Lesson One: Self-Promotion is a Virtue

One of the best things about being an amateur in a subject is you don't know enough about it to know how hard it might be or how few ways there are to do it right. You just throw yourself into it out of love for the work (the word "amateur", by the way, is French for "a lover or enthusiast of something") and see what happens. Nothing to lose, no wrong answers.

So when I decided it was time to learn how to promote myself and my one-person software studio more effectively, I reached for the tools that have served me well elsewhere in my professional life and set about crafting a six-week course for myself to do exactly that.

Why did I think I could do this? Because why not. Why six weeks? Because it sounded good. Why self-promotion? Because it's the one thing I'm weakest at. Why start a blog about it before I'm even five days into the process? Because I love to learn and believe that the best way to learn something is to do it... and to tell other people about it as you go.

This is the first of six weekly dispatches where I'll share the hard questions I'm asking myself and the often surprising answers I'm getting.

Lesson One: Self-Promotion is a Virtue

Let's say you feel that talking about yourself and your work in public is awkward or embarrassing. Maybe you believe promoting your business to friends and strangers feels off-putting to people or icky to you. Or perhaps you're struggling with imposter syndrome and it feels safer to stay in your shell and just hope you'll get noticed than to "put yourself out there" and maybe get called out by someone or, worse, ignored.

Well now imagine you've convinced yourself that all three are true. That's where I was last week. I wrote down that I think of promotion like some sort of "dark art" that felt weird to think about and that I was somehow better than that. I also wrote that I had, more often than not, relied on word-of-mouth promotion from other people in my personal and professional life to get where I've gotten.

Day one proved both of those beliefs to be wrong. The first one died by its own logic. If I believe myself to be an ethical person who gives without expectation and has valuable skills and abilities that others can benefit from, how could it be that sharing those things with other people, consensually and fairly, is anything but a virtue? The second one died by proof. While it is true that there have been pivotal moments where a friend or colleague has opened a door for me (thank you, by the way!), every case analysis I wrote from my past showed it was ultimately me who walked through that door, shook hands, made eye contact, showed the value I could produce and asked for the opportunity to make a meaningful exchange.

It turned out I've already been doing all the things I need to do, I just haven't been giving myself (or my work) the credit due for having done them. Once that illusion vanished, the resistance I felt about developing the skill vanished with it.

Nothing is different, I just have a new perspective... and a few books to read. Let me share my reading list with you and if you're interested in changing the way you think about showing yourself and your work to the world, maybe we can go on this journey together.

1) 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly - a brief essay that will help make the scale of the problem more manageable 2) Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon - the 10-step primer on how to be visible that inspired this post 3) This is Marketing by Seth Godin - a philosophy of marketing you can practice and not be ashamed of it

My one ask, if you're willing, is for you to share your experiences back with me as well. What are you struggling with when it comes to marketing and self-promotion? What have you found that's changed your perspective? I'd love to hear from you.