Confident Self-Promotion

“Those Turkeys Didn’t Do What They Were Supposed to Do!”

2008-01-28T21:41:00.000-08:00

O what a mess we can create when we simply expect things ... .

Expectations are anticipations of some probable occurrence or appearance to which you look forward. In other words, when you expect something, you are making a mental wager with yourself about the outcome of some future event.

This event can be any thing, however, it is frequently your own behavior or that of someone else. How you bet on this event often reflects your beliefs, attitudes, standards, and goals.

As a confident self-promoter, you need to know that your expectations, as well as those of your prospects and clients, can result in self-fulfilling prophecies. Specifically, when you believe something very strongly and have high expectations that it will happen, you will tend to make it happen. That is, you will act, consciously or unconsciously, in accordance with that expectation.

This can be positive for you when your expectations are high and realistic. They can propel you to overcome obstacles in order to accomplish your goals. For example, you have surveyed your target audience to determine what their burning issues are in selling real estate and are sure you can provide an appropriate set of solution tips to their problem.

But it also can be negative for you when your expectations are high and unrealistic. They can put insurmountable obstacles in your path. For example, you have surveyed keyword searches in real estate and assume your target audience will be interested in refinancing their homes, when they really want to know how to negotiate the best deal in a slow market.

How can you tell the difference between “high realistic” and “high unrealistic” expectations?

High unrealistic expectations have that chiseled-in-granite quality to them. That is, if it’s a “probable” occurrence, it “should” happen. “Clients should know that I value them as individuals” or “I shouldn’t have to keep reminding prospects of the benefits I provide; they should just remember them.”

When these anticipations don’t pan out, you tend to feel a sense of deep-seated anger. You will tend to see others as disappointing you ‑ that they aren’t doing what you want. You may also rage against yourself for not perfectly matching your expectations for yourself … and, perhaps, for being a failure as a result.

As a confident, effective, and professional self-promoter, you have to

*Determine how realistic any expectation is. Ask yourself how likely it is the event will happen as you want. Use your past experiences as your database for comparing and assessing the validity of your expectations.

*Ask others what they think. Being honest with yourself is not always easy, especially if you’re invested in the idea. Share your expectations with others to get feedback on whether you’re in the right ballpark, out in left field, or need more data.

*Assign a percentage to the expected outcome. How truly likely is it that things will turn out as you expect? Quantifying it helps move you from wishful thinking to probabilities. Keep re-assessing this percentage as things move along in the process. This will make your expectations more elastic and situation-specific. Static, carved-in-stone expectations tend to be doomed to not being met.

*Let people (colleagues, subordinates, prospects, and clients) know what you expect of them. If you want them to act in a particular way, you have to clearly communicate what you want them to do, why they should do it (what’s in it for them), lead them to act, then show them how.

Expectations can make all the difference between your successes and failures. Make them work for you, not against you!

Why You Have to Fight the Zeigarnik Effect

2008-01-24T13:10:00.000-08:00

Ever notice how easy it is to remember the negative? I don’t mean only disaster-in-the-making negative events, but also the everyday I-can’t-find-any-stamps-with-flags negative events.

At the same time, positive events of the day tend to float by, somewhere below your level of recognition unless they are momentous, such as surviving a serious illness, getting a new project or promotion, or seeing your child’s first steps.

This is because your mind drives your memory toward the negative. The result of this action is the Zeigarnik Effect.

In 1927 Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik discovered that our minds are constructed in such as way that we tend to remember uncompleted, rather than completed, tasks. As you have no doubt experienced, uncompleted tasks create a tension which is unpleasant. We expect to complete tasks and experience the satisfaction of doing so. Consequently, when you don’t, the negativity associated with incompletion sticks in your memory.

Similarly, in general you expect that what you do as a normal part of your everyday behavior routine will go smoothly – from getting up to going to bed. As a result, you will tend to take each step of that positive expectation situation for granted and focus on other, unexpected, situations.

Think of it like walking along a path and suddenly you get a pebble in your shoe. Until the stone created unpleasantness for you, you were not particularly focused on your feet as part of your walking experience.

Think of it as doing various marketing tasks to promote yourself. When things go along as you expect, you tend not to be specifically aware of them. But let there be a minor e-mail glitch when you’re about to launch a product or service then you’re lasering in on the negative situation.

It has been hypothesized that your specific attention to the negative is evolutionary – that it helped people respond immediately to fear and pain in order to survive. However, today the tendency to attend to negative events is creating problems.

In studies on Positive Psychology in organizations Dr. Barbara Fredrickson has found that negative thoughts and expressions tend to minimize satisfaction and maximize anxiety and depression. This has a negative effect on attitude, expectation, productivity, and whether an organization flourishes or fails. Thus, this tendency toward the negative can significantly interfere with your successfully promoting yourself.

The Good News is that you can consciously counter this drive toward negative memory by getting in touch with positive memories and the positive thoughts and feelings they represent.

You can do this by noticing and analyzing what went well today in your self-promotion efforts and then expressing gratitude for those positive events and how you contributed to them.

For example, you had a press release to send out and you did it on schedule. You wrote and submitted a useful blog entry. You reached the person who will interview you for a teleseminar and confirmed the date and time. You signed a contract for a speaking engagement.

As you review in detail what went well, you need to tell yourself (1) why it went well, (2) how you feel about it, and (3) why specifically you feel good.

For example, you sent out the press release on schedule: (1) It went well because you tend to procrastinate and then have to rush to get information out. (2) You feel good personally and from a business stand point about it. (3) You feel good because procrastination has been interfering with your doing things in a timely manner and this is your first step toward alleviating that problem.

Doing this every night before going to sleep can help you focus on and magnify what you’re doing right, celebrate the good events each day, and acknowledge their positive, necessary baby-step contributions to your acceptance that you can do it (and do it right) and your achieving your self-promotion goals.

Are the Difficulties You Encounter a Closed Door or an Open Door?

2008-01-21T16:20:00.000-08:00

As hard as it may be to believe, every difficulty presents you with an opportunity. I grant you that they’re not always easy to spot and it takes practice to learn how to spot them.

But when you do spot them, what do you notice first? Do you see a door closing and what you can’t do in these situations? Or do you see a door opening and what you can do in these situations?

If all you can see is what is wrong in a situation, you’re a pessimist. You are more likely to fall into a depression, think that things like that always happen to you, and it will never change for the better.

If you can rise above what is wrong to see what positive possibilities exist in a situation, you’re an optimist. You are more likely to look at what went wrong and see what you can learn from it. You will tend to gather up the pieces, decide what else you can do with them, and go on.

While you will tend toward one mind-set and approach, you are likely to be a little of both. Being a little of both is advantageous. It means you are likely to be situationally flexible. This is very important in all areas of your life but particularly important in your self-promotion.

Your pessimistic inclination helps you be analytical and realistic. You can see what factors need to be considered and addressed. You can see where the boundaries are. Pessimism is grounded in the present which helps with objective assessment. But it also tends to dampen creativity.

Optimism, on the other hand, helps you consider all the factors in a more positive way. This means you are more likely to see what opportunities may lurk as well as temper pessimistic negativity that may interfere. Optimism is grounded in the future and tends to heighten creativity and forward thinking. But it also tends not to give full weight to all the possible implications of each option.

