[00:00:00] Marcus: a lot of this stuff is beyond your control. Most everything is. So that's the spirituality of being able to say for me, okay, I am not me as a part of my identity more so now than five, ten years ago, for sure is not wrapped up in how much money I make, how much is my bank account, how many customers I have that does not mean that I do not feel it when something goes wrong, it just means that it's no longer the death of my self.
[00:00:28] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breadth depth, and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention. Gratitude and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live The Width Of Your Life podcast. Today's guest is Marcus Schaller, and he is a marketing strategist, copywriter, and content creator who specializes in helping small, but growing companies target their messaging and content cut through the noise, and engage the types of prospects who are most likely to become their ideal customers.
We had such an interesting conversation and I spent a lot of time talking about spirituality, entrepreneurship, creativity, how to get into flow, and practices that help him also me just really get into a state of flow, how to target your ideal clients. Why it's so important to find a way to feel comfortable and adapt sales as an art form. We just had a lot of great conversations. I hope you enjoy it. Take a listen.
[00:01:54] Aneta: Good to have you here.
[00:01:56] Marcus: Me too. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:58] Aneta: Of course. And it's so interesting because today is actually the day that our podcast conversation from your show went live. So it was just such an interesting coincidence.
[00:02:10] Marcus: And it was actually really, cause I have a few episodes that I have in the can and it really was ours together that was going to go out today. And so I was just like, she's going to think I'm just like totally planning this ahead of time. But. It was serendipity
[00:02:26] Aneta: it is. And your podcast, I should mention is called Attract Your Ideal Customers. So for all that want to listen, and you and I, I'm trying to think back. So we met through LinkedIn. Is that right?
[00:02:39] Marcus: If I remember correctly. I reached out to you through LinkedIn cause in general, when I'm looking for guests for the show. I look for people who are doing something that I find interesting and who I feel have a pretty specific and concrete niche and that they express that in a way through primarily their website, but also maybe through their LinkedIn post in a way that I feel is like they might have something interesting to share with my audience about how to really like focus on a niche and understand your strengths and how that overlaps with a particular group of customers. So I think that's how we met.
[00:03:12] Aneta: Yeah, I love it. And it's so great because I've actually met so many interesting people through LinkedIn. And so for those that aren't as familiar with you or maybe your company or podcast do you mind just sharing a little bit about your passions and your journey and how you got to where you are today?
[00:03:28] Marcus: Sure. So I started in marketing a little over 20 years ago. And over that time, I've had different roles, mostly as a self-employed professional or freelancer. Everything from advising small business owners to working on copywriting projects for larger companies. And more recently I decided like a lot of people that coming out of the pandemic was kind of reframing, what do I really want to focus on moving forward?
I've really been focusing more on the advising aspect of what I do as a marketer, because as fun as it can be to write marketing copy after a while I realized that I really love to have interaction with clients. So I launched the podcast that you were on about six months ago and I started doing this iteration of it.
And essentially, it's my way to have these conversations with people about what happens in the real world. That's really what I'm most interested in because marketers, we can get kind of full of ourselves and kind of in the weeds with theory. But I'm always interested in finding out how people, marketers in bigger companies, and self-employed people like yourself with smaller consulting firms, are actually attracting customers.
Because it's so hard. It's like so hard just to be heard and seen. And I just really have enjoyed having these types of conversations with people like yourself.
[00:04:49] Aneta: I love podcasting. I just think it's such a great opportunity. As you said, to meet interesting people, to hear their stories, and a gift to be able to share them with others.
But how did you decide that you were going to do the podcast? Did you hire a company or did you decide to figure it out on your own? I always love asking people how they got to launch their podcasts and how calculated they were with their approach.
[00:05:15] Marcus: Yeah it's funny because I think back again 20-ish years, I was the one burning cd roms in my home office creating an audio program.
So podcast, 20 years ago I couldn't have even dreamt that there were these kinds of formats. So I've always been a tinker in that way where I'm not necessarily technically inclined, but when the tools become easy enough for people like myself to use, I love doing it. So I did not hire anybody to help me with this.
Basically, when the pandemic, I kept talking about that, but I think this is kind of when the spike in podcasting really happened in mid-2020 when I was like okay everything kind of stopped. And I was like, what do I really want to create here? I had created a couple of iterations of it.
