Business and Career | Words For Hire

Little Lesons from a Big Speech

February 25, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

Last night I watched the President of the United States deliver his first address to the joint session of Congress. This President was applauded for his brilliant marketing tactics during the election so I am always eager to listen and pick up lessons that will help me engage my customers.

This post, however is not about politics, but rather the train of thought inspired by the words. Let me repeat this is not a political post.

I enjoy the artistry of speeches. It is a joy to listen to the structure and rhythm of the words and how they move the crowd. Like all speeches, last night a few of the passages really struck me. I read the words again as I considered their application to day to day business life and my own interactions with clients. Below I’ve listed a few that caught my attention along with my thoughts/questions for reflection.

“The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation.”

What a great line! Many marketers have spun messages around the recession but lines like this inspire us to nod to reality but not allow it to define us for the future.

“The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth.”

As entrepreneurs and marketers are we inclusive? Do we inspire everyone at our client and prospect companies that they are meaningful to the process? In our places of employment, does everyone feel connected to the vision and value of the company?

“In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. “

When presenting solutions to clients are we simply satisfying short term goals or are we aligning with long term positioning? Asking the tough questions in these economic times, will certainly stand out to clients who need more than a message of hope for today but a plan of action that will stabilize their future.

“And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.”

Okay, so we’ve made mistakes. There were things we should have done but it’s time to move past them and take charge of the future. How can we deliver that message to our clients and colleagues? What can we do to take charge now that the future is here?

Do you like speeches as much as I do? Are there any that are memorable for you?

For Love or Money?

February 24, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim
William “Paul” Young is a writer and now thanks to viral word of marketing, and a little help from a friend he is a published best selling author. Young’s story is told in the February edition of Writer’s Digest and is aptly titled Cinderella Story. How many aspiring artists dream of doing what they love and being wildly successful at it?

Young calls himself an “accidental writer.” He views writing as an expression and never pursued it as profession. He gave his work to friends and family as gits. One gift, The Shack, launched his accidental publishing career, selling 3.8 million copies. He did not toil for years, query publishers and agents, and suffer rejection. No, Young simply wrote because he loved it and one of his books just happened to take off.

The “accidental writer” may or may not pen another novel. He is not under contract and doesn’t feel the pressure to produce another blockbuster. He will always write because he loves it.

Young’s story reads like a dream come true, and on the surface seems to lend credence to the modern day mantra of pursuing passion as profession. Entire industries have sprung up teaching people how to pursue and profit from their passion. But is that always the best course?

For many, when passion becomes a job complete with deadlines, loss of creative control and administrative duties it quickly turns from dream to nightmare.

“I am so over puppies running through fields of daisies,” he proclaimed as his lip turned slightly upward. I examined his face closely unable to pinpoint his age. There was a hardened wisdom that seemed out of sync with his generational references. An accomplished photographer who was “living the dream” was long over the youthful love affair of “art as job.”
Mike the photographer has a new dream of creating a business that frees him from art as job. Young was blessed with the gift of money for art but not beholden to it as “job.”

Can we merge passion and profit and maintain the balance?

Resources:
The Shack

Caressing You Softly with My Song

February 20, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

All week we have been examining the topic of self-promotion. Why this topic and why now?

: Image by vividBreeze via Flickr

Why Self-Promotion?

We can hire people to sell for us or we can partner with others to cross promote products and services but none of this replaces the need for self promotion. Self promotion is sharing your capabilities with others. Whether you are a student, artist, CEO or employee, you must e able to tell others about your talents and abilities.

Our reluctance to self-promote is often rooted in false beliefs such as:

Self-promoting is rude and overbearing
Before we self-promote we have to know more or achieve more.
We’re not that special or we have nothing new to offer.
Self-promotion shows a lack of humility or modesty.
It is disrespectful. No one wants to hear us drone on about ourselves.
It is loud, obnoxious, and always unwelcomed.

Bragging versus Self-Promotion
Self-promotion is not shouting to the world, “Hey look at me, click my links and buy my junk.” Self-promotion is the ability to sell your ideas and your capabilities to those they can benefit.

Many of us have associated self-promotion with negative behavior due to deep-seated beliefs about what constitutes politeness. We have unfairly intertwined selling ourselves with bragging and they are quite different things.

