Marketing Angst… and Why I Did What I Did

Before I started my business, I was the global marketing director of a pretty large international company. I had more than 17 years in the corporate world, and had some physical ails to provie it — migraines, weight gain, sleep issues (grinding teeth).

Now, I LOVE marketing. I love the psychology, creativity, and ability to grow visibility of a company — whose products/services I support — with my head and hands. I love creating the brand of the company’s products/services. And I love taking all the pieces, putting it all together like a big puzzle, and then watching the company succeed — if all the pieces put together correctly, it’s a beautiful thing.

What I DIDN’T love is the way the CEO/president/whatever senior staff would pay good money to have me look at the market, put together the business case(s) and market and marketing plan, and then, if he/she disagreed, would just go off and do their own thing. And then, when that inevitably failed (and I cannot remember ONE time in 17 years when it didn’t), they would come back to me and say, “FIX IT.” Which I would, because I was so very good at my job.

THAT’S a large part of why I decided to move on and start my own company. At least the mistakes I made would be my own, and I’d be picking up my own pieces instead of someone else’s if something failed.

And all was well until I did something that in retrospect was STUPID, STUPID, STUPID — I volunteered to help our Master Instructor (part-time) at our Tae Kwon Do school to help him do his marketing for the mere exchange of my family’s tuition. What a deal for him! Because as wonderful of an instructor and figure head as he is, he totally s**ks at business. He is irresponsible with his finances, and he has an oozie of a problem in his home life, which I won’t get into, but just know it causes him most of his financial woes. It’s amazing to me that he’s been in business for more than 20 years; though at his height he had something like 6 schools. Now he’s down to 2, and barely scraping by.

Anyway, me, being the FIXIT person I am, wanted to swoop in and save the day. After all, not only do I REALLY know marketing and business, but I’m also a black belt at the school — so I (obviously) totally stand behind the product! When I first started working with him on the marketing, I made him make me a few promises (having to do with past mistakes he’d made), and if he held to his promises, I told him we’d grow the business back to where he wanted it to be in no time.

Well, not only did he reneg on his promises, but now I found myself back “in the hole” I thought I’d left when I left the corporate world. What luck. And I’m sort of stuck, because I’m so ingrained in the school and it’s so much a part of my family’s lives that I’m between a rock and a hard place, because our Master Instructor is doing something that no less than 6 people have told him was a bad idea (including me), and I will inevitably have to pick up the pieces WHEN it fails.

And now the joy and fun has gone out of helping.  

:::sigh::: Why do I do this to myself? Why do I put myself out, be a champion, and then get tromped on? Those whom I help obviously somehow know what buttons to push to get me to continue to help, and then by the time I’m done, I’m just bitter, bitter, bitter, and feel like I’ve been dragged through the mud.

I’m not a sucker — I’m an honest, strong-willed, utspoken, steel-backed person! And I thought I could get away from this, but it comes back to me again and again. Is it my universal lesson that I’m not supposed to help others? That’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? I’ve always believed in karma, and I’m really starting to wonder if I did something really, really, really bad in a past life to deserve these beatings on my goodwill and persistence.

Maybe I was someone like Hitler before. Maybe I was a miserable cuss and just SUCKED the life out of everyone I was with. And maybe in this life, I’m making up for it, and get the life sucked out of me. If it’s not, I don’t understand why I keep on putting myself into these situations. But I don’t understand how not to!!! I NEED TO HELP FIX THINGS! I HATE WHEN THINGS ARE BROKEN!

And a good, solid, strategic businessperson (I’ll stick with businessperson, because there’s no such thing as a good, solid politician! ) would understand me, I think. Because there’s so much wrong in the world today, and so few people who are willing to really want to stand up and FIX things.

I’ve been told I should go into politics, but I really couldn’t ever do so — I’m too direct, honest, and trying to fix THOSE problems would just break me. Because I care.

I think I’m done with my rant for now. Now, I have to decide whether to go and do some yoga or just flush my head down the toilet…..  

Feeling Solitary

You know, I feel like writing here today, but when my mind wandered to a subject matter, it just continued to… wander. Several different subjects popped up in my head, but I couldn’t really decide on one. And then, I thought of a recurring theme…

 Oh, yeah… solitude… as in part of my blog’s name…

I’ve become quite accustomed to it, since I left my corporate job to focus on my own business early last year. And don’t get me wrong — I’m crazy busy all the time, but my solitude and internal thoughts make me crazy. It’s different now than it used to be. I used to always be surrounded by people. Now I’m surrounded by plants, and though in constant contact with people, it’s much more at a distance than it used to be. Because now, I’m the business owner, and a lot of my contact is with customers. I don’t really have the camaraderie that I had when I worked WITH people, without them being a CUSTOMER. And the people I encounter now are generally MUCH different than those with whom I’m most comfortable. You know, though I KNEW that on paper (theoretically) before, I didn’t REALLY understand that until maybe 6 months ago. And it will continue to be so, even when I hire people. Because then, no matter how well we get along, I will always be the BOSS, which puts up a wall of sorts. And that’s funny, too, because I was a BOSS for most of my corporate life, but that was different. I wasn’t the TOP BOSS, or owner, president, whatever. That makes a difference.

So I feel a bit lonely, I guess. This is pretty hard for an extrovert, as I am! Actually, it’s killing me!!!!  AAAGGGHHH!!!

That’s just so funny for me to write. Because besides the business, I’m married and have 2 kids; I also help with the marketing for our Tae Kwon Do school, and am in constant contact with the people there (as well as in class and teaching class constantly). And really, I’m around and talking with people all the time.