So this is kind of I guess my third really if I was like I launched a couple and played around with a little bit and just felt they really didn't have the legs that I was looking for as far as the long term. So I already had a lot of experiments, and experience, just kind of creating stuff and playing around with it.
So the technical side of it in my opinion is not the hard part. It's just there's all these tools now. Whatever those tools you're more comfortable using, there's more than enough out there for anybody of pretty much any skill level. The main thing for me. Is it that I really want to talk to people about more than just 30 episodes worth?
So when I started it this was something that I wonder if I can have good conversations around messaging and around niches and how people really focus on making those decisions of the type of customers they serve. So far, so good. It is always a work in progress as you and I have talked about in the past.
[00:06:55] Aneta: Yeah. And I agree with you. It's not like we were just having a conversation before we hit record about microphones. Because you don't always know what mic should I get and what platform I get to? And I started to mind messy. I said I'm going to give myself a month.
We'll figure it out. And you just iterate along the way. And I think when you and I talked before, I said, one of the things that I did was listen to the people that I listened to their very first podcast episode like Lewis Howes and Cathy Heller and all these other folks. And I thought, okay, their first episode does not sound like what their current one does. So I'm okay. I've got enough time and space to get better.
[00:07:35] Marcus: I was just going to say to, even if we listen, I listened to quite a few podcasts to for obvious reasons, not only because I enjoy the format, but because I think there's people we talked about. Rick Rubin has a fantastic podcast that I really like.
So it's a great way just to be a fly on the wall and listen to interesting people, but it's also partly a little professional kind of curiosity and see how people do it. I think the takeaway for me is aside from a baseline of technical competence, the sound has to be good enough that people can hear you clearly and all that.
You don't want it to be too amateurish where it's distracting from the conversation, but ultimately there's no one right way to do it. We can draw inspiration for a podcast or any other type of content from other people. But at the end of the day, it's really about trusting your own voice and your own style and what you want to create and put out into the world.
And realizing that might maybe look a lot different than the people that you look up to, like Lewis Howes, your approach to it can be just your own. And that doesn't make it wrong. It just makes it yours.
[00:08:37] Aneta: That's right. That's so true. And I think that Rick Rubin, since you mentioned him, even his book that he wrote I think it's called A Creative Act. And he just talks about how creativity is really just an extension of who we are. And if we're happy with the by-product, what we are able to put out into the world it really doesn't matter. If others also enjoy it, you hope that they do, but that's not necessarily what we're searching for or the aim when you create something, do you agree with that?
[00:09:05] Marcus: I do very much. And it's actually been, and we'll probably get into this a little bit later in the conversation. That theme has been probably the hardest thing for me to figure out, and wrap my head around over the last few years that I've been practicing yoga and meditation and all that, because that notion of trusting your own voice and trusting your intuition and all those great things, it can get very easy to second guess yourself when it's not working. Whatever working is because ultimately, these things do have a purpose outside of our own expression. It's particularly in business.
So if I have an idea for this podcast or right now I'm reworking my home page on my website because I'm really focusing more on the messaging strategy than the copywriting, all that stuff.
So there is an intention to be able to actually serve customers that way and do that. So to that point, there's actually a brand new book speaking up today and I just posted about it on LinkedIn. I don't know if you've seen this, but Michael Gervais is a psychologist, performance psychologist, and coach whose book just came out. It's called the first step of mastery, I believe. And it's literally about not worrying about what other people think, but this is like on its way right now through Amazon. It's going to be here this afternoon.
So that's again, part of my own kind of hunger for like how do you maintain that focus on trusting yourself, not second guessing yourself yet at the same time, be able to, in an authentic way adjust and pivot and adapt so that you are actually.
Creating something in the world that's helpful for other people because it can be really easy if you're just doing pure art for its own sake, let's say traditional art, painting, whatever, and you're content with that, that's fine. But I consider business to be a form of art, absolutely.
And so that is something that's been probably the hardest thing for me to really incorporate on a day-to-day basis. And I feel like I'm doing it much better today than I might've done five years ago, where I was still like, but if I'm not trying to get other people's approval, then what's the point? No longer really kind of stuck in that, but it's still there.
