How Business Ecosystems Kill Joy

When seeing the whole makes you lose the thread.

When thinking about marketing funnels, you might easily land in thinking you need to do something more. To set things up and to connect it better together.

You get an idea for how it could be, and you see how it is right now. There’s a gap, and that gap wants to be bridged. So the mind starts working.

With it, you might lose joy. Maybe you’re one of the exceptions who loves to pour attention into marketing. But if you’re like me, you could be in trouble now.

Things are not how they should be. Products need to be added, others changed. You only see work. It’s so easy to fall back into the identity. Into thinking you’re the marketer who has to do this.

The six forces I sometimes write about—direct dialogue, natural mention, easy discovery, fictive branding, facilitated finding, gentle collaboration—they’re moving underneath everything visible.

They’re present. Some forms might help them activate more. A book makes natural mention easier. A community space creates room for gentle collaboration. Your services open direct dialogue. But these forces exist before the forms do.

The gap between what is and what could be? It might be pulling things into place on its own. Creating tension that arranges what needs arranging.

The ecosystem wants to happen rather than managed. The work might be seeing what’s already moving and giving it a little more room.