Self-promotion need not be a hurricane. It can be a gentle breeze that softly lifts your hair as it whispers the notes of nature in your ear.

Why you should care?
Would you knowingly withhold information from someone who needed it? In addition to your unique gifts and talents, along your life journey you have collected a vast amount of knowledge and experience. No one has traveled the same exact path as you so it is unfair to assume that you have nothing special to share.

Our world has changed. It is bigger and noisier and wallflowers can get stampeded in the shuffle. In quieter times, the boss would notice your good work and promote you or the townsfolk all knew you and bought from you because of relationship. Today, we cannot keep track of who knows what as we struggle to categorize the daily onslaught of information. Learning to self-promote has become an essential skill set for our work and personal lives.

Self-promotion begins with a belief that we are capable. Your dreams will never come true if you don’t take the steps to make them happen. You may sing like an angel, but no one will know if you never open your mouth and let your voice be heard. So go ahead and sing just hold back on the bass.

How can self-promotion be of value in your own life? Is it a skill set that came naturally or did you have to work at it?

Sequins, Shimmies and Sasha

February 19, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

: Image via Wikipedia

Dr. Christiane Northrup has one and recommends it to other women. Beyonce has one who made her own album. David Bowie’s is famous. Miley Cyrus shares the spotlight with hers. Mine has been the cure for my fear of self-promotion.

Meet my alter ego, Sasha the sales champ. Not the multiple personality disorder, on the verge of a breakdown alter ego. A persona or role if you will that was the antidote to my fear of selling, boldly going where I could not.

My journey to finding Sasha forced me to take a hard look at my own fears. When I was an employee, my face brightened when asked about my job. I enjoyed what I did and was proud of my company. I never worried about being overbearing because sharing what you did was a normal part of getting to know others.

It was so easy when someone else’s name was on the shingle. What had changed? Me. I was emotionally attached to the product in a way I had not been in corporate. Selling had migrated from a routine business practice to a reflection of me as a person.

I needed distance and Sasha afforded me that space. An alter ego provided me the luxury of stepping into a selling role with nothing to fear. Sasha realizes that it’s her job to find other people to help. She believes in the company and knows that it is not overbearing or intrusive to talk about what “we” do. She is building two-way relationships and understands that part of her giving is letting others know what you have to offer.

When I tell Sasha my fears, she rolls her eyes and responds, “Duh, if you don’t tell people what you do, how will they know?”

We want to buy from people we know and trust. We also want to refer to people we know and trust. If we’re all too polite to let people know what we offer, how can we give and get support? My alter ego understands this principle. She has not allowed herself to be saddled with unessential emotional baggage.

My fear of selling was rooted in disordered thinking. Sasha allowed me to adjust my lens and change my perspective. Sometimes a little distance is precisely what the doctor ordered.

Have you ever created an alter ego? In what way did it help you? What did you learn about yourself?

Tomorrow we will examine specific changes that we can make to self-promote without triggering those internal alarm bells.

Crouching Lion, Hidden Fear

February 18, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

My own descent into full-blown fear of self-promotion began subtly. I was fine when presented with a sales situation, one in which there was a clearly defined prospect. Even cold calling did not bother me, as I somehow was able to effortlessly slide into sales mode. I had spent the better part of my career in sales and marketing or in roles that required the ability to sell.

Cowering Man

Yet, I was uncomfortable with proactive self-promotion that required me to raise awareness of my brand. A problem that may have been quietly tucked away as a quirk or minor weakness in the “good old days” came face to face with the reality of life lived aloud in living color and broadcast to millions of people. There is nothing like social media to slap you in the face with your weakness and magnify it like the trick mirrors in a fun house.

I watched in horror as peers blew past me on Twitter and created ravenous groups of fans on Facebook. I hobbled along like a one legged tortoise in a race against a herd of hares. Everyone else seemed capable of sharing their accomplishments, and telling the world what they did while I stood on the sideline waiting my turn.

I had good excuses. I did not want to bother people. People were being saturated with too much information. I did not want to come across as a know it all. I was going to be nice if it killed me. So, I didn’t invite people to friend me, I rarely promoted my blog, I never invited subscribers and heaven forbid that I should actually send a newsletter to the people who signed up for one. In other words, I did nothing.

