What’s up Fish Fans! My name is Marcus, and I’m the owner of Blue Fish. You’re watching Marketing Madness: the Blue Fish vlog! With each video, our goal is to address common questions that business owners may have about marketing, advertising, sales and business in general.
I hope you’ve all had a great holiday season and have returned ready to take on 2018. In our last video we talked about setting SMART goals. If you did not get a chance to watch that we will link it below. I wanted to use this video to put a final point on the topic of setting goals. Next week we’ll get back to our videos on practical application of marketing principles.
For the last couple of years I have been focused on the word “Intentional” when writing out my goals and planning for the year ahead. The dictionary defines Intentional as “done on purpose”. And when I write out my goals I talk about wanting to be intentional with everything in my life from growing Blue Fish, to spending time with my wife and sons, to making time to work out several times a week. Intentional is the word that I use to maintain my focus.
Intentional living is about knowing why you do what you do... and more importantly: why you don’t do what you don’t do.
The very foundation of intentional living is knowing your purpose. Why do you do the things you do? This applies to business as well. Why do you spend time away from family trying to achieve your business goals? Why do you put up with the stress over increasing revenue? What is it that drives you to put yourself out there for all to see your success and your failures?
Are you acting intentionally? Or are you just letting life move you through the various stages as it sees fit? If you don’t make your choices intentionally, someone else will gladly help you make those choices. Unfortunately relying on others will likely not benefit you as much as it does them.
And if this video does nothing more than make you stop for 5 minutes to think about what your purpose is then I have succeeded.
The good news: taking the time necessary to discover your purpose can be extremely helpful to your marketing too. Every business needs a story and I often find that the purpose of the business owner aligns with the purpose of the business.
The unofficial tagline for Blue Fish is “Do Good”. We may not print it on all our websites and paperwork. But, if you look at all of the things we are involved in, you’ll notice that we are trying to make a difference in the lives of those we touch.
We created a platform that provides local business owners with exposure though our podcasts. We’ve recorded close to 100 episodes of the podcast, invested in equipment and pay for all of the promotion because we believe in positively changing the conversation about what is happening in Mobile.
We created videos sharing how local business owners view Mobile and the changes we are seeing in our local economy. There were over 85,000 minutes of video viewed in a 3 week period! Those videos were a pet project. We invested 2 months worth of man hours to record, edit, and publish those videos to Facebook.
Even this vlog that we’ve recorded weekly for the last year was an effort to share some of our knowledge with business owners in the hopes that it would inspire some of you to take action. We’ve heard that many of you are doing just that. It is awesome to think that the information we are putting out is encouraging so many and helping you build your business!
So take a minute. Think through what you are trying to accomplish. My gut tells me you are trying to do more than just earn another nickel. There is something that drives you. You are wanting to achieve your goals for some deeper purpose. Find that purpose and use it to fuel the decisions you make for your business.
That’s a wrap for this week. I want to thank you for your attention. If you have any questions or comments leave them down below. If you want to talk about how Blue Fish can help you grow your business just send us a message and we’ll get the conversation started!