Are you one of those people who run small businesses based on their passions, but shy away from the “Business of business”? I too, like many of you I suspect, have often struggled in my attempts to reframe the concept of “Marketing”  in particular. To be fair to all of us, what we seem to be up against is a collective wisdom that says that “marketing is that dodgy stuff that people do in order to flog things to you when you don’t really want them”. Cue the double glazing and used car salesmen. Oh dear!

In the traditional model, business can be seen as a vehicle for channelling money from the compliant poor to the ruling, wealthy elite. The needs of the business owner are met through exploitation of raw materials and of other people – lesser paid employees and a material hungry client base mostly. Whilst successful in terms of achieving what it sets out to achieve, this version of enterprise provides a service to the community that has major limitations:

1.    Meeting human needs through constructing “wants” for the client to have.

2.    Promoting those to suit the needs of the business and involving the consumption  and waste of limited resources.

3.    Little regard for the effects that the business has on the environment, other than complying with legislation or a nod of some kind to Corporate Social Responsibility.

4.    A focus on profit and the wishes of shareholders at the expense of the wellbeing of the people involved in the business and the natural world in which it operates.

Contrast this with the activities and attitude of those businesses whose remit is to employ ethical marketing methods. Ethical marketing in this case is an appropriate (and measured ) response to a wish to meet a particular genuine human need in a way that embraces care for the earth, for people and for how the wealth generated will be shared.

In a life sustaining society of the future, there is the potential for small, localised ethical businesses to effect positive change, not just in what they can provide materially and in the form of expertise, but in the ways they interface with their local community, other businesses and the wider world.

On a personal level, though, to be able to accept this reframing of “marketing” we require a change of mindset. This is not just for those natural leaders who are starting and running this new generation of businesses, but for those of us who will be their clients too. It involves acknowledging and examining our own needs and choosing to meet them, not primarily at minimum cost and maximum convenience, but by looking longer term and demanding sustainable solutions: those that are humane, environmentally responsible and fair to all involved.

For business leaders, this is also about a willingness to meet the needs of others through genuine service. I don’t mean the type of “meeting needs” that results in subservience, victim behaviour and other traits resulting from feelings of unworthiness. What I refer to is recognising that we each have a unique role to play in this world and that we can safely do that in partnership with others and for our mutual benefit. That the world might be a better place just because we exist – quirky and diverse beings that we are – is an idea than can be alien to many of us raised in a society that values compliance, standardisation and uniformity.

These new business owners – servant leaders of the future – know that their primary focus, with ethical marketing, is to find ways to offer their unique gifts to those who might benefit and to hold their business vision on behalf of those they employ.

It’s much easier and more enjoyable than “flogging stuff”.