This Issue: Tell People About Your Success

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

-- Mark Twain

I have a friend who is extremely accomplished and also very wealthy. Uber-wealthy as they say. But just a few weeks ago he called me up to see if I could get him reservations at Jean Georges Restaurant and I had to ask myself, "What’s the point of his success if he can’t even get a reservation in New York?” The only reason he can’t is because no one has ever heard of him. He’s shy about using his name to the extent that it does him no good. He has to call other people like me to help him out.

That got me to thinking about the “toot your own horn” theory, which is something I believe in. Here’s a perfect example of why I believe in it. This rich guy might as well be just a poor guy when trying to get in the right places. The power of a name can be incredible. It can open doors like nothing else. A lot of people might have been richer than Aristotle Onassis, but when people heard the name Onassis, they knew who he was. I’ve mentioned before that one of the perks of being famous is being able to get restaurant reservations without any problem. My rich friend has not allowed himself many perks.

Ever notice if you introduce someone and then later add on something like “as you know, he won the Pulitzer Prize” that the reaction to the person becomes entirely different? It goes from polite to excited in no time flat. Suddenly the “nobody” is a somebody. Suddenly the person's PR power, or buzz effect, has escalated. But unless you have someone around to toot your horn for you, you’ll have to get accustomed to doing it for yourself.

What’s in a name? A lot. The well-established brand name literally speaks for itself. Some people may not even like the designs Karl Lagerfeld comes up with for Chanel, but because it says Chanel, they’ll buy them, wear them, and love them.

A name can speak volumes, but until you have a household name, you might do well to tell people who you are and what you’ve done. It’s a start. It’s also a way of networking to find out if you might have common interests. Can you imagine what we would have missed if Luciano Pavarotti had been singing contentedly in some obscure place his whole life? Or if Elton John was happy to just sing for himself in a garage somewhere? There’s nothing wrong with bringing your talents to the surface.

Having an ego and acknowledging it is a healthy choice. Our ego is the center of our consciousness and gives us a sense of purpose. People with no ego will have very little life force, and people with too much will tend towards dictatorial personalities. As with everything, keeping a good balance is important. Your ego can serve to keep your momentum strong. It can keep you vibrant and productive. It can help you keep your focus where it should be: on your work. After awhile, you won’t have to tell people about your success because they’ll already know about it. Do not ignore your ego.

It’s very important to be your own best friend. As Mark Twain said, be comfortable with your own approval. Sometimes, people will belittle your accomplishments and your ambitions. But if you’re steadfast in your self-respect that won’t bother you because you’ll be able to see those people as the small fries that they are. Critics serve their own purpose, which is fine, because you’ll be smart enough to serve your own purpose, too. Think about it: if you can’t say great things about yourself, who do you think will? So don’t be afraid to toot your own horn when you’ve done something worth tooting about.

I’d like to end with another insightful statement from Mark Twain: "I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position." So see you in the billionaires’ circle, where we can discuss our adventures at length.

Successful professionals, business owners, and entrepreneurs have a lot in common. One of those commonalities is an artful approach to letting others know about what they do, how they do it, and why customers, clients, and prospects will find value in doing business with them.

It's not about boastful, chest-thumping self-promotion. It's about crafting a thoughtful and effective way to share information or create awareness about your business, profession, or organization. It also is an essential part of your overarching marketing and communications strategy.

One of the most effective and credible ways to tell people about your success is to let other people do the talking. Basic human nature and cultural sensitivities make us skeptical about over-the-top self promotion, so it's advisable to seek other ways to "tell your story." One effective method is the use of testimonials by satisfied customers or clients.

In our hype-filled world, the use of testimonials is a great way to be heard through the "noise" and to build credibility. It’s like having loyal customers serve as your unpaid sales force. To make this work, go to satisfied customers and ask them to include their thoughts in your communications strategy. You will be pleasantly surprised at how interested your customers will be in letting others know about the value they find in doing business with you. Once you have captured customers’ testimonials, use the testimonials to support your marketing and communications messages in your company brochure, website, and formal proposals or sales presentations.