To be a confident and effective self-promoter, you need to act analytically AND in a forward-thinking manner. So the next time you meet a situation, you don’t want to negatively discard it out of hand or jump on it positively without assessing it.

For example, the “Bridging Heart and Marketing Conference” February 22-24. A pessimist might say, “I don’t want to spend money on a conference, hotel, and flight.” An optimist might say, “I’ll learn so much and meet important people.” But a more balanced approach would be, “This info is on the cutting edge being given by savvy people. I don’t want to miss it or the networking. Becoming an affiliate and taking off-hour flights could significantly reduce my costs.”

Consequently, being both pessimistic and optimistic – present-oriented and future-oriented ‑ enhances your finding the best, most opportunity-filled solutions to achieve your marketing and life goals.

How To Handle Those #%$! Putdowns

2008-01-18T21:29:00.000-08:00

Red-faced and still fuming, Louise returned from her business lead exchange luncheon ready to blast anyone who crossed her path. It had been a good meeting, wherein the ten members exchanged referrals, leads, and tips, until Louise had misunderstood something another member had said. It was twenty-something Tony, who had the unfortunate habit of directing his comments to males only who were seated at the other end of the table.

Louise had asked him politely to repeat his information. Grinning as if about to reveal a truth no one else would dare utter, Tony responded with a chuckle, “Sure, Louise. I know it can be really tough to follow business when a woman gets to be your age.” He hunkered over to make the point.

His comment hung in the air like a grease-soaked chicken dumpling. No one laughed. Most buried their heads in their notes in front of them – even his male cohorts at the end of the table looked for holes to crawl into. Louise flushed a deep scarlet.

She wanted to come back with something so snappy he’d be blown out of his argyle socks and tasseled loafers. But her mind was blank. The anger and embarrassment had severed the connection between her brain and her tongue. As a result, she felt stupid and impotent as well.

Louise’s experience isn’t unusual. At one time or another you’ve probably experienced being put down. Perhaps the person presented it with humor, and perhaps not. But, irrespective of how a putdown is presented, putdowns hurt … and sometimes, depending upon where and in front of whom they happen, they can hurt a lot ... and have devastating implications.

Consequently, it’s essential that you learn how to (1) manage putdowns so that your self-confidence can remain unscathed and (2) discourage the attacker from doing it again (that is, something short of having connected types give your attacker a swimming lesson in cement booties).

When you encounter a putdown, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself if there is any truth in what has been said. In Louise’s case, was it really harder for someone over thirty, but not yet a member of the Gray Panthers, to understand business? No, no truth at all to it.

When you encounter a putdown, how do you feel? You tend to be flooded with feelings of shame, hurt, anger, and rejection. Since putdowns are like arrows piercing your protective armor, making you feel vulnerable, you need to find ways to make yourself more immune to them.

Imagery is useful in this regard. You can imagine yourself surrounded by a plastic shield or electromagnetic field that repels anything hurtful, keeping you safe and secure. You can imagine the putdown as a pile of dog excrement on the sidewalk that you step over or walk around without a second thought.

You can step back to objectively analyze the offender and why they would say such a thing. Perhaps his comment was the result of youthful misperception of her age. Perhaps it was buying into some stereotype. Perhaps Tony doesn’t feel very good about himself and, consequently, projects his anger about it onto others.

Perhaps he’s trying to impress the other, older males there. Perhaps he resents women in business. Perhaps he’s seeking attention and thinks he’s being humorous. Whatever you determine here will help you decide how you may wish to respond to the putdown

You can also tell yourself that irrespective of Tony’s motives or intentions, “I’m not going to be bothered by this because I have the confidence, power, self-control, and good sense my attacker so obviously and sadly lacks.”

Then you need to decide what you’re going to do to discourage the attacker from making further attacks. Sometimes simply ignoring the person and their comment, acting as if nothing happened, will stop those seeking attention or trying to manipulate you to get a response. But, if you choose to make a reply, make it quick and neutral.

For example, “Is that a fact.” “No kidding.” “Big deal.” “So?” “I don’t agree.” Then lyou should let the subject drop as if it never happened. This leaves the attacker with no place to go because you haven’t done anything to reinforce the putdown behavior or the motivation behind it. Whatever you do don’t respond in kind because nastiness can rapidly escalate the situation out of control.

If, however, there is even a small kernel of truth to which you could agree, you could say, “”You may be right about my not understanding everything about business” or “Really, I wasn’t aware that I was missing anything other than what you said.” You define to what you’re agreeing.

Agreeing shows that you’re listening to the person, analyzing what the attacker is saying, and considering its merits. This takes the wind out of the attacker’s sails because they have no place else to go. You’ve heard them and thought about it. Period.

You can always make a small, non-aggressive joke out of it, such as, “Don’t let my clients know” or I’d like that in writing” or, doing your best Robert De Niro “Taxi Driver” impersonation, say, “You talkin’ to me?!” Make sure you do it with a smile so others present can get in on the relief-giving humor.

While you should not have to bear the brunt of putdowns, sometimes you will have to. But knowing you can handle them and preparing to do so will allow you to deal with them more effectively the next time they occur. Furthermore, dealing successfully with them will make you feel better about yourself and your control over your environment.

Bridging Heart and Marketing

2008-01-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

If you're selling soft products (and not how-to-make-money hard products), there is an upcoming conference you really need to know about.

Drs. Judith Sherven and Jim Sniechowski have developed an innovative marketing program designed for soft product/service providers, like me. It's aptly called "Bridging Heart and Marketing."

It's gathering acclaim from all over. Even premier Internet Marketing Guru Alex Mandossian has praised it as being "what has been missing from Internet marketing."

I decided to attend because I had taken Judith and Jim’s "Soft Topic Copywriting Course" which opened my eyes to why trying to sell self-presentation/self-promotion coaching, training, ebooks, CDs, etc., with a hard sell approach simply doesn’t work well.

The February 22-24 “Bridging Heart and Mind Conference,” which will be in L.A., is designed for those of who market "life enhancement" - such as coaches, therapists, MDs, personal growth advisors and healers, interior designers, trainers, lawyers, artists, home schooling experts, financial planners, etc.

They have deliberately recruited the top 11 Internet gurus who are savvy in the Soft Sell approach as their conference speakers (these include Stephen Pierce and Mike Filsaime). Of the 11 total, 5 are women.

This conference will be a dedicated networking and training ground for soft sell Internet marketers who need soft sell marketing tools and to feel more comfortable “selling.”

This is truly the first of its kind - a history-making marketing event - that I feel is on the cutting edge of helping soft sell marketers really begin to enjoy the large financial and soul-satisfying gains of Internet marketing.

If you’re a soft sell Internet marketer, I strongly I urge you to do yourself a big favor and check out Judith and Jim's “Bridging Heart and Marketing” event:
http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com/invitation
(Disclaimer: I get nothing for telling you about this, except knowing that you are now aware of this great opportunity.)

I look forward to seeing you there, where we can network together and have a fun and enlightening time.

Turn Networking into Dollars in 30 Seconds or Less

2008-01-14T12:43:00.000-08:00

In George Bernard Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, there is a line that reads: “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”

This is what successful people do. In fact, one of the most important characteristics in self-made millionaires and other successful people is that they create opportunities for themselves by networking everywhere, all the time. They do not wait around in hope that opportunity will knock on their door … because they know it won’t.

