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Finding Your True Market

This set of handouts was created for my Finding Your True Market workshops given in various sites across the U.S.

The workshop is limited to eight participants, who are guided through an individualized process to discover their natural markets. This process includes discovering answers to these questions:

• what is my vision of the effect of my storytelling?
• what do I have to offer?
• who shares this vision and wants what I have to offer?
• how do I reach and form alliances with these people?
• what are concrete steps I can take to form these alliances?

The handouts included here are merely supplementary to this detailed process.

Some Marketing Thoughts

Questions to answer

Two pieces of reality

Some Marketing Thoughts

1. People think: I have to be different from who I am to do the business of storytelling.

   In fact, the business, done truthfully, well, effectively, makes me more myself.

2. Marketing is not inherently corrupt or manipulative
   • Even in a perfect society, we'd still have the job of letting people know that what they want is available
   • Letting people know is a favor to them, not a manipulation of them
   • It is our duty to respect our art by making it available
   • Spreading the word is part of our role as leaders in the society
3. The way to :
   • gain true wealth and security
   • be ourselves more fully
   • thrive as artists
   is to:
   • get close to many people
   • use our art for connection with people
   • use our art to help others be themselves
   • reach people with our art
4. Nurturing our relationships with our allies
   • Find those people who it makes sense for us to be "art partners" with, who share our goals or vision in some way.
   • Listen to them, lead them as needed - as a favor to them and to us
   • Hold out to them the possibility of greater connection
   • Remain connected to them over time
   • Learn from them
   • Be partners with them in developing even greater possibilities for being who we really are

5. Nurturing ourselves
   • provide ourselves with the best life possible
   • do not settle
   • take charge as needed, to make this happen
   • this will require overcoming obstacles
     • including healing fear, embarrassment, rage, etc.
   • this will be beneficial for all concerned
   • we need many allies, connections
   • the only one in a strategic position to create it for me is me
6. Premises
   • We are each wonderful,
     • we each have much to offer
     • we are each capable of helping the world become what it could be
   • There are many, many others out there who
     • would like to get close to us
     • want us to succeed
     • are hungry for what we have to offer
     • want to know about us, but don't know who to ask
   • Since our uniqueness is central to what we have to offer,
     • comparisons are un-helpful and not meaningful
   • If at this moment I am not succeeding, I must need some form of resource:
     • help
     • time
     • information
     • shift in point of view
     • emotional healing

7. As storytellers, we are in a prime position to begin the next era of our economy:
   • 1-1 marketing is perfect for us, because we have a personal "product"
   • it's natural for us to think in terms of individuals rather than masses and statistics
   • we care more about people and connection than about profits
   • we draw on traditions of connection and interaction

Questions to answer

My peak experiences as an artist have been _____

When people love my performances (or other gigs), it is because _____

• e.g., they say _______

• they do _______

• afterwards, what happens is _______.

When I love a performance, it is because ______

The moments when I feel that I am on the (a) right path are _____

If I only dared to admit it, what I want from life is _____.

In my truest self, what I would say to my true market about me is _____.

If I were someone else, the reasons I would recommend that someone hire that person would be _____

If nothing were in my way, the people I would reach would be: ______

what I know about them:

• what they want _____

• how they respond _____

• what their issues are _____

• what their possibilities are _____

Two pieces of reality

1. Marketing is not foreign, but is about my uniqueness & relationships
2. Oppression of artists is real.
   • it is not "about me" that I have trouble with this
   • key issues:
     • cooperative not competitive
     • my talent is not a question
     • my success and worth cannot be measured in money
     • artists are sane and normal
     • art is important; artists are more important
     • art makes the world better for everyone
     • artists thrive on community
     • all the (very real) hardships can be overcome (with time and help)

Copyright © Doug Lipman

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Doug Lipman
Phone: (405) 348-6060
Toll free: (888) 446-4738
Fax: (405) 340-3264; toll-free fax: 800-476-0891
P.O. Box 174, Edmond, OK 73034 U.S.A.

http://www.storydynamics.com

This page was last updated on Friday, November 28, 2003
Copyright©2003 Doug Lipman