[00:11:18] Aneta: And it's so hard to predict especially if we think of social media, for example, it's hard to predict what is going to get the most engagement or the most views or what algorithms are changing. And I just remember feeling at the beginning uncomfortable posting often, but I know Seth Godin said, you have to post consistently, you got to do it every day.
And whether you're inspired or not just create. So part of me does believe that the consistency is very helpful because you never know exactly if it's the one post that's going to attract clients or if it's just that that post was the one the tipping point where they're like, okay, I think I'm finally ready to maybe reach out and work with this client.
So I don't know what the answer is. Have you played around with like consistency or really trying to figure out do these posts work best versus other ones? Because I can't really find an answer.
[00:12:15] Marcus: Yeah. It's funny because what you just said earlier about the most engagement, I don't know if you specifically said the most likes, but I think right in there lies the clue into where it can become confusing we're kind of conditioned to think that the goal should be getting the most possible likes.
The highest possible traffic, the most customers, possibly. I think there is a clue and if our goal is to get the most, I don't know if you've ever read the long tail. I think that's the name of the book, but the concept of the long tail. So in the digital age, you have the long tail, which is the hits if you think about a graph and the hits are like Britney Spears 30 years ago, 25 years ago was like, boom, right at the top.
And then as that kind of goes down, you have most artists, they may sell a few albums or something and I'm butchering the concept, but hopefully you get the point and ultimately it's a market of niches right now.
LinkedIn does very well with that because it's got all of us on there, so it doesn't care who's the hits or who's not the same as Amazon. Same with whoever. So we become accustomed to thinking, let's say LinkedIn in particular, if I post on LinkedIn, of course, if I go and I post something and I think this is great.
I put out something that's so brilliant. And it's got like one or two likes, of course, there's part of me that's a little bit disappointed but if I go into it thinking that the goal should be to get thousands of likes. Now, am I going to stay true to what I'm trying to do when I'm saying, this is what I'm trying to create?
There is a potential market for that of whatever size. And my goal is to connect with those people. That market might be relatively small. So to kind of chase the biggest engagement possible potentially puts us in a mindset of now going. That wasn't the right way to do it. Well, it's like, okay, what is the right way to do it the way that even Lewis House does it or whatever?
There are people that are doing it their way and they happen to connect with an audience. It's big enough and they've been doing it for years. So it's taken time to do that. So I guess my point is thinking in terms of if we're focused on expressing something that's uniquely us with the intention of creating value for people we want to serve at the same time, it's maybe a little easier to do that if we let go of yes, but it also should be a number one hit.
That kind of thinking. It doesn't mean it can't be, and or shouldn't be. But if we're chasing the numbers, especially at the beginning, we're kind of playing other people's game instead of looking and saying, hey, right now my job is to find my audience. And if I find my audience and I create something that is authentically me and I feel is useful, hopefully, there are enough people out there that will agree. And maybe there's not, that's always the risk to it.
[00:15:06] Aneta: It's so true. And I remember this is a funny story, from several years ago, maybe it was the year of the pandemic. I wasn't doing a lot of video and I did a video and just recorded it here in the office. It was not planned. It wasn't scripted. It was like one take.
I put it out there and from that one video, I got five new clients. I didn't plan it. And it was interesting because in that video I think three of the five were men and typically my clients on the coaching side were women, but something about that particular message at that time.
It just struck different people differently. And then you find out that even if people aren't necessarily replying or you don't know that they're even viewing the message, what I found is that people are, they just don't necessarily want LinkedIn, especially where it's a business platform to like, or to comment, because then they worry that people are going to read into it.
So it's very difficult to know. That's why I think it's so important to what you said before just making sure you're adding value of service, you're creating content that feels really good to you from an integrity perspective. And then I do believe that the right clients, if you do it well and consistently and whatever all the other formula is that the right clients will find you. But do you find that that's worked for you as well?
[00:16:24] Marcus: It has, but I think there's a part of this that also is important is that that requires a certain amount of output to your point earlier about consistency. Everything is a funnel, and the bigger the top of that funnel, the greater the probability that the bottom you're going to get whatever results you're looking for.
So if you picture it that way, realize that most of life is completely random that we will never be able to clearly understand. We could talk about LinkedIn and algorithms. None of us has a clue as to why one of our posts hit that day and didn't hit the other because there are millions of other people, not only interacting on the platform but sharing content on the platform.