As Harvey Mackay, New York Times best-selling author of Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty, repeatedly demonstrates, networking is the primary and best way to gain access to friends, jobs, health, legal, and financial information, hobbies, and services. Whatever circumstances you seek, whatever opportunities you desire, you can achieve them through networking.

“Great!” you say. “I’ve been the networking route and I think it’s been a huge waste of my time.”

It can be ... IF you don’t follow the three essential networking criteria:

(1) Choose networking sites for who is there, what they do, what they know, and whom they know.

(2) Be prepared to create relationships first before trying to get what you want. And

(3) Express what you provide "emotionally" in 30 seconds of less.

It’s number three with which the majority of people have the most difficulty. When you introduce yourself, what do you tend to say? If you’re like most people, you say, “I’m a _____” (coach, lawyer, doctor, manager, etc.)” Blaggh! How boring! You can just watch their eyes glaze over.

Why? The moment you say you’re a label, they make their own emotional associations with that label, conjure up old expectations, and shut out what you have to say about it. After all, they already know.

For this reason, you don’t give them your label; you give them your action – what you DO. But you make it intriguing, like the title of this post, “I turn networking into dollars in 30 seconds or less.” You leave them wanting more.

Your first sentence is short, pithy, and suggests action. It zeroes in on tapping into your listener’s desires: making money and doing it quickly.

Then you elaborate, further emphasizing the benefits you have provided others: “One small business consultant using my ‘30 Seconds to Gold’ method increased his income 50 percent from only one chamber of commerce meeting. As a result, the Albuquerque Business Magazine did a feature on him and my method, and Acme Insurance retained me to train their agents to be even more successful.”

You’ve heard of an “elevator speech.” That’s where you tell someone about yourself in the time it takes to go from one floor to another. Well, this approach is an elevator speech on steroids.

Before you attend your next networking meeting, create, refine, and practice your own “networking to dollars in 30 seconds” speech … then see the difference it makes in how others respond to your introduction.

Me Remember Their Names? Get Real!

2008-01-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

Doesn’t it drive you crazy when someone smiles at you or says “hello” and you recognize them but you can’t remember their name? Or you see someone you know you’ve met and everything is a blank? Or you have been conversing with them for a few minutes and you suddenly realize you don’t recall their name? Or you have to introduce them to someone and – oops ‑ you scour your memory for their name but the vault is empty?

You don’t want to have to ask them for their name again and risk looking stupid and embarrassing yourself. So you don’t … and merely “feel” stupid… and miss out on a great self-promotion opportunity.

Remembering names is important in social situations but particularly important in your self-promotion situations. This is because a person’s name identifies and represents them as a specific individual. It differentiates them (and you) from all the rest. Think about it. When you hear your name, you feel distinguished from the faceless crowd. You feel valued, sort of warm and fuzzy, ... and important.

So what’s the problem? If you can’t seem to remember names, are you suffering from a developmental disability or early senile dementia? No. More likely, you are suffering from interference. Interference comes from distraction and inhibition.

Anything that disrupts your concentration is distracting. The biggest distracters are anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, and strong emotions, like anger or fear. When they then prevent your hearing the name and making an association, these can also create inhibition. Distraction and inhibition are the enemy of the confident and effective self-promoter. They’re an enemy you cannot afford not to defeat.

What this suggests is that to listen and get people’s names from short-term memory into long-term, you have to focus, concentrate, and employ a number of tricks. These tricks help you keep the name around long enough to tag it and make it retrievable.

To catch the name that is tossed your way, consider the following:

*Stop thinking about what you want to say next and give your full attention to the other person.

*Repeat the name aloud, as if you want to make sure you heard it correctly. This helps set it.

*If you didn’t hear the name clearly the first time, ask that it be repeated. The other person will actually appreciate your effort. (I can't tell you how many people mispronounce my name after I've said it - it's very irritating.)

*Repeat it to yourself, saying it over and over again as you take in the person’s physical image.

*Associate the name with something distinctive about the person, such as the name “Bridgeton” and the person’s broad shoulders that remind you of an expansion bridge or the bridge of their nose is wide.

*Associate the name with someone you know or who is famous, such as the name “Wilson” on someone who dresses like Robin Williams.

*Create a picture of the person’s name, such as “Wheaton” with a whole wheat biscuit or a field of waving grain.

*Associate the sound of the name, like “Schuster,” in whole or part with something memorable either in general or about the person, such as looking like they’re shhhh-ing someone.

*Create a picture from the person’s initial, such as “R.O.T.” for Roger O. Thornhill in Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest.”

*Create a chain of associations, such as the person looks devilish; Jack Nicholson looks devilish; your favorite Nicholson movie is “As Good As It Gets”; and the person’s name is “Atwood.”
* * *
You need to use any memory device you can to increase your chances of remembering the name. Using the name in conversation with the person helps to cement it. Writing it down with an association and the reason to remember them further enhances your recollection. Until you find what method (or combination of methods) works best for you, practice them all.

Your remembering the other person’s name will create a positive impression, which they are more likely to share with others, and will put another foundation stone under your relationship with them.

Eracing Attitudinal Barriers to Creating Promotional Relationships

2008-01-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

If you’re having difficulties creating promotional relationships, the problem may not be anxiety, rusty social skills, or ineffective marketing strategies. It may be your attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs that are preventing you from initiating promotional interactions.

The problem with some attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs is that they may be so ingrained in your view of self-promotion, the world, and how they operate that they may be nearly invisible to you. Ferreting them out and exposing them to the light of day is essential.

For example, what is the first thing that comes to mind when someone talks about making a "presentation"? What’s your first reaction to the word “selling”?

There are many common, and sometimes insidious, attitudinal barriers to promoting yourself. They include the following:

Social Situations Must Be Spontaneous
Someplace in the inner recesses of your cranium you may believe that planning any aspect of social interaction is deceitful, manipulative, unethical, or speaks ill of you. Perhaps it’s not unlike when you ask a pregnant teenager why she didn’t use some form of prevention. The all-too-common reply is that she didn’t want to look as if she had loose morals by anticipating and preparing for the interaction.

According to this belief, social interaction of any kind should be “natural” and open to whatever happens. There should be no process or defined goal in mind.

The problem with this approach, of course, is that in order for you to interact effectively to present and promote yourself, you have to know what you want to achieve, what you want to say and how you want to say it, and how to attract and engage the other person. This requires anticipation and preparation.

Relationships Just Happen and Are the Result of “Vibes”
While we’d all like to believe that relationships occur by magic, they really develop as a result of effort – effort expended by both parties. Participants are consciously aware of what each is giving and receiving and build intimacy and trust upon this reciprocal exchange.

Your initial attraction is another is generally the consequence of association, not pixie dust or pheromones. You resonate to those with whom you associate something favorable in the past. These positive feelings, like an aura, are transferred to the new person and make the transition from stranger to acquaintance easier.

By being pleasant, helpful, and interested in the other person in a business setting, you can engender these same positive feelings which will then become anchored in past positive associations.

People Ought to See and Experience the Real” You
The “real” you is really whoever you are at the moment. It’s your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, and behaviors in a particular situation. This means that as the situation changes, the so-called “real” you will tend to change as well.

Different situations require that you take on different roles. The way you present yourself at a holiday party with old friends will differ from how you present yourself to potential customers or clients at a seminar. Different roles have different expressions of who you are.

