By: Stella Orange
When one of my work buddies at the co-working space found me, I was slurping my lentil soup at the kitchen island.
He told me about meeting a lady last week who did some kind of work with companies and goes in and does that work.
“Anyway,” he continued, “She’s tired of working alone and your name sprung to my mind. I told her about you and she asked for an intro. Do you have a card?”
Side bar: This work buddy is an attorney, and while he knows I’m a consultant and writer of marketing, we’ve had more conversations about travel, riding bikes, and glamping than we’ve had about work.
Nor do I think I’ve ever directly told him, “I’m looking for introductions to people who want collaborators.”
Anyway, I gave him my phone number and email address, thanked him for thinking of me, and confirmed his intuition that I do, indeed, show up when people say “You know, I don’t like this working alone thing.”
He sent an email intro within the hour. It’s too soon to tell how this episode will unfold, but that’s not the point.
The point is: That was a bat signal!
Now, I’ll admit that I’m not much of a comic book fan. In my mind, the characters tend to run together into one blurry pile of costumes, superpowers, and backstory.
But one thing I do remember is how, when the city needed Batman’s help, they shone the big spotlight with the little bat silhouette in the middle. And he stood, waiting and watching for it.
This is how I experience words like “don’t want to do it alone.”
Like a big spotlight shining in the night sky that says, “One of your people is nearby.”
Here at Las Peregrinas, we believe that we can do marketing from this place.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a client call and heard Rebecca say, “I don’t know how I get clients. But I’ve been in business this long, so it must be working.”
Truth be told, Rebecca is one of the most consistent and methodical “marketers” I’ve ever met. But her flavor of “marketing” actually looks a lot more like tending relationships over time and showing up to be of service to whomever may be in front of her.
Which, at the end of the day, strikes me as far more potent and dare I say subversive than what most folks think of as “marketing.”
But I digress.
We use this language of “we work with folks who don’t want to do it alone” explicitly on our website.
And yet, the truth is that idea is just how Rebecca and I roll, as human beings. At this point, many of my visions, schemes, and projects are bigger than anything I could ever do or “hold” by myself. I’m clear that I move through the world listening to the beat of my own drum, but when you zoom out, I’m located in a drumming circle. And that circle is interwoven with other drumming circles, and so on.
Where was I?
Oh yes, bat signals.
There are words, phrases, and ideas that belong to each of us. And we belong to them. If you tune in, you can hear them. And then comes the fun part – when you transmit and receive on that frequency — and practice trusting that not only is that enough, but that it’s really the only thing you need to do.
Big love,
Stella
Stella is cofounder and copywriter at Las Peregrinas, a creative and consulting agency. As our resident word nerd, she writes copy and points out the stories everyone is living and telling through their work. She is also fun at parties.
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