envision and imagine what is a better option or future or existence? And really, I want the latter.”
She has made it a priority to revisit her own content and make sure it’s presenting positive outcomes rather than exploiting negativity or fear.
Erica recalls it being jarring when she first started encountering those tactics after having been in a brick and mortar business that was based on relationships.
Amy says that exploiting the vulnerable state those messages put people in is ultimately a terrible way to build a relationship with a client.
“What I want someone to come to me and realize is that we can work together to find the way forward that’s best for them…I’m not trying to fix you. I’m trying to support you in finding what works.”
And while focusing on pain points remains a norm in the industry, Amy says she reserves judgment of people who are using those tactics, because “most people use this tactic because it’s told to them that it’s really effective and they’re just trying to sell their thing and they don’t know any other way.”
She continues, “My hope is that by continuing to work with entrepreneurs, small business owners on what marketing can be like, the possibilities of using tactics that feel good in addition to work, can just help to eliminate more of those instances in the online space.”
Show People Who You Are
To make your values more explicit, Amy suggests starting by writing them down, then reviewing some of your recent marketing, whether it’s your website or your Instagram feed.
“Are your values present there? Are they a part of how you communicate? Are they apparent?...If it’s not there, start to work them in, find a way to show people who you are in addition to what you do.”
Ready to Dive Deeper?
Values have been touted as something you should have, but no one has really told you what to do with them. Taking a static word and turning it into action is the sweet spot where values become guiding principles on how to respond, make choices, and create impact with your brand.
Join Pause on the Play, The Community, and get access to Erica and India’s workshop, From Implicit to Explicit: Reconsidering What You Know About Values and learn why identifying your values can change everything in and around your brand, you’ll uncover ways that traditional ideal client workshops and tools aren’t helpful and how leading with your values can shift the way you approach your brand.
Learn more at pauseontheplay.com/community
Connect with Amy Jacobus:
Instagram: @amyjacobus