*Preface to the 2nd Edition
I WROTE THIS BOOK TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO. Since then, so much has changed, and while the principles and strategies within it have not, I’ve learned that implementing them is another story. It’s one thing to consult with a client through the process; it’s another to live it out yourself.
With this new edition of Gather the People, I want to not only share with you what I’ve learned about approaching marketing in a more human way, I also want to explore how it challenges us to overcome obstacles that are less “out there” and more inside our hearts.
When I wrote the first edition of this book, I had just been laid off from &yet, a design and software consultancy I had fallen in love with for their genuine love and care for people. Working with them changed the way I thought about the type of impact I wanted to have in the world. Prior to that, I had been an independent researcher and consultant for 9 years, having owned my own design and marketing agency at one point. I never imagined working for anyone but myself. But after meeting the people at &yet, I just wanted to be in their orbit for as long as they’d let me.
Alas, life being what it is, we lost our biggest contract that year and had to shut down the fledgling marketing division I was hired to lead less than a year prior. After that, I gave myself 90 days to finish writing the book I had been mulling over for years. 90 days until the money ran out, and I could no longer pay my rent (which was at that time, pretty exorbitant). I shared the preview of what I was writing with my community, took pre-orders, and got to work, using the strategies I’ve laid out in this book to give the project the support it needed to be a success.
Thankfully, it worked. Not only did I sell enough copies to give myself a solid runway to work on my next project (an online program to help people implement these principles in their own work), but I filled my calendar with consulting projects. Before long, I had a waiting list.
Things were going well, but I was no longer at a point in my career where I wanted to work alone, and &yet was still on my heart. Amazingly, a little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to join the team again, this time as a partner in the company. There was no question—I had to do it. And now, I get to explore a whole new layer of this work with some of my favorite people in the world.
It would be great if that was the whole story, everything wrapped in a nice little bow at the end. But of course, it isn’t. About a year ago, social media stopped being a safe place for me when someone in my community started pursuing me obsessively. Then six months after that, some really hard things happened in my personal life, and I shrunk back from sharing online completely. “Creating out loud” (one of the principles we’ll talk about in later chapters) became next to impossible.
Showing up online has always been hard, especially for people who are underrepresented, marginalized, or just have really big hearts. When you’re doing creative work that is personal, risky, and goes against the norm, it’s even harder. I hope the second edition of this book will not only give you the why and the how of marketing in a more human way, but will also give you strategies for continuing to do so during times when everything in you is fighting against being seen.