This week I am delighted to be chatting with Sarah Santacroce about her Gentle Marketing Revolution.
When I first spoke to Sarah, she introduced herself as the Hippie turned Business Coach, which gave me visions of VW Beetles and flowers, so I was instantly hooked and intrigued to learn more. As you will hear, Sarah has a lovely European Accent with a twist of California that is charming to listen to.
She is part of a growing tide of marketing professionals (myself and several other guests included) who are questioning the dubious path that sales and marketing has taken over the last 20 years. Recognising that it was not healthy to squeeze herself into a model that doesn’t fit her values and personality, Sarah has created a new niche for herself with her business marketing approach and is here to share her story with us.
“My parents changed the way we grew up together, with the way they created a community. I would like to change the way we do business and do it in a more gentle and empathic way.”
Peace, Love & Bicycles
To begin the story, Sarah’s unique childhood was spent living in a peace loving community called Colombina. It was a community living experience co-owned by her parents and their friends.
In the 1980s Sarah’s parents, together with 5 other families had bought an apartment complex in Bern, Switzerland. Each family had their own private spaces but there were communal areas and much of the time was spent together as a group; eating, exploring shared activities, and caring for the house and gardens.
Although she informed me there were no VW’s in her childhood, Sarah does recount how uncomfortable it felt being so different to her school friends. She remembers the embarrassment of being collected from school by bicycle when all the other kids were taken home by car and how strange her unique home life always seemed to them.
At that young age, Sarah hated being different, but looking back she now recognises that her hippie parents gave her an advantage that she has grown to appreciate and celebrate.
“I was taught early on that I was very privileged to be born in a society that has everything and that this privilege came with a responsibility: take care of our world and take care of those who are not as privileged as me.”
However, community living isn’t always peace and love. It is a unique environment, based around shared values and trust, especially when it comes to making collective decisions. The key is in learning to get along with people and being prepared to compromise. While Sarah distanced herself from it growing up, it made her the woman she is today and those gentle values of leadership and collaboration are central to her way of living and working.
Sarah’s Marketing Career Development
Upon leaving school, Sarah skipped college and started her marketing career working within an International Business School and over the next few years she worked in a range of other corporate jobs.
She met her Italian husband on a vacation in Spain, and after a period of living together in Switzerland, they moved to California in 2006 to support his career advancements. Once their children were settled in school, it was time for Sarah to consider her own career development. She started creating what became a successful consultancy with LinkedIn & Social media strategies, and became internationally recognized as a LinkedIn Specialist & Online Presence Mentor.
Using the classic guru marketing, hustle and manipulation strategies, she grew the project to 6 figures plus. By all business standards that is a big success, however some things come with a price, and as an introvert Sarah was well on the way to burning out. Recognizing the signs and looking for a solution she had a moment of epiphany.
Gentle Marketing : Aligning With Core Values
That was three years ago and led to the rediscovery of her childhood and the gentler approach to life that was more natural to her. In our conversation we discuss how Sarah took her revelations and used them to develop her Gentle Marketing programme in 2019, and how 2020 (the year of COVID virus confinements) enabled her to writing her book “The Gentle Marketing Revolution”.
It is Sarah’s belief that the pandemic brought a new consciousness to how we live and that marketing needs to change. For her it was about going back and reevaluating her journey, learning to appreciate her roots and bring that discovery into her work.
Sarah and I are very much on the same page and much of what she is saying is why I moved away from my own marketing business. Our conversation is about not hiding behind masks and being authentic in our business approach. It is about learning to be who we are and living by our values in our work in the same way that we do in our personal lives.
I hope you enjoy this conversation and discovering more about the Gentle Marketing approach with Sarah Santacroce.
If you are interested in discovering how Sarah can help you, a good place to start is with her free download of “The One Page Marketing Plan”. Click on the mandala image above or follow the link listed with her other links and social media connections below.
You can also catch Sarah interviewing me on her podcast ‘The Gentle Business Revolution Show’ (link in the episode image).
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