Marketing for Weirdos
Don’t wanna read a super-long sales page? Here’s the TLDR:
4 week online course about content marketing for people who don’t like marketing
90 minute Marketing Class every Monday (yes, class is recorded!)
90 minute Office Hours session every Thursday
$540 (financial options copiously available)
REGISTRATION IS CLOSED FOR THIS ROUND.
SIGN UP BELOW FOR THE WAITING LIST FOR NEXT TIME (SUMMER/FALL 2024)
“I LOVED Marketing for Weirdos. It helped remove the ickiness that I have always felt around marketing and broke down so much confusion that I had. The course was enlightening and easy to understand, and I feel much more confident.” -Karen Grant, Feminist Embodiment Coach
Fellow weirdos, we went into business to do our work, not to talk about it.
At this point, you’re damn good at the work itself. The clients you’ve got are delighted, but there just aren’t enough of them. You know marketing is probably the answer, yet you didn’t go into business because you want to spend your time marketing! It can be the least fun, most terrifying part of the job.
You might avoid marketing because:
There are so many tips and strategies out there on the wide wild interwebs. Who can figure out where to start?
You’ve tried a million different strategies and thrown pounds of metaphorical spaghetti at the wall and yet nothing’s worked.
It feels just plain vulnerable to shout with a bullhorn about how great you are. No thanks!
Even if you’ve found something that works, traditional sales and marketing tactics can be coercive, manipulative and extractive. Many of them are rooted in oppressive ideology, and you know you don’t want to replicate that.
It’s no wonder that we shy away from this aspect of being in business. You’re not alone in that and it’s not a personal failure. But it’s a fact of being in business that you have to talk about your work. This is why I created Marketing for Weirdos.
Marketing for Weirdos is an online course designed to help you get crystal clear on your marketing strategy and overcome the blocks that are keeping you from talking about your business. This course will help you to:
Craft a straightforward blueprint of exactly WHAT topics you should be posting about.
Learn WHY you need to post what you do, so every post feels intentional rather than arbitrary.
Build out a plan for marketing beyond social media, so you can diversify your marketing plan and minimize your reliance on the Zuckerverse.
Gain a deeper understanding of what’s broken about traditional marketing strategies and what to do instead.
There are no quick fixes or one-size-fits-all solutions, and that’s not what I’m selling, but if consistently, effectively marketing has evaded you, I truly believe this course will help. The marketing system I’ve created takes your whole self into account: your availability, your aversions, and your aptitudes. It eschews coercive marketing advice and offers alternatives that feel ethical, relational and generative. My hope is that you’ll leave this course with a plan to make social media and content creation systematized, easy and (dare I say) FUN!
“If you want to share your talents and skills with the wider world in an ethical and engaging way, Marketing for Weirdos can help you do exactly that. Bear models a way to do business that is consent- and justice-oriented while also sustainable and fun. I could not recommend this class more.” -Kate Paxton, Midwife
What it is and how it works
Each week there is one 90-minute class where we dive deep into the WHAT, WHY, and HOW of marketing so you can finally get clear and get moving on marketing your work.
Week 1: WHAT? Clarify the core topics and central messages for your marketing. Never again wonder “What should I post about today?”
Week 2: WHY? Understand the customer journey and how that relates to your core topics and central messages. This is the key to every post feeling purposeful. No more “posting just to post.”
Week 3: HOW? Determine your strongest marketing channels. Make a marketing plan for each season that is not about random content, but instead is hyper-focused on getting your right-fit people to buy what you’re selling, without pressure or persuasion.
Week 4: AND? Broaden your scope beyond social media. Diversify your strategies so you’re not reliant on any one platform. Make it interesting! Send potential clients your favorite book in the mail! Make posters with your face xeroxed onto them! Let’s get (strategically) weird! Avant-garde marketing!
OFFICE HOURS: The backbone of the course is, obviously, the content of the marketing classes. But we don’t stop with just learning. You can absorb all the theory in the world but if you don’t put it into practice, it’s not doing you any good. So in addition to class time, we do our best to support you in implementing what you’re learning through office hours.
Office Hours is an upbeat and engaging 90-minute call (optional but super valuable) where we get down to business for troubleshooting and Q+A. This is a space to get my brain on your marketing queries and specific business problems. Dancing will inevitably happen!
RECORDINGS: Yes! The Monday classes will be recorded and sent out the same day so you’ve got time to watch them before Office Hours on Thursdays if you can’t be there live. Thursday sessions are recorded and annotated so you can find the info you need again later.
