Are You Brave Enough to Do What’s Marketing-Right?

Standing at the edge of change and deciding to...

There’s a moment in every marketer’s journey where the familiar stops feeling safe and starts feeling small. You sense it before you name it. The quiet pull toward a different way of working. A sharper truth. A creative choice that feels absolutely right for the customer, but risky for the culture you sit inside.

That moment is where bravery begins.

Over the past year, I’ve been standing inside that tension myself. I’m on the verge of something new, something that challenges the gravitational pull of “what we’ve always done.” It’s big, it’s different, and if I’m honest, it scares me in all the right ways. Because disruption always surfaces its critics long before it earns its believers.

But here’s the real question: What does it actually take to do what’s right in marketing when you know you’ll face internal resistance? When you know certain people will push back, question your choices, or point to the past as justification for the future?

If you’re here, reading this, you already know the truth: your best work will never come from the safe path.

Bravery Isn’t Loud. It’s Consistent.

I’ve spent decades inside industries the outside world calls boring. Trash cans, industrial testing equipment, office furniture, thermoplastic compounds. And yet as I wrote in the early chapters of Disruptive Awe, boredom is never about the product. It’s a branding problem, a perception problem, a courage problem. The unsexy becomes unforgettable when you tell the story differently. When you’re willing to look at what “is” and imagine what “could be.”

But courage comes with consequence. Internal politics. Territorial habits. Legacy logic. The belief that predictability is safety. Anyone who has ever tried to push an organization toward more emotionally resonant, curiosity-driven, tension-filled work knows the friction well.

So, what does bravery look like in practice?

Bravery is choosing meaning over maintenance.

In the Disruptive Awe book draft, I call it The Stakes for a reason. Staying the same is its own form of decay. When you’re surrounded by sameness, you aren’t just dulling your brand. You’re dulling your own creative spirit. And that disconnection is costly. It shows up in your team’s energy, your campaigns, your pipeline, your reputation.

Bravery is what interrupts that cycle.

Bravery is the willingness to be misunderstood—for a while.

Every disruptive marketer you admire has a chapter they don’t talk about often: the months or years when their ideas were questioned because they didn’t fit the norm. Disruption doesn’t feel innovative from the inside. It feels lonely. It feels like swimming upstream while everyone else drifts with the current.

As I wrote in the foundational sections of the book, creativity without courage is decoration. You’re not challenging anything. You’re just changing the packaging.

You’re here to build something truer than that.

Bravery is listening deeply—and acting anyway.

The Bear-Proof Trash Can story in my manuscript is fun to tell, but the lesson behind it is serious. When assumptions aren’t tested, they become blind spots. When you don’t listen to the customer, the product fails. And when you don’t listen to yourself, your marketing fails.

Part of bravery is tuning into the creative instinct that quietly says, “There’s a better way,” even when no one else sees it yet.

Bravery is choosing Disruptive Awe over noise.

Disruptive Awe isn’t volume. It’s emotional intelligence wrapped in strategic clarity. It’s the moment someone stops, looks twice, and feels something. That shift doesn’t happen when you follow the pattern. It happens when you break it.

And that requires courage.

So, here’s what I want you to sit with today:

Are you brave enough to do what’s right for your audience, your team, and your future, even if your organization isn’t ready for it yet?

Are you willing to create the work that feels bold, meaningful, and alive—knowing it will invite friction before it earns momentum?

Are you prepared to lead with a clear heart and a steady hand, even when the room tilts toward comfort over progress?

Because that’s the crossroads where everything changes.

Not through a new tool, or trend, or algorithm.

Through the willingness to choose meaning over maintenance.

Through the courage to tell the deeper truth.

Through the kind of creative audacity that turns “unsexy” industries into unforgettable brands.

Bravery is the quiet engine behind every industry-shifting idea.

And right now, you’re standing at the edge of yours.

I know, because I’m standing at mine.

Something new is coming. Something transformative. And I’m committed to walking through the internal resistance, the backlash, the discomfort—because the work deserves that kind of courage.

You’ll see the first signals of this shift in the months ahead. And I hope, when the moment comes for you, you choose the brave path too.

Your next chapter won’t be defined by what your organization expects of you.

It will be defined by what you dare to create.

— John Kowalski
B2B Marketing Veteran | Disruptive Awe Architect