Does that make sense?

The good part is, I’ve really gotten to know myself, and I think I’ve really developed my inner sense of the universe. I definitely have evolved. It’s just that I’ve discovered that I really don’t have anyone to discuss it with anymore. Isn’t that strange? I thought that people with whom I used to be “close” were really my friends — we had many of the same thoughts, values, and dreams. But when I actually decided to bite the bullet and actually  follow my dream, it was like… well, it was like I quickly became disassociated from them. Like I’d done something forbidden. Or, probably in reality, I just left their public eye, and it was too hard to try to keep in touch, because there’s too much in everyone’s lives to keep up-to-date.

My husband, as much as I love him, only understands parts of me. Well, a large part of me. But not all, and there are things he really doesn’t understand about what I’m thinking and how I feel about certain things. Plus, he’s in my every day life, and quite honestly, I really sometimes need to vent to someone because he makes me crazy (as all spouses will do). And there are times I need to run my irritation by someone outside of the homefront, to get an outside perspective about it.

I’m close with my retired mother, but she is sometimes of a very different mindset than me. She’s had three marriages over the years, and none that I would call solid, long-term relationships (I don’t think any of the three lasted for more than five years). And we approach things very differently in life — she’s very fixed, very habitual, very happy with being comfortable. I never have been. I always want to move on, do something new, evolve, get to the next level. If it doesn’t work, toss it and move on. We’re very close, but there’s sometimes a lack of understanding about stuff. And she’s my mother — there’s just a line, know what I mean? Different points in life, too.

And my husband is sometimes a lot like my mother. He really doesn’t have the burning desire for forward movement that I do, of carving new paths. I’m always thinking about four steps ahead of where I am now, and he’s just thinking of… well, now. Don’t get me wrong – he loves adventure, and does like problem solving, but he just can’t see past the moment, really. And his mantra is, if it works, why fuss with it? Sometimes he’d rather put 10 Band-Aids on something instead of just fixing it. That just makes me BONKERS, because often it ends up wasting a lot more time and money than if it were just fixed in the first place. And it seems that he’s sort of in la-la land more often than I’d like him to be. In reality, I think he’s always been like that, but I was too distracted to notice. Now it bugs me, because it takes nothing short of me having a complete meltdown for him to engage sometimes.

Plus, he’s not a puzzle thinker, like I am. I think of the “four steps ahead” thing as a puzzle-like capability. That was a part of my former profession — how to put the pieces of the puzzle together to make the whole program work.

So, I guess in my former corporate world, I made many acquaintances with like minds, and I felt satisfied that way. I guess I thought I would always have that, and I was really surprised at how quickly I was “removed” from it. Oh, sure, lunches for awhile afterwards, but it tapered off. Now, there’s only 2-3 people I see with any regularity, and it’s typically for lunch, about once a month. The few friends I have left from over the years are spread out around the country, and once or twice a year doesn’t really quench that need for a comrade.

So, what to do?

I don’t know. I guess that’s my point. It’s not like I don’t have people around me, but we mostly keep each other at an arm’s length. I don’t have any friends anymore that I would just call to BS with any regularity, ponder some point about life, and then be fulfilled and move on with my day. Also, I don’t feel like I get really rich information introduced to chew on from outside of my world… I love to turn over new information, chew it up, process it, debate it, and come to some kind of conclusion. I can only run the wheel by myself for so long. Where I think I’ve become much more focused, it seems those around me have become much more distracted.

There was a very, very longtime friend I had over the years (I think it’s about 24 years since I’ve known him), who was my best, best, BEST friend of all time. Because in many ways, we were very like minded, but we were different enough to challenge each other constantly. I LOVED the mental sparring! Kept me cutting edge. And we had been through SO MUCH together, growing up and all. We were close all the way up until… well, maybe 7 years ago? It sort of faded out. But a chunk of our friendship dissolved after I eloped with my husband 13 years ago, and then even moreso when I had children 11 years ago. The downfall of the male-female FRIENDSHIP, I guess. It wasn’t that my husband cared — he got along fine with my friend — but my friend was obviously harboring OTHER hopes that I’d not much considered, as much as I loved him, because he was more like my BROTHER than anything else –  and I think playing with that fire with someone who knows you THAT well, and vice versa, can be more detrimental than When Harry Met Sally ever explored! So, he got more and more bitter and obnoxious, and finally, we just sort of lost touch, to vaguely reconnect again a few years ago. And now, it’s about once a year (if that) when we speak, and there’s now a wall there, too.   I miss him!

And now, my husband — after being with him for 15 years — gets a little put out every time I speak with my friend. I’m not sure why, but he gets a little paranoid and a little jealous for awhile every time we speak (which in that respect, is lucky is not so often). There’s nothing new he knows now that he didn’t know back then, so that puzzles me.  

But anyway, it’s strange. I’m not sure where I am. I’m not sure how to remedy this. I don’t want to go back to the corporate world, because I really like what I’m doing now — creating MY OWN corporate world. But I guess I’m sorta lost. And, as I have always been the shoulder for many, the one many come to with their problems and questions, I find I have no one who can be my shoulder, or even just my comrade. It’s very sad to me that this blog is the only place I can express these thoughts, which I think is a large part of why I created it in the first place.  Yet, I’m not saying I’m pitying myself — there’s no time for pity in this world, especially self-pity, because it’s useless – I’m just feeling a bit lonely and needing to unload somewhere.

So, why not here?