And I see people on LinkedIn, they're talking about like, hey, I posted this on this Tuesday and I posted that on that Thursday, and this one performed better. It's like they're approaching it as if everything else is static, right? Everybody that looked on on Tuesday looked it on on Thursday and nobody else posted more, whatever. The world is so complex that we get caught up in thinking that there's this kind of Newtonian physics where we go from A to B and then we're going to get C every time because we think we understand how it works. It's not how it works. There's randomness.
I mean, I talk about books a lot because it's behind me, I like to read because none of these ideas are mine, and there's one called the click moment or click moments. I read that years ago, and that totally changed my whole approach to success or focus because I realized, oh, wait, it's not me. If I tried something, it didn't work. It's not because I'm terrible or useless because the world is random. If I want to increase my probability of success, I need to not only lean into that randomness but stop trying to second guess how things should work.
Be able to experiment, it talks about not little bets, but it's kind of these purposeful bets where you're saying, hey, I have an idea for this podcast. I'm going to create five episodes and see what happens and learn from that instead of going, I know that this podcast, because that was me back in the day.
I know that this podcast or I know that this business is going, no, I didn't. So that part of it too, I think is really important for me because it focuses on the process instead of the outcome. You realize that your job is not only to be consistent in what you're putting out but to realize that there are a lot of other moving parts and variables that are way beyond your control.
And all you can do is focus on the things that you can control, which is your mindset, your attitude, your mental health to some degree. Hopefully, we all have control over that. But yeah, I think it's just, that it frees you to be able to focus on doing the work and allowing for serendipity to do what it does. We look in hindsight at people who are successful and go, they did this, this, and this, it looked so strategic.
If you look into any of those stories, there are always unexpected meetings, unexpected detours, and weird coincidences. It's part of everybody's story.
[00:19:30] Aneta: I a hundred percent agree with you and I would love for us to just go a little bit further and talk about, do you see a trend or maybe just in your own experience what is the relationship between spirituality and entrepreneurship for you? How do you run your business? Is spirituality a part of business for you?
[00:19:52] Marcus: It has been for the last almost decade now for sure prior to 2015, it was all about proving myself. It was all about ego. It was all about I was going to show myself and everybody else around me that I was good enough and I could succeed and all that stuff until that didn't work anymore.
And I went through, there was a family issue as a, it was an illness in the family that basically just stopped everything. And it just rocked my world and bottom. Just hit bottom. And I just basically realized that I was trying to fix the inside by changing the outside and that that wasn't working.
So it took me a few years to figure out, well, how do I function like that in the world? Because it's easy to get into all sorts of theories or philosophy or spirituality, whatever you want to call it. But then at the same time, you have things you want to create and do and achieve. And I think for me again Business to me is art business to me is a creative act.
It's different than music in the sense of the tools that are used in the instruments, I guess, but it is still a creative act. And I think business, it's so easy to get caught up in the idea that the only thing that matters is the outcome. The only thing that matters is the end result and the performance without realizing or giving really respect to the fact that the performance is the result of the process and the being present and the quality of your consciousness as you're doing the work because then all the other things that I talked about before, all that crazy, variable, unpredictable, messy stuff of the world, COVID 2020, It's all mixed together and then you get to a result.
And a lot of this stuff is beyond your control. Most everything is. So that's the spirituality of being able to say for me, to be able to say, okay, I am not me as a part of my identity more so now than five, ten years ago, for sure is not wrapped up in how much money I make, how much is my bank account, how many customers I have that does not mean that I do not feel it when something goes wrong, it just means that it's no longer the death of my self.
And then that sounds all really great. It's like, what does that mean? It's like when you're doing something that you're really meant to do, and you're in the middle of that work. Everything else disappears. You can call it the zone. You can call it whatever the term is flow.
It's this experience where it's just pure presence. Something's acting through you that you're not consciously forcing and all those beautiful talents and skills that you were born with and have developed over your life are all just expressing themselves without any willful effort or forcing on your part.
That, to me, is spirituality in action when it comes to business. The tricky part is to maintain that, not get caught up in, I've only got this much in my bank account right now and getting freaked out by the day-to-day stuff, so.