As opportunities slipped through my hands my “politeness” started chipping away at my esteem. I believed that I wasn’t in the same league as those who self-promoted. I had a bad case of “not as-itis” – not as good, not as smart, not as credentialed. The questions came fast and furious: Was I too late to join the party? Was my market too crowded for what I had to offer? Oh gosh, why did X client hire me, this project is over my head!

Before I knew what hit me I was hiding under the table with a lion trying to avoid the stampede. Modesty had become a cancer that was affecting my job, and I had to find a cure.

I had scope creep and it wasn’t pretty. The scope of my fear had moved from self-promotion to my confidence in my ability to do my job. A job I had been doing on my own for nearly five years with 20 years of experience to back me. Shocked to my senses, I crawled from under the table and resolved to find the way – to the yellow brick road, Kansas, the Wizard (I already had the cowardly lion after all- I honestly did not care where I went as long as the Land of Scared was in my dust.

You may be tempted to dismiss your fear as a minor inconvenience but I learned the hard way that fear does not always stay in the box you have chosen. The fear of self-promotion in today’s world can cost you in opportunity, dollars and self-respect.

Stick around for the last two posts in this series and I will tell you how I drop kicked my fear like a kung-fu master.

Have you experienced scope creep in regards to fear? What did you do to overcome it?

How to Sing Like a Canary without Being a Blowhard

February 17, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

This post is the second in a week long series on Learning to Love Self Promotion. You can read the introductory post here.

Self-promotion is integrally entwined with negative emotions for many people. You may have been raised to cloak yourself in humility and view self-promotion as bragging. Or you may have seen the trait in others and found it distasteful or overbearing. To begin to overcome our discomfort and fears let us first define some terms.

Brag – 1 : a pompous or boastful statement 2 : arrogant talk or manner : cockiness (boldly or brashly self-confident)

Self – 1 a: oneself or itself <self-supporting> b: of oneself or itself <self-abasement> c: by oneself or itself <self-propelled> <self-acting>2 a: to, with, for, or toward oneself or itself <self-consistent> <self-addressed> <self-love> b: of or in oneself or itself inherently <self-evident> c: from or by means of oneself or itself <self-fertile

Promotion– : the act of furthering the growth or development of something ; especially : the furtherance of the acceptance and sale of merchandise through advertising, publicity, or discounting

We can therefore define self-promotion as selling yourself. You will note that by pure definition promotion is not inherently “arrogant” or “pompous.”

Self-promotion is necessary to make others aware of your capabilities, or offerings. You may be immensely talented or have a top-notch product or service. However, it is possible to get bypassed for opportunity simply because you did not speak up.

Have you ever watched an “expert” on television and realized that you could have provided the same information? Has someone else held a position that you were entirely capable of performing?

Imagine that someone you love has the voice of an angel. When they open their mouth to sing, the sound is so beautiful that it moves you to tears. Further they love to sing and dream of one day singing on a world stage. One day you and your loved one are at a coffee shop and a well-known music producer walks through the door. As you wait for your order, you overhear him telling the barista of his dilemna. He is putting on a local show and his lead singer has taken ill. Without a replacement, he will have to cancel the show. Do you tell your loved one to make his/her talent known or do you encourage them to keep quiet because self-promotion is an unattractive quality?

I’m going to take a wild guess and assume your answer was “Are you kidding me, I’d tell them to sing their hearts out right there in that coffee shop!”

So, why do you feel okay about self-promotion in this instance but not others? In our example, there was an expressed unmet need (opportunity) and your loved one had a solution. Not only was it okay but there was a benefit for the producer (prospect). It’s hard not to feel good about offering value to another person.

Not every sales situation is this transparent. If it were, self-promotion would be as easy as offering a band-aid to someone with a cut. We have to uncover opportunity and we do that by actively seeking people we can help. We share what we have to offer to others. They may not need what we’re selling today, but when they do, don’t you want to be the first person that comes to mind?

Were you associating self-promotion with a negative connotation? When you remove that emotion does it help remove some of the barrier for you?