This is the World’s Worst Strategy

There’s a principle that is always floating around. It’s this idea of “if I build it, they’ll come”. It also has another variant: “if you’re good, people will find you”.

I wish this was true. But it only works in movies and rarely in real life. It’s a terrible strategy whether in business or the social impact space.

There have been so many superior products in the world that failed commercially because someone thought it was too good to be spoken about.

I wish I could list out examples, but I can’t. No one heard about them. Who knows, some of those ideas may have changed our lives in some way. 

Here’s the point. You won’t make much of a difference in the world if no one knows what you are doing. So having a strong marketing framework for your school, organization and importantly for your personal brand is important in the journey of doing great work. We owe to ourselves and the communities we serve to find diverse and creative ways to tell our stories because we live in a world where so many things need to change. 

But we cannot function like big businesses with thousands of dollars in marketing expenses. The good news is we don’t need one. We have our stories and the internet - for you and me, this is enough.

You don’t have to go through the complex process of creating a campaign; you just have to show up each day and talk about your experiences.