[00:22:56] Aneta: So much goodness in there. And I was actually going to ask you, when was the last time that you felt like you were in just complete flow? I
[00:23:07] Marcus: want to say it's a daily thing. Some days are easier than others. I put in a lot of time and effort. It's ironic that I'm saying effort. I put a lot of time and focus, that's a better word into the practice itself which helps make it easier. So we'll talk about meditation, right?
To me, I think meditation is it's not a way to necessarily make yourself feel any particular way. It's a way to practice being present and it's a way to practice being aware of being aware. So that when you're in the thick of it, it's easy to go there.
And I use the metaphor, I'm not a sports person, but I use the metaphor. If you're a basketball player and you're practicing three-point shots, you want to do that under calm conditions every day or whatever your practice schedule is so that when you're in the middle of the game, you can just hook into it without thinking about it. That to me is what meditation has done for me.
So as much as possible, being able to spend that time on the cushion, as they say, and being aware of that because everything other than the story that we think we are and you're just aware of the awareness. For some people, it's not going to mean anything, but if you've done the work, you'll kind of know what that means.
And then that way, when I'm sitting at my desk and I'm working on a project, I can enter that space much more easily. Then if I wasn't doing that work every day,
[00:24:27] Aneta: I'm so glad you brought up meditation. It is just a form of hygiene and it's a daily discipline, but not in a bad way.
And so for me, it just is something that is such a habit now. And I know the difference. Everyone around me knows the difference when I don't meditate. So I agree with you it's definitely made a huge difference. Are there other practices that you really enjoy and that help you either personally and also professionally in your business?
[00:24:54] Marcus: I think it's an extension of the meditation that on the cushion part of it, where the meditation becomes a day-long every aspect of your life. So the practice isn't just limited to the time where I've got a 15-minute timer going. At the very least I'm going to sit here and just do this practice for this 15 minutes. It's being able to snap into that state the second you realize that you're lost in thought. So it's like constantly coming back to it.
So I just kind of want to mention that because I think that's the core practice for me. Aside from that, I don't know if I call it a practice, but I like simple things, like going for walks, little simple things on my own. I'm a big believer in tapping into intuition and your subconscious for your best ideas.
For me, what's worked the best is that balance between kind of focused effort where I have like a whiteboard and I'm doing mind maps and all that, and then letting it go, letting the mind, the gestation period happen, all that classic creative process stuff, and then just going for a walk.
Like where I live, we have all these beautiful Metro parks where it's like ridiculous. I could just go walk in the forest for 45 minutes and it's five minutes away from my house. It's nuts. I'm from New York, and that's crazy. So for that, I don't know if I call it a practice, but that's an important part for me to be able to do my best.
What I think are my best ideas happen in those situations and I have my phone and my recorder I know it's going to be a busy evening when I come home with 24 minutes’ worth of audio recordings, but just creating that space.
So however you do it, I think one of the things that it's got to give in our society is it just can't continue this way is the lack of space, both physical and just time for people just to actually breathe and just have some white space in their day, just create it. Like they go from zoom to zoom to zoom and they were wondering why they're fried.
It's just not sustainable. So creating that space, I think is like the core practice, whether it's on the cushion, meditating, walking through the woods, playing with your dogs, your kids, whatever.
[00:26:58] Aneta: Yeah, I agree. I love doing that too. And one of the things that we don't get that much time doing anymore is driving.
So I don't drive into an office. A lot of people are either working remotely but being in the car sometimes is one of those places where, especially if the radio was not on or maybe just gently in the background, just being able to be by yourself within the car sometimes was a great place of creativity or if not creativity, just a place of rest, being awake, but resting the mind, not having to do something.
And so one of the things I always tell all my clients is to create that barrier for yourself with the space in between work and your personal life and your family time. And sometimes we just need to do that because we don't have the gift of having a commute either on public transportation or in the car.
[00:27:49] Marcus: And giving yourself permission for that. It's a lot of times it's easy to assume it's an employer or a manager that's imposing this and a lot of times it might be, definitely, there's a culture surrounding most people that I might interact with, or you might interact with on LinkedIn or whatever it is.