Therefore, there is no absolute “real” you, only what variations and nuances that you choose to share to meet your goals - whether it's having a good time at a party or influencing seminar attendees to seek out your help.
* * *
Once you have become aware of those sorts of attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs, you have to test them to see which pass the Reality Sniff Test. Those that don’t make the cut, that erect perceptual barriers for you, have to be chucked.

It makes no sense to maintain negative thoughts, fears, or biases about “marketing,” for example, when you can reframe and recreate your self-promotion "marketing" as a comfortable, confident, and dignified way to establish necessary business relationships.

When You Need a Boot in the Rear

2008-01-08T21:55:00.000-08:00

You've made up your list of the things you're going to do this year to present and promote yourself more effectively and confidently. It's a good list to which you've given a lot of thought. However, it is still sitting on your desk ... you haven't yet lifted a finger to implement anything on it.

You know that to execute any one of the tasks you have to act - which means getting your derriere in gear. But you just don't seem quite ready. Your motivation, which helped you develop this great list, seems to have disappeared out the back door. You snap your fingers, "Shazaam!,"but you can't quite conjure it up again.

No motivation, no action. Unfortunately, motivation isn't something with which you're born. It's not a personality characteristic or trait. It doesn't operate like a muscle you can flex at will. Instead, it's a state of readiness or eagerness to make change occur. It varies from one situation to another. You can think of it as a probability that you will enter into, continue, and adhere to a specific change strategy.

Sometimes you can generate motivation internally by asking yourself, "What's in it for me - how will I benefit from doing this?" You may answer that doing it will significantly increase your self-confidence, make you proud of having done something important, or enhance your financial opportunities, career, or relationships.

For example, Harry likes it that his online blogging expertise is sought by others. He knows his promotional efforts, like ezines and article directories, are working for him. Whenever anyone asks him for his professional advice, he feels a heightened sense of self-esteem. He likes feeling needed, wanted, and valued.

But, the sad truth is that you don't always have internal motivation pushing you along. This means you have to manufacture it externally. The two primary external motivators are fear and incentives. Fear motivation is based on the "Or-Else Principle." If you don't do it, you'll lose something.

Everyone has used this at some time, whether it's your family, friends, significant others, bosses, business, government agencies et al. If you think about it, you'll admit that you've probably bullied yourself on one or more occasions to get yourself moving. Harry has found fear of loss of love, money, security, experience, opportunity, rejection, or abandonment to be very intimidating ... and motivating.

Motivation by incentive, on the other hand, is like dangling a carrot, or a carat, in front of yourself. You tell yourself that if you achieve some specific requirement, you'll get something you value in return. Call it payment for action or the "Quid Pro Quo Principle." When "brilliant" thoughts about blogs and then decides maybe it isn't such a burden to do it after all.

Most of the time you will have to work to generate the motivation you need to do what you want to and have to do. Some of the ways to rev up your engine are:

*Give yourself advice about the problem or risk area by identifying what it is and why your action is important - then advocate it.

*Remove the barriers to your action: thoughts of fear, cost, time, or safety.

*Provide yourself with choice by reframing the situation, removing the feelings of coercion or threat, and finding an internal reason to act.

*Decrease the desirability of not taking action - the status quo - and simultaneously increase the desirability of acting.

*Get feedback because if you don't have enough information on which to make a decision to act, you won't be motivated to act.

*Formulate your goals then clarify them by comparing the feedback you get with your personal standards.

*Actively help yourself by positively and actively affirming that your goal or action is worthy of your achieving it and it will do something positive for you.

Philosopher John Locke wrote in 1693, "Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set to work, and guided."

That doesn't mean, however, that you can't exercise control of your motivators and set them in motion when you need to. Because, believe it or not, you can!

Word of Mouth – Something to Get Your Teeth Into

2008-01-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

What is the most powerful and valuable marketing resource you can have that you cannot buy? Your visibility and credibility: Your sterling reputation.

One of the best ways to achieve that positive reputation is through word-of-mouth promotion. As Michael E. Cafferky, author of Let Your Customers Do the Talking, suggests, the reason word-of-mouth is so effective is that it is a natural, powerful, low-cost, and low-risk way to promote your business. Also it’s psychologically grounded: People like to talk, give advice, and make recommendations based upon their experiences.

Consequently, when customers or clients derive benefit from you …, when they are satisfied with your service or product, they will hold you in high esteem. They will come to know, like, and trust you. They will have confidence in you. Furthermore, they will want to share with others their special knowledge of you and their gratitude for what you do.

Being concerned about quality and customer service is all very well and good for establishing and maintaining your reputation, but you need to help speed the word-of-mouth process along. There are literally hundreds of simple actions you can take.

But what you need to do first and foremost with a customer or client is spend some time with them, not only before but also after the transaction. You need to relate to them as a person, not as a “buyer.” This means getting them to talk about themselves as well as share their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and/or opinions.

How do you do this? You do this by asking them questions and then having them” tell you more” about what they share. This is not a police grilling but a friendly interchange. Remember: Everyone wants to feel that what they think and feel is recognized by others as having worth.

After your initiation of a relationship with your customer or client, you need to follow up. Think of it as a successful first date that you want to pursue. You cannot assume that the good feelings engendered by the date will simply continue by themselves. You have to fan the flames … but, you have to do it in a friendly, indirect way. That is, you don’t slap them about the head and shoulders with frequent sales offers.

Instead, you start with a personalized “thank you” or “welcome” note. This acknowledges to them their importance to you. It also recreates their warm first impression of you. You could let them know that you will be sending them a periodic hardcopy newsletter or ezine with helpful tips and solutions to common problems.

In your newsletter or ezine you could ask them in a brief survey what their most burning question. You could also ask their advice on how you can make what you do easier, more comfortable, more convenient, or more on-point for them.

This demonstrates that you value their input and want to serve them even better. Furthermore, it helps keep the relationship embers warm as it keeps your name on the top of their head or the tip of their tongue.

Intuition? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Intuition!

2008-01-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

What have you been taught about decision making? If you're like most people, you've been taught to ignore your intuition and follow a logical, systematic approach, doing a cost-benefit and risk analysis. Period. But, while the logical, systematic, analytical approach is necessary, it is not sufficient.

When you have to make decisions, you also have that gnawing feeling or nagging sense that something is wrong or right or connected. It's just there. However, you do have it for a reason.

Intuition is a subconscious process that you feel. What is going on is neither evident or deducible. Yet, the result is a weighted calculation and judgment. Even though it seems to come out of nowhere, it is something you need to recognize as a critical decision making factor.

Contrary to popular opinion, intuition doesn't have a gender - it is not the exclusive domain of women. However, historically women have been socialized and expected to be aware of their feelings, those of others, and others' needs. As such, they are the ones who are generally more schooled in the skills needed to take advantage of intuition.

This does no mean that men don't have intuition. They do. One theory about intuition is that it has broad evolutionary underpinnings. You can think of it as emotional radar ... or apprehension. In other words, it's like an early-warning system by which you look for and make judgments about signs of threat as well as alert you to positive situations of which you might want to take advantage.

Everyone has the capacity for intuition, but some have honed this ability and use it effectively.

To be a successful self-promoter (and human being) you need to develop your intuitive skills. You do this by:

*Being aware, observant, and attending to the various aspects of situations and the nonverbal behavior of others.

*Storing this information away for future use

*Referring to it for associations, similarities, emotional and cognitive input

*Combining all these elements to lead you in a given direction.

