HOW I overcame my hangups

Last week, when Ilise wrote the post soliciting entries for HOW magazine's self promo issue this October, I pointedly looked the other way.

I write for two blogs! I have business cards! I hand them out at all the networking events I've started going to in the last year!

And then I thought about what Ilise and HOW were really asking for: people who overcame their hangups with self promotion. And I realized that, in fact, this is precisely what I've done.

Because a year ago, I wasn't writing for two blogs, didn't have business cards, and wasn't going to networking events. I had just signed on with Ilise as a mentee, whom I'd discovered from taking Peleg's Pricing & Marketing Workshop here in L.A., which I'd found out about through Spencer Cross and the designer's group kernspiracy—all of which were completely new territory to me. Prior to that, I'd gotten all my clients through word of mouth and—well, we all know how that goes.

Maybe you've all quietly submitted your names and self promotion hangups to Ilise via email, instead of leaving them in the comments. But if you didn't, either because you were, um, embarrassed about it (they are hangups, after all) or, like me, didn't realize you'd overcome anything, why not shout it out to the rooftops?

Or just leave it in the comments of this post, or Ilise's previous post. We all get ideas and inspiration from each other's forays into unknown territory. And you might get your story in print—what better way to celebrate a little shameless self promotion?

Comments

[Dani Nordin]

I've just had so many hangups - I overcome them beautifully, but it's mostly because I'm dead stubborn and I have the world's most insane survival instinct - I'm incredibly good at doing what needs to be done for me to survive. Right now the challenge I'm trying to overcome is to do MORE than survive - to actually grow my business and shape it into something that can support more than just me.

It's still a daily challenge, but I'm starting to get there...

[Andrea Robinson]

Amen!

I just found Ilise's post about HOW self-promotion and responded to it. I wanted to chime in an say that I agree with Dani's comment that some of us do have that survivial instinct but it's NOT ENOUGH to survive. I call this reactive mode and getting out of this mode is one reason why I am working with Ilise as well.

Learning the art of being proactive in business planning our self-promotion and marketing... I think that we get in that "needed it yesterday" mentality because clients come to us that way. This wears on us and more often we get stuck in a constant reactive state...

Peleg was responsible for pointing me to Ilise a few years ago at the Chicago, HOW Conference. I am thankful he did!