But I think a lot of times it's people's own personal. I don't know whether they feel guilty about doing it. They feel like they're being lazy. It's just a misunderstanding about what quality of work really is. And we're moving into very quickly an age where we talk about AI, it's here and it's changing things really fast and for years we've been talking about the notion of the future and it's about creative work and problem-solving and the people that are going to be able to sell and succeed in the future are the ones that are able to connect the dots and all that stuff.
It's not going to be people that are churning out, like an accountant, and trying to compete with QuickBooks. Like we're all going to be trying to do that, that is a losing game. So it's like, we're never going to be able to outwork bots as far as output. And so our best hope as individuals.
To be able to contribute something, and create value in a professional setting in our kind of work, like creative work or thought kind where its information is the ability to solve problems. That's not going to happen when you're staring at a computer screen 9 hours a day.
Going from Zoom meeting, so I think people, we have this still factory mentality where if we're not constantly typing on our computer, that means we're not working. And I think that's just to me, I get it, but it's just like, got to let go of that because it's just not the direction that is going to be either healthy or productive.
[00:29:35] Aneta: And it goes back to that space. Like you were saying, just giving ourselves space, even giving ourselves space and time to ask better questions to enable critical thinking skills. And just thinking about Einstein, I think one of the things he said he did, he'd go for walks or he would allow himself the space to ask a question.
And while he slept to waited for the mind to do the work at night. And so it requires patience and it requires trust that in the waiting sometimes that's where actually the breakthroughs can happen.
[00:30:10] Marcus: Absolutely. The thought experiments that he would do. He came up with the theory of relativity if I can say it correctly. From what I understand, it was sitting in his lounge chair or he was playing violin. And my wife's a nurse, she works with the elderly population. Her value in that role is to be present with the people. It's just not sitting there walking through the woods and coming up with solutions to ideas, but she is there to be a caretaker for people, that's a different type of role. If I'm sitting and I'm trying to solve problems for clients, that's not about constantly running around.
There are different ways to kind of judge productivity. And I think spirituality for me, one of the biggest benefits is being able to, for me to see through kind of the BS meter, right? So my BS meter is pretty well calibrated at this point and not buy into the pressure that we see around us to be the one that's always posting on LinkedIn, the one that's always at every whatever.
It's like we get so caught up with the noise that we forget about what the source of this is, and I'm lucky, I'm self-employed, I know that not everybody has, I mean, I know there's computer software now that literally measures people's keystrokes and mouse movement on their computers when they're working, like, that to me is draconian. I can't imagine working in that environment, but I'm lucky, and I think it's ultimately, we each have to make our own decisions about what works best for us.
But I think people that might be listening to the show are people that are at that point, we're like, this isn't working, and if you give yourself first permission to be like yeah, my productivity and my value is more than just whether I'm the first one to respond to the slack message every time. That's a terrible way to try to exist every day.
[00:31:51] Aneta: And I think that the pendulum has to flip because it's just not sustainable. This pace of being constantly responding quickly and really just the constant interruptions. I do think that that's what's contributing to so much burnout, so much stress, to so much dysregulation of the nervous system. And it will have to swing in the other direction at some point. It's just a question of when and what's the impact when it finally does.
[00:32:18] Marcus: And it's also counterproductive. If all this stuff works, there might be an argument for it. But how many times have you been in a Zoom meeting with three or four people where you could tell that two of them weren't paying any attention?
It's just not effective. The thing with constant interruptions. If you're doing any kind of creative work, by definition, it's probably going to be some kind of deep work.
It's something that you need to shut off the notifications and focus on for 20, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever it is. If you're creating for a living, if you're writing copy, or you're solving problems, or whatever it is that you do that involves getting into a flow that we talked about before that's where your ideas are going to come from being in that zone.
You can't do that if every 3 minutes or every 30 seconds you're looking at your Slack channel or the things binging. It just doesn't work.
And it's like, yeah, I think one of the problems too, is when it comes to creative work or any kind of like knowledge work, is that it's hard to measure. It's hard to see what's the progress, but it's really easy to see if somebody responds quickly to an email.
It's really easy to see if people are on a Zoom call, but they're all multi-tech because that looks busy. It's just terrible. It's counterproductive and it's just we can't compete with the technology that's going to be doing that so much better than we ever could be.