Studies at Harvard University have demonstrated that everyone makes intuitive judgments in the first 30 seconds of a 15-minute encounter. These judgments are the basis of your first impression. Interestingly, they also tend to have 80 percent accuracy.

But while intuition is useful in decision making, alone it is not enough or foolproof. It can be influenced by faulty memory, maladaptive thoughts and beliefs, and biases. Consequently, you don't want to follow it blindly. Whenever possible, you should combine intuition with the logical, analytical components of decision making. Each is part of the process. Together they provide you with your most effective decision making approach.

A study by Isenberg, also at Harvard, indicated that the higher you move up in your company, the more important it is to add intuition to your decision making mix. But, this is not restricted to middle management and above. At any level, it can provide you with more options and flexibility in decision making.

How can you become more intuitive? You have to sharpen your observational skills and attention to details. So the next time you experience a hunch, do the following:

*Examine it carefully

*Ask what specific emotion you're feeling

*Determine the chain of events leading up to it

*Determine what initiated the chain reaction

*Pinpoint specific memories or association which signalled your positive or negative emotion

*Describe what your gut is telling you

*Review the hard evidence which supports your hypothesis to check its validity.

American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., summed it up nicely in 1905 when he wrote: "General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend upon a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise."

Success Mythology Can Sabotage Your Efforts

2008-01-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

"Success" is something for which you are expected to strive in most of your life - and certainly is considered to be inherent in your goals. By "success" most of us mean "achieving something desired, planned, or attempted," such as fame, prosperity, superiority, or victory. As you know, striving for and achieving success is not always easy.

There are obstacles in your path. But these obstacles are not just factors outside yourself. Your beliefs and attitude, too often based on myths, about success and how it operates can sabotage you, making your achieving success nearly impossible.

Here are a few of the Success Myths of which you need to be aware:

*Success is universal - Success is really whatever you individually define it to be and dependent upon how you structure your goal, what resources you use to achieve it, and how you measure it.

*Success is what others define it to be - Success is your definition alone, from feeling satisfied to having all the high-status accessories that some feel symbolize "having made it."

*Only some people can be successful because they have the right background, connections, or education - Success comes to those who want something badly enough to do whatever it takes (within their value system) to get it.

*Success results from working an excess of 40 hours per week - Achieving what you want comes from doing what's necessary and doing it right. Working 60 hours a week doing the wrong things doesn't create success; it creates stress, fatgue, and frustration. Management guru Peter Drucker says, "Being efficient is doing the job right, but being effective is doing the right job."

*Successful people amange to avoid mistakes - There's a saying that an executive who makes only 50 percent of his/her decisions correctly is still an effective, successful leader. Everyone makes mistakes. Most of your learning is trial and error. The primary difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people don't keep repeating their mistakes. Moreover, they may make as many mistakes as soon as possible in order to achieve their goal faster.

*Successful people are those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps all by themselves - No one becomes a success without some assistance along the way. Getting assistance does not detract from your personal achievement. In fact, getting and using assistance effectively is the mark of a smart and successful person.

*Success is merely a matter of luck - While chance may play a part in your achieving your goals, most of what you achieve is the result of knowledge, application, and hard work - blood, sweat, and tears. It's Edison's prescription of 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. Success doesn't just fall into your lap. It results from being prepared for it, having a plan, and actively seeking it out.

*There's only one way to achieve success - While there are no specific rules for achieving any particular success, there may be methods which are more useful to attaining your goals. But each situation requires an approach appropriate to it and one with which you are comfortable. Precisely how you achieve is going to be different for each person and each circumstance.

*Being successful makes life trouble-free - Life is never "trouble-free" no matter what you achieve. There are always external and internal issues with which to deal. You will always have good and bad moments, ups and downs. things which don't work out as you want, people who disappoint you. Success gets you what you want in one area of your life for some period of time, but it's not (alas) all-encompassing ... or forever.

It's essential to recognize and enjoy each success (large or small) as it comes - for what it says about you and what it gives you. You need to see how you're responsible for your achievements and feel good about yourself for what you've done. This creates your realistic self-confidence which you can build upon for achieving your next goal.

You need to de-mythologize success for yourself so you can cast aside those internal roadblocks and create plans to accomplish what you desire.

Don’t Let Politicians’ Ego Olympics Sour You on Self-Promotion

2008-01-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

When you see the hoards and hoards of politicians of every stripe grasping, maneuvering, exhorting, pleading, and manipulating, trying to seize just one more moment of significant presidential candidate air time, it’s enough to make you shy away from promoting yourself forever.

It’s so crass. It’s so boring. It’s so me-me-me (it reminds me of the seagulls in “Finding Nemo”). Who outside of politics would want to be associated with such narcissistic tackiness? More to the point, who would want to be on the receiving end of that self-aggrandizing, feature-oriented pitch in any other context?

If I didn’t know that education- and relations-based marketing were 180 degrees removed from that bipartisan public demonstration of “marketing at its worst,” I’d put a paper bag over my head and sneak away in the middle of the night to the nearest cave to grow mushrooms.

What these people are doing in this particular and really rather peculiar display of competitive ego-centrism every four years has little bearing on what you have to do to give yourself visibility and credibility. It's not about you. your ambitions, or what you can gain. In fact, your ego should not be even a part of the equation.

Your goal as a self-promoter is to make yourself seen, known, and felt as a dignified, caring, listening, and trustworthy professional. Your goal is to subtly, overtly, and repeatedly show that you're more interested in your client and solving his/her problem than you are in "marketing" or "selling" to her/him. You are more interested in your client than you are even in yourself.

Nope. I guess that will never fly in politics. Too bad!

When Expectations Go Belly Up

2008-01-01T21:47:00.000-08:00

How often do you think back about the outcomes you desired but never obtained? Maybe they were trivial or maybe they were momentous. Maybe you expected Ben & Jerry’s “Blueberry Cheesecake Frozen Yoghurt” but got “Chunky Monkey." Maybe you expected to work on a new project that would get you greater visibility and credibility but it never materialized.

When those things happened, you likely ran through a progression of emotions (in varying degrees) from sadness to loss to anger to frustration to self-pity – the universal components of disappointment. Disappointment is the result of not having your positive expectations met. Depending upon the makeup of those expectations, your sense of disappointment may be acute, occurring once or infrequently, or chronic, happening over and over again.

Obviously, not all unmet positive expectations produce disappointment. Those that do tend to result from faulty judgment, unrealistic wishes, exaggerated hopes, or dependence upon chance. The closer expectations are connected to reality, the more likely they will match the actual probability of the occurrence of what you expect. Reality-connected expectations are also less likely to disappoint you, or do so severely.

When you deal with disappointment, it’s important to remember that the reasons for your not reaching your goal are less important than what you think about it and how you feel. Anticipating, hoping, wishing, and getting emotionally involved give you a sense of control over the results of the expectation. The harder you expect it, the surer you are it will happen. Then, if it doesn’t happen or happen as you expect, you will likely feel cheated.

Disappointment can be a big obstacle for confidently promoting yourself. This is why clinical psychologist Dr. David Brandt suggests that you think of each of your positive expectations as a continuum of possibilities, ranging from the realistically possible to the realistically impossible.

To deal with your present pain from past disappointments, you need to dissect the original expectation, separating the “wish” part from your belief of its actually occurring. Then you need to determine how much control or influence you really had over the situation.

