I've been a little quiet recently.

Partly because I'm in contemplative mood at the moment, pondering the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

And partly because Kathy's got me working behind the scenes on marketing for her latest Early Years Summit.

Watching Kathy's summit progress is fascinating. It's commercially successful, but it's much more than that.

For her audience (early years practitioners and educators) it's one of the few chances they get to experience free high-quality training from leading experts in their field. So when we run ads promoting the summit instead of the normal muted or sceptical response we get people enthusiastically sharing the ad with their friends or commenting on how much they're looking forward to it and how brilliant the last one was.

And when we post up screenshots of the day's videos and ask people what they learnt, the #1 message that comes through is how inspired people feel as a result of the summit.

Inspiring 10,000 or so people every six months is a pretty neat thing to do I think.

Which brings me back to the question “what's the point of marketing?”

If I look in my inbox at the emails from the dozens and dozens of marketing people I follow, a huge number of them just focus on the bottom line like it was the only thing that mattered.

Subject lines today include thing like “How I went from struggling to 2.5 million in sales”, “How to break through $1 million in organic sales” and all sorts.

And when I read their emails the central tenet seems to be that it's your job to do whatever it takes to “get the money”. And that if a ton of money is rolling in, you must be doing the right thing.

Now I'm not going to get all soppy here and say that money isn't important. Without money, most of us simply wouldn't be able to do what we wanted to do.

But sometimes it seems we lose track of what we really want and end up doing what others tell us is best.

I see coaches who love working with people 1-1 waste months of their lives and tons of money trying to create online products because some guru has told them they “shouldn't be exchanging time for money”.

I've seen great consultants switch from helping people to setting up Amazon businesses and trying to succeed in the cutthroat world of e-commerce because the guru they followed decided that selling courses on Amazon was more lucrative for him than selling courses on how to become seen as an expert.

I often look at all these emails in my inbox and all the amazing courses out there and think “wow – if I just did that…”. If I just did a big high-end event I could make millions. If I just did a little tripwire funnel I could make millions. If I just…

Yet whenever I've done what seemed the easiest or the most lucrative I've done OK – but have always ended up switching back because it just didn't meet a real need inside me. And it just “wasn't me”.

I love my membership program. I don't like working 1-1 so much. I love writing emails and making videos. I don't like reaching out to new people or anything with the word “cold” pre-appended to it. 

We all have preferences and things we're good at. And things we want to achieve that are more than just money. Maybe yours is to inspire thousands like Kathy's summit. Or to make a difference to a few important people. Or just to have a bit of fun.

The point of marketing is to ensure you're able to achieve your goals in ways you enjoy. So make sure you use marketing that lets you do that, rather than marketing that's worked for someone else with different goals and different preferences.