[00:33:35] Aneta: You know, I didn't ask you, you said you started your business, has it been over 10 years?
[00:33:39] Marcus: So I've been doing marketing in different forms or another for over 20 years now. But yes, for quite a while.
20 years on my own. I've worked at different places on and off. Up in a like unbroken chain of 20 years, but ultimately, when I think about like, where I started as a marketer I was back in the days before you do before, like when AdWords was a new thing, like so much has changed. Yeah, because it's interesting for the content marketing that didn't exist. You mentioned Seth Godin, as far as I know, he's the one that kind of coined, permission marketing, which is when you can do a newsletter and people so much has changed. It's crazy.
[00:34:12] Aneta: It has. And so what are some of the things that you love most about being an entrepreneur?
And what are some of the biggest challenges or lessons that you've learned along the way?
[00:34:23] Marcus: I love most the autonomy. And that relates to the things we were talking about before about being able to make those choices for myself. I've been working from home since the beginning. So when everything shifted three years ago there was no shift for me.
I like to be able to have control over that to as much as I can to the degree that I can. And it makes me better at what I do. When I've worked in companies before, I think that was one of the things that wasn't present. And I struggled with that a lot. It was very hard for me, mindfulness or not mindfulness.
It was very hard for me to really kind of let go of this is how I work best. This is the best environment for me to be able to create my best work. And I think the challenge at least in my experience is that if you're self-employed, whether that's being a freelance copywriter, or whether you're starting a company, you have to be very comfortable with uncertainty again, with discomfort.
I don't believe that there is such a thing as job security, but it's still kind of present in our culture where if you get a job full-time job, there's some kind of security. I think that's not really the case anymore.
I think when you're self-employed, you have to be willing to wear all the hats you have to be willing to sell. You have to be willing to market yourself. You have to be doing all those things unless you have somebody else doing it for you, they're not going to get done. They're not going to be getting done at all.
You can face some pretty scary stuff. And I think that's, again, where the spirituality comes in, where you realize it's like, I'm not that if my bank account goes to zero, I don't die.
[00:36:00] Aneta: And has your ideal client changed since you started?
[00:36:05] Marcus: Yes, absolutely. Back Thank you. 20-something years ago, I really wanted to work primarily with very small business owners or other entrepreneurs, self-employed people.
And for obvious reasons, in the sense that I love entrepreneurship, I think it's like for people to be able to do their own thing and use their skills and sell those skills in the marketplace to be able to solve problems and do their own thing. I love that. The problem is. At least the way I saw it was the challenges.
Somebody starting a business, I might be able to help them with their marketing, but they don't have any money to pay for help, which causes a problem. So maybe that's where the podcast comes in too. So I like doing that kind of stuff where I feel like it can help people and they don't necessarily have to be customers. But that's changed over the last few years shifted more toward larger tech companies, and other startups, but more well-funded.
But again, now my role within that was more about executing a copy rather than working on the strategy. So I mentioned earlier in our conversation that I'm now shifting, really focusing on the strategy part because I've now done it long enough where I feel like I have the experience to be able to go to a reasonably decent-sized company and be able to add value to a marketing team when it comes to the strategy of the side of marketing and messaging.
I wouldn't have been able to do that 10, or 15 years ago. I just didn't have the chops, I didn't have the experience. So now as you go through your career, you're like, wait, I have not only decades of experience, but I have these skills and I have this insight and all that stuff.
So it's definitely shifted. I think the thing that stayed the same is. Again, I think that business and marketing in particular and selling even I think selling is like, I think it's a bad rap when you're doing it well, selling is an art, spend some time with somebody who really knows how to sell and do it from the right place, it is performance art absolutely.
So I think that's the one consistent thing is like when I'm able to work with clients and help them with this it really does feel like it's coming from a truly creative, good place where you're like, I'm helping them put something out in the world. That's going to help solve problems. That's a pretty good way to spend your day.
[00:38:12] Aneta: And do you have a mission statement either for your life or your business or for both?
[00:38:19] Marcus: That's a great question. I don't. Yeah, I'm kind of on the fence about mission statements and I'll tell you why.
One is I've learned over the years that as much as I think I can determine what my life is going to be about ahead of time. Life changes. Circumstances change. Opportunities change. I also think it's funny, even as somebody who writes and creates messaging for a living, I think some of the times it's hard to capture that in words.