You’re likely to discover that there was a lot of magical thinking involved in your expectations. Magical thinking is a form of self-sabotage which can condemn you to chronic disappointment and hamper your effectiveness as a confident self-promoter.

Despite Alexander Pope writing, “Blessed is the man who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed,” don't chuck your expectations. Expectations are not only important but also absolutely necessary to achievement. You can’t see and have success without them.

The secret is to handling disappointment is to make your expectations positive, realistic, action-oriented, and visualizable.

Forget New Year’s Resolutions!

2007-12-30T23:38:00.000-08:00

Say what? Why?

Making resolutions at the beginning of a new year is a centuries’ old ritual that creates more disappointment and sense of failure than positive results. The reason is that too often resolutions are simply unrealistic promises about what changes you’d like to see, or feel you should or have to make. As such, they tend to lack the commitment, motivation, and structure that can make them successful.

Yet there are those who do the same thing over and over, get the same crummy results, but still expect to get different results the next time they do it. They need to wake up and smell hard reality. Edison would never have created the light bulb filament if he kept testing candle wicks ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Studies done by Dr. John Norcross at University of Scranton showed that only 50 percent of those who made New Year's resolutions kept them for three months.

Rather than resolutions, the confident self-promoter and others should think realistically about what changes they’d like to make. Change is often difficult to achieve because it involves risk and moving out of your comfort zone. While you may not like where you are, you know what to expect and have adapted to your situation in a fashion.

Change represents the unknown, uncertainty, stress, lots of effort, and some pain. For many “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” So those New Year's promises end up being wishful thinking with little chance of achieving your desired goal.

Instead of making abstract promises, you need to give yourself a break this year and decide what you really want to do. You need to make it as concrete and specific as possible and express it in behavioral terms. Saying you want to “make a lot of money this year” is an unachievable goal. What’s “a lot”? How do you know when you’ve achieved it?

Instead, you need to go for a specific amount but that amount has to be realistic. If you’re making $35,000 a year, it’s probably not very realistic to say you’re going to make $1 million this year. But you might be able to make $60,000 depending upon your p-l-a-n.

Oops! I said the “p” word. Whatever your goal for this new year is it has to have a plan behind it, directing your action. That plan isn’t just breaking the task down into digestible bits and delineating what steps you need to accomplish it. It is also finding ways to tailor the plan to your personality, values, attitudes, habits, and lifestyle. You want to make it as enjoyable and satisfying as possible so it doesn’t feel like hard, slogging work that you'll want to avoid.

For example, deciding that you want to make your additional $25K through speaking engagements may conflict with your discomfort with flying or the amount of time you need to care for an elderly parent on an ongoing basis. But, then again, if speaking is what you really want to do, you may use this as an opportunity to explore other ways of handling those particular life obstacles to give you more flexibility – like taking speaking engagements only within driving distance or finding other assistance for your parent when you can’t be there.

Once you decide what your concrete, specific, measurable, and achievable goal is, you have to figure out exactly how you’re going to achieve it. To make an additional $25K a confident self-promoter could do teleseminars and sell the transcripts and MP3s. You could coach, consult, or speak. You could create e-books, CDs, or home study courses. You could become an affiliate to programs you like.

Whatever you choose singly or in combination, you want to have a sense that it can make the amount you’re seeking, that you’d enjoy doing it, and that it fits with your schedule and life.

You also should be sure to make a public commitment to follow through with your plan. Sharing with others, and even getting constructive feedback from them on it, helps reinforce your motivation to stick with your plan. When making changes, you will tend to have periods of uncertainty and feeling alone. Having a support network can bolster your resolve, help you reward yourself for your progress, and keep you on track.

Furthermore, it's important that you don’t make your plan a matter of "success" or "failure" - life or death. Making $60K as a goal isn’t etched in stone. You may discover as you achieve each successive step in your plan that $50K is more realistic based upon what you’re doing. Or you may choose to alter the way you make the additional $25K or the time period in which you’re doing it.

Resolutions, promises, and wishful thinking can, potentially, lead to your making plans to achieve a goal, but far too often don’t. If you’re really serious about getting what you want – what you really want, then kiss New Year’s Resolutions good-bye.

Self-Promotion is Not About You!

2007-12-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

I know that sounds contradictory, but it’s true. That’s because whether you’re promoting your business, a charitable organization, a political candidate, a cause, or yourself, the promotion is about your target audience.

“Yeah, I know,” you say. “I have the demographics on them: age, income, and residential area – all that physical stuff.” But while demographics are necessary, increasingly they are not sufficient. “But,” you say, “I also have psychographics on them: attitudes, values, lifestyle, opinions, and personality characteristics – all that psychological stuff.” Again, while psychographics is necessary, increasingly it is not sufficient.

As the marketing seas change from emphasis on promoting you and your features, they are shifting to drilling down to understanding where your target audience is emotionally at the moment - what their fears, needs, and desires are. They’re also focusing on what benefits you can provide your audience wherever they are.

How do you do that? Online marketer Alex Mandossian says, “Do an Ask Campaign.” You cannot simply assume you know what your audience wants from their demographics and psychographics alone. If you want to match what you provide with your audience, you have to ask them directly what their most burning question is about your topic (a topic which you already know is of interest to them generally).

This tells you exactly what they want and need. You can then fashion your self-promotion around these questions and your answers to them. In doing this:

You demonstrate your interest in what’s important to them
You begin to further develop a rapport and relationship
You showcase your solutions to their problems
You highlight the benefits only your solutions provide
You are seen as a caring and accessible expert.

What all this boils down to is when you promote yourself, you need to do it in such a way that it is first and foremost about your audience and their immediate problem. Then when you have their attention, you begin to introduce what you can do to solve their problem, detailing your benefits and how they are superior to the competition's.

It is still about you but in a more savvy, relationship-building, and productive way.

Giving = Four-Fold Returns

2007-12-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

Holidays and giving are synonymous. But, of course, giving isn’t necessarily only physical gifts. When you as a confident self-promoter also look beyond physical gifts, you can create a state of even greater giving … and receiving.

As you may know, I’m the proud mom of 13 felines. No, I’m not a hoarder but a member of an animal rescue group in Corrales, NM, called C.A.R.M.A. (Companion Animal Rescue and Medical Assistance). I’ve adopted hard-to-place, disabled cats, and sick cats (however, density-wise, 13 is the absolute limit).

Several of the ways I help CARMA, besides Pictures with Santa, the adoption clinics, and an occasional check, include writing timely articles and media releases about them and offering free coaching or free seminars for those who make a minimum contribution to CARMA.

When I do these activities, CARMA gets visibility and increased donations. I, on the other hand, get a feeling of having contributed significantly AND secure visibility for what I do as well as who I am as a charitable person. This is a big win-win!

If I had a business having to do with benefiting animals, it would be an even bigger win for me as a self -promoter. That, however, should not the overriding factor in your giving - promoting efforts. Positive visibility is positive visibility, irrespective of what your business is.

While there are all kinds of ways you can give, it is important for you to match what you’re giving to you so that people can make the association. That is not to say that you’re creating a slick commercial for yourself making it all about you. Besides being tacky, that takes away from the focus of your charitable effort and erases the impression of your doing this for charitable reasons.

