…but it can be profitable.
I recently read a great book on marketing that takes a slightly different turn than my usual reading.
I'm recommending the book to you.
It's called Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and is written by Shel Horowitz and Jay Conrad Levinson.
I think the book's main virtue (aside from being well-reasoned and well-written) is demonstrating the work we do as business owners and entrepreneurs is important. Not only in an economic sense, but in other ways as well.
In the book, Shel does a great job of marrying the ethics and pragmatics of business, and showing us that the two are inextricably linked. These ethical, spiritual viewpoints are important as determiners of the paradigm from which we operate as business people.
(As an aside: the section on copywriting is brilliant, a great distillation of timeless truth, presented in a fresh new way. I'll be discussing these ideas in an upcoming issue of my soon-to-be-launched print newsletter for copywriters.)
Historically, there have been two disparate camps in the Western world. One one hand: the “Ayn Rand style” of entrepreneur, out primarily to make money. On the other hand: the spiritual-socially-conscious people, who have tended to paint “big business” primarily as robber-barons.
There is a third way, and it is masterfully articulated in this book.
And while I don't agree with everything in the book, I have no hesitation in recommending it.
Read Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, and be encouraged. The work you're doing is more important than you may think.