I’m working my way through Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

It’s 50% western, 50% fantasy… and 100% weird.

Highly recommended.

Anyways, one of the main characters in the series got me thinking about split personalities.

She’s one person with two completely different women trapped inside her…

“Odetta Holmes” is a highly educated, refined woman concerned with civil rights activism in the 1960s.

“Detta Walker,” on the other hand, is a shoplifter and scammer. She’s a racist and a complete sociopath.

We never know which woman we’re going to get. The schizophrenic personalities fight for dominance in her mind, nearly pulling her apart.

I won’t give away any more details because I don’t want to spoil the books.

But Odetta/Detta reminds me a lot of the way people are running their businesses online.

Way too many people are classifying different parts of their business into silos. Cordoning them off with imaginary ropes in their minds.

“Marketing” is something entirely different than “product development” or “customer service.”

And so on.

Despite how people are interacting online is bringing all of those things closer together.

That confuses some business owners who are comfortable separating their activities into separate boxes… but only because they’re unwilling to question their assumptions.

Now, these activities are “flavoring” each other in how people perceive your brand. It’s more obvious than ever before.

And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

My philosophy: everything you do is marketing. Whether it’s good marketing or bad marketing is up to you.

There’s no reason to separate these things mentally. There’s no need to wear different hats in product development, marketing, and customer service.

It’s all about building and strengthening relationships.

Studying copywriting can help you write more compelling blog posts.

Writing compelling blog posts can generate the feedback you need to create new products.

Etc.

So get quality content out there, and do it consistently.

Stop worrying about “marketing,” “customer service,” and other meaningless distinctions.

Focus on what you can do today to build the best relationships you can with your customers.

The rest will fall into place.