You can subtly make yourself known via a relevant author bio with an article, mention of what services you're exchanging for donations in the press release, or letting people know you’re offering a complimentary helpful report on something associated with the charity and with you. With a little brainstorming you can create lots of possibilities.

Holidays (any holidays!) can be a particularly effective, indirect exposure of who you are and what you promote. They add another positive identification aspect to the rapport and relationship you’re creating with your audience. And ... you're sharing and helping those in need.

Cite It Correctly Or Don't Cite It At All!

2007-12-23T22:52:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned, stories, analogies, metaphors, examples, and quotations are very useful in helping your listener become interested and involved in what you are saying. However, when you choose that special something to make your point or give it weight, be sure you are stating it correctly and attributing authorship correctly.

I subscribe to a few informative marketing e-zines and hard copy newsletters which I scan for updates, new information, tips, strategies, and tactics. When I see something (large or small) that isn't quite accurate, it jumps out at me and stops me cold, totally disrupting my train of thought.

One guru, for example, said he was playing around with the concept of "feast" as a marketing metaphor. Great concept! But then he mentioned turn-of-the-century actress Lillian Russell and "her famous quote": Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.

"What?!" I thought. "That's not right. Lillian Russell didn't say that." Then a spent the next few precious minutes recalling who said what under what circumstances, totally detached from his newsletter and marketing advice.

The fact is that the line "Life is a banquet ..." is not a quotation from a person. It's a line from the book "Auntie Mame" (by Patrick Dennis, aka Edward Everett Tanner) which shows up in the film "Auntie Mame" and then in the musical "Mame." Furthermore, Lillian Russell didn't say the line (this was way after her time). Rosalind Russell did in the film.

I've seen this (and other things) misattributed or misstated before. This suggests to me that those individuals didn't check it for accuracy before using it. After all, if another guru used it, it must be okay. As I have learned the hard way, unless you know it is correct, you should always go to a highly respected reference (or the original source) whenever possible to check.

Mistakes are perpetuated and become gospel simply by people just repeating them. And, as we all know, the Net is rife with incorrect information and opinion masquerading as fact.

You may be saying, "Big deal! It's just a crummy line in a book or play." What makes it a big deal for the confident self-promoter is that even the smallest factual errors can, at the very least, distract your reader or listener ... or, at the most, create dissonance and irritate them, sending them to search their mental files, or elsewhere, for the correct information, letting your message drift away.

Afterward, they may wonder how careful you are. Their minds may dance around the idea that if one obvious (to them) mistake occurs, perhaps there are others. At which point they may focus on whether other mistakes are made or they may tune you out altogether. In either case, they may block out the rest of what you're saying. A seemingly simple error and - suddenly - you've lost them!

You never want to give your audience the opportunity to become disengaged from your message. Your objective is to have them see you as very credible - someone they can believe in and trust. They don't expect you to be perfect but they do expect you to be correct in what you tell them as you engage them in your area of expertise.

Just Ask Ollie: Ya Gotta Tell A Story

2007-12-22T21:29:00.000-08:00

When you're trying to get your message across, you can provide information. You can explain things. You can make suggestions. These are necessary but they also need support. Nothing quite grabs people's attention, engages and involves them, creates understanding, and bolsters identification like stories or anecdotes.

Let me give you a personal example. People who have self-presentation anxiety or marketing reluctance often feel they are the only ones who suffer from fear of being negatively evaluated, found wanting, and rejected by those with whom they interact. Furthermore, they're convinced there's no hope of recovery. As a result, I share with them how I responded before I recovered:

The jarring, jangling, heart-pumping sound of the office phone ringing filled me with dread, nearly making my hair stand on end. Every nerve ending was firing as I wrung my sweating hands. The malevolent instrument was demanding that I pick it up, but I just couldn't. I didn't know what was awaiting me on the other end of the line.

But after a moment of frozen panic, I'd check the caller ID. If I knew the person and why they were likely calling, I could prepare myself at least a little. But when it read "Out of Area" or "Unavailable," a heavy weight dropped into my legs and my mouth became parched. It was indecision time: To answer or not to answer.

Answering without knowing who was calling left me certain I'd babble, humiliate myself, and look totally incompetent. But if I let it go to the answering machine, I'd have to call back ... which was worse. And ... heaven help me if I got their answering machine! Suddenly I'd have 30 seconds to as quickly as possible say all the "right" things in the right order. I'd rather have eaten worms. Fortunately, I found a way to avoid that delicacy.

Ollie North talked about numbers of things wherein he painted a picture. He spoke about Abu Nidal and a specific brutal killing. He talked about wanting to go mano y mano with this terrorist. He talked about why he accepted a security fence to protect his family after receiving death threats. In every instance he reached his listeners where they live. He strongly put a face on the facts that his listeners could see in their minds.

Stories or anecdotes you relate don't have to be brilliant or witty. But they do have to resonate with your audience. They have to leave them with the vivid picture and accompanying emotion you desire ... a portrait you want them to remember, think about, and continue to ruminate upon.

Promoting Yourself Doesn't Mean Becoming an Ollie North Clone

2007-12-21T18:57:00.000-08:00

Somehow mentioning self-promotion techniques and Ollie North in the same breath makes some people uncomfortable. So let's do little comparison:

Think about Ollie North at Iran-Contra Hearings:

1. How would you describe the image he projected?
2. What adjectives would you use to describe him as he presented himself?
3. What was his message?
4. What image did he project?

Now think about yourself in promoting your business:

1. How would you describe the image you project?
2. What adjectives would you use to describe yourself as you present yourself?
3. What is your message?
4. What image do you project?

No matter who you are and what your goal is, you have to project your image in a way that resonates with your audience and gets your message across. The objective is to create visibility and credibility because they are the linch pins of achieving success in your business.

Specifically, visibility is not only being seen but also being seen as synonymous with your message. This means that you have to believe in your message and that it is important for others to believe too. Your credibility is your expertise, legitimacy, and professionalism in what you do in your work and how you promote yourself.

Part of your legitimacy is what you say and how you say it. It is fashioned by your personality and values. You're not creating a character out of whole cloth - or being an actor - who is spouting things in which you do not believe. Seeing you as being honest and truthful about what you say makes you worthy of your audience's belief and trust.

Your image determines how your audience views you, values you, is attracted to you, identifies with you, trusts you, and wants to interact with you. Your image defines how you want your audience to think about you and your message and then respond to you and it.

Remember: Your image grabs your audience's attention. It creates expectations and sets the tone for potential interaction. Your image is what gets your foot in the door so you can present your message to your audience and persuade them of its benefit to them.

To work on your visibilty and credibility you need to examine your image and message and ask:

1. What image do you want to project?
2. What image are you currently projecting?
3. How is your audience perceiving you?
4. How are they responding to that perception?
5. What is your message?
6. What do you want your audience to know?
7. How do you want them to respond to that information?
8. What is your goal in concrete, specific behavioral terms?
9. Are you getting your message across as efficiently, effectively, and economically as possible?
10. Are you achieving your goal?

Creating visibility and credibility for yourself is not a once-in-awhile proposition - at least, not if you want to get your message out and achieve your goal. Doing this requires continuous effort, looking for more effective ways to hit your audience up-close and personal.

That is not to say that all audiences are alike - they're not. As a result, you have to recognize that each audience may require a slightly different approach to your image and message. This may sound slick, but it isn't. It is simply acknowledging that each group may be different, knowing what they want, and demonstrating to them ways you personally and honestly can understand them and identify with them so you're speaking their language.

