The point
The point
This marketing stuff is just a trojan horse for something deeper
I could spend all 100 days of this challenge writing about marketing and creativity and whatnot. It would probably be fun and make my business grow. But I'd be lying if I said that's what brings me most alive. I'd also be lying if I said that's what Ungated, as an intellectual and cultural project, is about.
My favorite book title, by a wide margin, is "The challenges we face as individuals and societies, and becoming who we need to be to face them." The book itself is solid. But that title... something about it resonates through every fiber of my being.
When I bought my copy in mid-2020—a moment where the world felt like it was erupting into a flaming pile of destructive chaos—a seed was planted for everything else to come. Without quite realizing it, my life, and all of my projects, started aligning around this theme.
Becoming who we need to be.
When I talk about building a more beautiful internet, 1,000 true fans, and digital oases, it's all pointing back to this. Same with non-coercive marketing. I believe our business ecosystem can start the dominoes toppling towards us becoming who we need to be as individuals, as communities, as societies.
By unlearning the patterns of coercion and not-enoughness that underlie so much business behavior, and extending that gift to customers and markets, we can start building a more nourishing and empowering web of interdependent relationships. We can begin regenerating trust in a world where trust is our most precious resource. All of the messiest, most wicked crises facing humanity are coordination problems. We have the technology. We have the brute strength. What we don't have is the capacity to trust one another and work towards common goals as a species.
So this post, if anything, is just me stating my intention to start writing more about the deeper side of the Ungated equation. It's easy for me to stay in the shallows, and do popular work in the genre of Renegade Marketing Guy. But there's so much emotional and relational and psychospiritual work happening behind the scenes and beneath the surface. Anything good that's happening in my business, and my life, is downstream of a larger project. Becoming who we need to be. That's the heart of Ungated.
Rob's Daily Invitation
My ideal vision for The Frontier is that it's not yet another business and marketing membership. Instead, I'm striving to create a digital space where we let go of stories of who we think we should be, discover what sparks us alive, and start courageously bringing our creative gifts to the world, unimpeded by cynicism or fear.
The Frontier is a membership for homies who, like me, feel the inner spark, and are in the process of becoming who they need to be to not only protect it, but nourish it into a bonfire that warms every human spirit who comes near. 🔥❤️🔥🔥
I love where you are heading on this Rob. What speaks to me is deep diving into transforming and "Becoming who you need to be” via the "emotional and relational and psychospiritual” work you mention.
How I view this, is what I have been doing myself, to let go of all the old self beliefs of who thought I needed to be, an “identity” ie. being a soul destroying career as a corporate accountant for 33 years. Ego driven.
After experiencing chronic health issues and experiencing a major awakening, I’m more than the ego, been on a journey ever since, to do even more deeper work of self discovery and seek personal truth, meaning, and let go of past issues, so I can be of service and make a small dent of difference in the world.
I struggle with this all. the. time. Writing about marketing is hopelessly meta, because you're farming for attention by sharing how others can get attention. Nobody stays in marketing for very long. Most of the best marketers I have seen make a transition into something else thats more meaningful and worthwhile.
Sounds like your truer direction is helping people Become. I like it.