You can also tell people about your success by supplementing your marketing and communication strategy through the use of newsletters, blogs, and e-mail contact lists.

Because of the huge amount of information most of us receive every day, it’s easy for messages to customers to get quickly overrun by the next message, and soon the customer has relegated your inquiry to the bottom of the pile of messages that are vying for attention.

Our Internet-wired world makes it easy to stay in touch with our customers via an electronic newsletter. That provides an excellent way to keep our success in front of our current and prospective customers.

The best way we keep our message at the “top of mind” is to communicate consistently and often, not to the point of annoyance, but to keep a steady “drip” of information about ourselves, our company, and importantly, our value proposition.

The thoughtful use of a regularly-produced newsletter or an up-to-date and well-maintained blog will serve you well as a way to tell others about your success and, importantly, keep your message in the minds of your current, and prospective, customers and clients.

Don’t be afraid to "toot your own horn"--carefully and professionally--and let others know about your success and how they will benefit from doing business with you!

If a tree falls in the forest and no one writes a press release about it, does it make a sound? By the same token, if an artist creates a work and no one else experiences it, does it have any artistic impact? Is it a viable creation?

Many fine artists regard self-promotion as a base activity that is at odds with the creative process. In the extreme, they see it as dubious and sleazy, a mercenary endeavor that can only corrupt the purity of their vision. At best, it is a necessary evil that is totally divorced from the real business of making art.

This attitude is increasingly unrealistic and burdened with the quaint notion of the artist as a gifted exile in a pristine realm, completely insulated from the world at large. More importantly, this attitude can be fatal to artists’ careers and may preclude them from realizing even the most basic level of success.

Young artists especially are often reluctant to thrust themselves and their work into the arena of self-promotion. If they don’t harbor the prejudice that self-promotion is tainted, then they may simply dread the whole process because it is so unnatural for them and doesn’t mesh with their sensibilities. Their focus and training is on creating art, so promoting it seems like an intrusion and an endeavor for which they are wholly unprepared.

This attitude assumes that art and promotion are totally distinct activities, functioning practically independent of one another. Inherent in this view is the idea that specialists are best suited for the respective roles of artist and promoter. Yet artists who are not established rarely have the luxury of being able to completely entrust all of their promotional needs to a specialist. So, if an artist does not promote him/herself then this necessary task will go undone, in which case it is likely that the work, no matter how

good it is, will not find an audience. Artists must get their hands dirty and lay some of the groundwork to launch their own careers.

Basic tactics of self-promotion can be learned, but artists need to be motivated to learn them. A preliminary step toward motivation is to abandon anti-promotion attitudes and realize that art promotion, if done correctly, is hardly the same as peddling consumer goods. It can be an enriching experience, the means or process of which is just as valuable as its end (success); it doesn’t have to be painful or artless.

Another factor that might move artists to embrace self-promotion is the realization that it is essentially a means of shaping their destiny; everything creative people do with regard to their work reflects upon their future. Promotion means interacting with the public, producing a friction between the interior world that initiates a creative work and the exterior world. Self-promotion is taking your fate in your own hands; it is an active, deliberate effort to make a mark and impose your creative vision on the world.

Self-promotion is not just about selling your work, it’s also about selling yourself. This requires an artist to ask him/herself: Who am I? Where am I from? What image of myself do I want to project? The answers to these questions will have deep relevance to the work itself. Persona, promotion, and aesthetic are inextricably intertwined.

Being compelled to promote one’s art requires an artist to communicate to others what the work means. It takes discipline and clarity to provide a context for one’s art that will stimulate other people’s interest in it. Such an exercise may provide an artist with a golden opportunity for finding out firsthand what the art means. Self-promotion may thus be a route to further artistic discovery.

Promotion is more necessary than ever in a crowded, competitive marketplace. It’s no longer possible for artists to maintain the illusion that creating the best work will automatically gain them an audience and ensure that their careers move forward. No one can doubt that bad work driven by good promotion often thrives; good work driven by good promotion will most likely find itself at the head of the pack.