This is precisely what Ollie North did. He knew his audience. He communicated with them in a way that would show he was one of them. He appealed to their values, expectations, and interests. He let them identify with him as "underdog" and fight along with him to overcome perceived "injustice."

Self-Promotion Purpose - Alberto Gonzales & Ollie North

2007-12-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

Being a “confident self-promoter” isn’t just feeling confident promoting yourself. It’s also being confident that you understand your customer/client better than they understand themselves.

That is, you know them so well you can predict with a high degree of certainty what they want and how best to give it to them. You have confidence in your knowledge and it is the core of all you do in your promotion. The person who knows them best is the person who can ethically massage them to get their belief, trust, and business.

However, not all “confident self-promotion” is alike … or even acceptable. Being a “confident self-promoter” isn’t necessarily the same as being one with an honest and ethical purpose. One has only to look at Alberto Gonzales in 2007 or Ollie North during the Iran-Contra Congressional Hearings in 1987 to see where the difference lies.

Both Gonzales and North were confident and promoted themselves well toward their respective goals – goals benefiting themselves, not their audience. But of the two it was Oliver North who created a theatrically spectacular self-promotion campaign that provides us with a useful model. Let’s take at look at what he did and the results he got.

It was July 7, 1987, when then-Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver L. North stood in front of a packed Senate hearing room, before him two tiers of 26 elected officials, sitting behind stacks of three-ring binders of documents and testimony. Before and below that investigatory panel sat this lone, decorated military figure, the object of every gaze and the subject of every question.

This was the aloof, enigmatic National Security Council Aide who had stonewalled the Iran-Contra Congressional Hearing for seven months by refusing to testify, give depositions, or cooperate in any way about lying, selling guns, and illegally shredding documents. He had been tagged a “dangerous loose cannon.” As a result, his public favorability rating was barely 6 percent!

However, North was an experienced and effective fundraiser for the Republican National Committee. He was well-known for his powers of persuasion. He used his speaking and promotion skills to create the image that would best get his message across.

First he used his physical appearance to set the tone. He was clad in a perfectly-fitted Marine dress uniform, resplendent with six rows of ribbons and one row of medals. (not his normal business suit). His military attire shouted “this is someone who served his country and did so proudly – think God, Country, family, loyalty, and sacrifice.”

He used nonverbal behavior to look forthright and honest – a poster boy for apple pie, motherhood, and the flag. He made himself the “scapegoat,” underdog, and victim at the hearings, taking the blame for everything. With his jaw firmly set, he extended lower lip and furrowed brow, looking like a feisty David before the Goliath-like committee.

He used folksy words, such as, “golly, gee,” “neat idea, “I pray to God,” and let his voice crack like Jimmy Stewart’s when he was angry. He never did anything to break his focus with specific senators or the mood he was creating. Everything was expressed in throat-catching appeals to patriotism, sentiment, nobility, and justice.

He used illustrations, from a blowup of a newspaper article on Abu Nidal, whose group brutally murdered an 11-year-old girl, to stories, analogies, characterizations, speeches, and props to underscore every point he made. It was a masterpiece of choreography.

But the most spectacular aspect of North’s testimony was his control. He controlled his image – from macho and gung-ho to contrite then humble, boyish, and homespun. He controlled what he said, how he said it, and his emotions for maximum impact. He controlled his audience’s understanding of the intent of his message and their response to it.

His real audience was not the Senate Committee. It was the 55 million television viewers nationwide. He tailored the form and content of his presentation to the medium and his knowledge of his audience. He played to the intimate, emotional intensity of television to grab and hold them, leaving them to hang on his every word.

How effective was "confident self-promoter" Oliver North in creating the visibility and credibility he wanted? Only one day after his testimony, his public favorability rating shot from barely 6 percent to 43 percent!

Furthermore, 60 percent of polled TV viewers now expressed sympathy for him, 67 percent believed him a” true patriot,” and 84 percent thought him “truthful.” Posters, buttons, T-shirts, and billboards sprang up, proclaiming, “Real Americans Love Ollie” and “Ollie North for President.”

Using brilliant “confident self-promotion techniques,” Oliver North literally overnight transformed his public image from that of “lying, swaggering, messianic crook” to that of “selfless, flag-wrapped Guardian of the Western Hemisphere.” This he parlayed into becoming the darling of the lecture circuit, at $25K per gig, and a nationally syndicated talk show host with a popular Internet site.

No matter how you felt about Ollie North, he was a past-master of “confident self-promotion.” But don’t let his dishonest use of these strategies cause you to reject their honest use. The strategies themselves are legitimate, professional, and highly effective.

Everything depends upon your purpose in using them. When it’s honest, ethical, and geared toward benefiting your audience, you can use them to create the image you want and to get your audience to know, like, and trust you. When they feel that rapport, they'll do business with you. All of which further increases your confident self-promotion.

Gonzales Named “Lawyer of the Year”? Bad PR!

2007-12-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

It has been said that publicity, any publicity, is good. However, it seems unlikely that this applies to publicity for lawyers.

Lawyers have long suffered from a negative public image. A Harris Poll conducted in August of 2006 found that only 26% of those surveyed found lawyers “trustworthy.” In two ongoing national surveys I’m conducting (one for lawyers and one for the public) on the factors contributing to this problem, lawyers and the public alike state that lawyers are seen as arrogant, deceptive, deceitful, and lying.

For the American Bar Association Journal to award former-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales the title of “Lawyer of the Year” only further reinforces the negative public perception of lawyers.

While Edward A. Adams, editor and publisher of the magazine, says they gave the award to lawyers who “made the most news,” “who are noteworthy,” most people will likely nod to themselves and mutter, “Yeah, that figures!”

After all, one usually expects that honors like “Lawyer of the Year” would go to those who have demonstrated the highest principles of law or made the greatest contribution to upholding justice. That turns out to be a big chuckle in this case!

One is certainly hard pressed to think of Gonzales in those terms. He resigned amid investigations of his breaking the law and lying to Congress about such things as possible politically-motivated firings of nine U.S. attorneys and illegally tampering with a witness in ongoing Congressional and Justice Department inquiries

Even though publisher Adams says that the persons picked “do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the ABA,” ‑ and some 40,000 lawyers in the U.S., one has to wonder if their awards’ committee’s social awareness and marketing savvy were out-to-lunch when they appeared to positively sanction the tainted Gonzales and his questionable official actions.

I have to ask Adams and his committee: Don't you care about the impression you've created of the ABA and lawyers alike? If I were a lawyer trying to create positive visibility and credibility with my public, I would be more than a little displeased with the Gonzales award: I'd be embarrassed!

FLASH! It now appears that swift and rampant outrage from those most affected by this bad publicity has caused the editor of the ABA Journal to take action. Because of the so-called "confusion" of the original award title, "Lawyer of the Year" is being changed to "Newsmaker of the Year."

That reminds me of what the Pennsylvania Dutch used to say: "Too soon old and too late smart."

Lawyers who’d like to participate in my Factors Contributing to Negative Public Image of Lawyers Survey can do so at: http://www.confidentselfpromotion.com/lawyer-survey.htm

Non-lawyers can participate at: http://www.speakwithoutfearnow.com/public-lawyer-survey.htm

I have a gift for your participation in these short, anonymous surveys.