I have maybe a driving purpose. You and I had actually talked about this a few weeks ago. I think the closest thing I have to what might be considered a mission statement is an idea of what my Dharma is, right? So for people that aren't familiar, Dharma has a lot of different meanings, but in the particular case of Karma Yoga and the Bhagavad Gita, it basically, can be translated as purpose or nature or something like that.
Like, what is it that you're here to do? What is it you're here to create? And it's not really a statement. It's more a series of words. So for me, it's like advising, creating, problem-solving, and selling there, not selling in a weird way and being cheesy, but like selling because nothing happens until you sell it.
Nothing happens until it's sold. So those kinds of things, they all relate to business. And what that does is it allows me to have some flexibility.
[00:39:44] Aneta:
Think Dharma is tied into it. I think that our personal Dharma ties into if we do it right it's how we live our life. It's how we serve others. It's tied to the way we do business, all of those things.
And it doesn't have to be structured in a specific way. I just think that it is sort of like the North Star or guiding principles. I was just curious because I do find it difficult to do, but I just recently went through the exercise as part of a mastermind that I'm in.
And it was actually really helpful, but it was hard. It was very hard because it's hard to be succinct and we want to be everything. So it's a fine art between being specific enough with it, but also not being so specific that you feel like you have to constantly revise it.
[00:40:30] Marcus: And I think that you mentioned something about a guiding principle or North Star.
I think that's the trick. I think there's a difference between what somebody might say is a mission statement is something concrete goal setting is a great example of that. It's like this notion that we're going to be able to say by this. It's like there's a fine line where you can say having a guiding principle and having something that guides your day-to-day actions is critical. What I've gotten to the point over the last few years, particularly, and more so even in the last year or so it's almost a moment-to-moment experience.
And I think what my life is more about now is. Quieting the mind, getting some stillness where the meditation, all that stuff comes in, and being able to hear those, what do I do now?
Okay, today I'm going to do this. And I can just listen to it. So it's not something that's rigid. It's more something that's just like, you're just hearing at a level where I wouldn't be able to hear this if I was just totally still overwhelmed with my fears and the noise and all that stuff.
[00:41:35] Aneta: So one of the questions that I ask everybody is tied to the title of the podcast, which is living the width of your life.
What does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:41:48] Marcus: I think for me, it would mean, maybe this relates to your question about mission statement, not defining who or what I am based on the limitations of my personality or my experience or my baggage or my blockages or whatever. So quick story. I'm married. I met my wife during that horrible period that I mentioned in 2015.
I didn't meet her until the year after, but it was directly related to that situation. This was the worst, like, this terrible thing. I'm moving to a place I didn't want to live. And a family member's sick, and it's awful, and I'm going broke.
And then, like, a year later, I met my wife who just happened to be the person taking care of this family member. I would have never met her. So it's like, for me, when I think about the width of my life, it's like, there are things that I'm going to experience in my life in the future, hopefully, that I can't even comprehend at this point.
And there's going to be really good things, and there's going to be really difficult things, and everything in between. And I think the width, for me, is getting to that point, maintaining that point where I can accept all of it as the experience of living instead of trying to force it just to be the good stuff and never be the bad stuff. Daily thing. I'm not there yet and I don't think anybody really is there yet. Totally. It's a daily practice, but that's ultimately what I'm striving to do.
[00:43:16] Aneta: That's beautiful. Thank you so much for your time, Marcus. I just enjoy talking to you so much. And how can folks work with you? What's the best way that they can find you and connect with you?
[00:43:29] Marcus: The best way is through my website, Marcus Schaller. com. M A R C U S S C H A L L E R. com. You can connect with me on LinkedIn there as well.
What we've been talking about has changed my life in every way, and I can't imagine what my life would have been like had I not experienced what I experienced a few years ago, and then been open to maybe a different way of approaching things. So anybody, even that's just curious about this or wants to chat more about it, I'm more than happy to do that.
[00:44:01] Aneta: We will include all of your details in the show notes and thank you again for your time today. I know this will be just the first of many conversations that we'll get to have.
[00:44:11] Marcus: I hope so. Thank you.
[00:44:13] Aneta: You're welcome.
Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living.