“Bear has the incredible ability to take things that seem mysterious, complicated, or confusing, and break it down to feel simple and doable. They’re also a wiz at showing how it's possible to sell things without engaging in manipulative business tactics. They've forever changed the way I think about marketing!”
-Stephanie Boucher, Herbal Business Coach
Who it’s for
Small business owners, entrepreneurs, artists, and creatives trying to promote their work to the world so they can get paid
People who are over traditional marketing advice that insists you must coerce your customers in order to make a profit
Folks who want to move beyond social media as their only marketing channel
Anyone else interested in radical ways to do business
Who I am
My name is Bear Hebert (they/them) and I’ve been self-employed since 2010—full time since 2015. My teenage self would be so bewildered as to how an artistic weirdo like me ended up with a career teaching marketing (of all things!!), but here we are.
I never went into business to make a kerzillion dollars. Self-employment was my path out from under the thumb of capitalist wage labor. For me, it’s worked really well! And over the past six years as a business coach, I’ve seen how it can work for others too.
You should know: My work happens in an anti-oppressions framework. I’m always looking at the intersections of power and privilege in the world and in myself; this course will ask you to do the same (with so much love.) After more than a decade in business, I love helping my fellow weirdos figure out how to market their work so we can all get clients, get paid and get free. Read more about me here.
“Marketing for Weirdos really highlighted some of the ways I (as someone with racial and economic privilege) was unknowingly contributing to harmful business practices in my marketing. Not only is my marketing more ethical and inclusive now, but it is also more engaging and easier to write!” -Kay Oak, Guinea Pig Business-Owner (ko GuineaBox LLC)
When we meet
August 7-August 31, 2023
Mondays and Thursdays from 1:00pm-2:30pm Eastern time
Click here for a time zone converter
Monday August 7: Course Module 1
Thursday August 10: Office Hours
Thursday August 10: BONUS Office Hours (9 - 10:30pm ET); more suitable for Asia/Australia time zone
Monday August 14: Course Module 2
Thursday August 17: Office Hours
Monday August 21: Course Module 3
Thursday August 24: Office Hours
Monday August 28: Course Module 4
Wednesday August 30: BONUS Office Hours (9 - 10:30pm ET)
Thursday August 31: Office Hours plus closing celebration!
Accessibility: This course requires internet access. All classes are in English. Zoom captioning/transcription is automatically available for each class. Recordings are available to support asynchronous learning. If you have additional access needs, please be in touch: bear@bearcoaches.com
“I loved this course. I have taken many courses on marketing and social media, but Marketing for Weirdos gave me permission to sell in a non-manipulative way. It helped me finally find a groove in using Instagram for my business. And learning in community with people who also have shared politics was a huge relief!” -HanaKyle, Movement Maven
What it costs
$540 USD
Shame-free, no-interest payment plans are readily available for everyone! It’s great for my business to have some people pay for the course more slowly over time.
At check out, you can select a payment plan for 3-months ($180 x 3 months) or 6-months ($90 x 6 months). These will automatically charge your card each month.
Need a solidarity rate? Click here!
Fine print: No refunds, cancellations or exchanges for any reason. Payment plans are contractually binding for the full amount of the course.
“Marketing for Weirdos is the place to be! Bear is a skilled facilitator with a mind-expanding practice, shedding light on how to build your own wonderfully weird anti-capitalist business.” -Lara Buelow, Life Designer & Small Business Development Coach
What’s next
If you’re ready to:
Learn a robust yet easy to implement system for creating content for all your marketing platforms….
Unpack traditional marketing tropes and leave them behind….
Go beyond content marketing to create a diversified marketing strategy that leaves you less reliant on the constant churn of social media...
Build community with other radical business folks...
Feel crystal clear about how to talk about your work consistently and easily...
Join the Waiting list for Marketing for Weirdos 2024!
“This course was so helpful! Practical, soulful, with lots of space and permission to make my own sense from the materials and implement the practices into my business in the ways I need. Bear is a wonderful teacher with a much-needed perspective, and I loved every aspect of this experience. I've been in business for 8 years and have worked with Bear one-on-one, and I still got so much out of this class. I definitely recommend it!”
-Megan Leatherman, Vocational Coach
“Bear has a way of making the complicated really simple and straightforward. I highly recommend this course!!”
-Jen Ata, psychic liberation healer
“Marketing For Weirdos far exceeded my expectations. I still can't say that I'm excited about social media but I came away with a clear plan for what my marketing will look like, and I do feel much more confident about bringing my full self to marketing. Bear teaches with such confidence and dignity in their knowledge and anti-capitalist beliefs.”
-Ada Johnson, birth, trauma and transition worker