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Do you have the skills to thrive 

Mike Mahler 

I’ve got the skills to pay the bills. --  The Beastie Boys

In Napoleon Hill’s classic, Think And Grow Rich, he emphasizes the importance of specialized knowledge in becoming successful.  This is good advice, but specialized knowledge in a single field is rarely enough.  You can be the best musician around but if you don't know how to effectively get yourself in the marketplace, your career will go nowhere.  No matter what business you're in, you'll need the skills of marketing and self-promotion.  Even if you work for others, you'll use these skills selling yourself in job interviews, promoting the value you offer as an employee, keeping your job, and moving up the ladder.  For self-employed people, marketing and self-promotion skills are critical and lacking these skills makes you dependent upon others, which is fine if others actually want to do your promoting work for you--but what if they don't?  Moreover, do you want to be dependent upon others for your individual success?  I hope not.

Let's go over the common excuses for not learning marketing and promotion skills:

I want to focus on what I'm good at and delegate the rest to others.

It's reasonable to focus on your talents while delegating other tasks to those more qualified...but doing so can be costly.  Public Relation agents typically cost $5000.00 per month--and that doesn't include the cost of making media kits and mailing those kits to prospects.  Of course, $5000.00 isn't much if you've got access to millions--but who among you fall into this category?  When spraying the money house isn't an option, you use your brain, becoming more self-reliant.  Besides, even if you have money, it's wise to avoid wasting it on unnecessary services and ineffective advertising (most advertising methods are costly and ineffective, especially for small business people.)  Never do a promotion without being able to quantify the benefits.

Eventually, your business may grow to a place where it becomes worth your time to delegate the marketing and promotion.  Still, you want to maintain those skills in case you ever need them and you must be sure to hire the right people to do the work for you; you don't want to be wasting money on clueless marketing people.  Marketing skills in today’s world are the equivalent of hunting skills of old times:   just as our ancestors' lives depended on competent hunting skills to acquire food, we require effective marketing skills in today in order to survive and--more importantly--thrive.

I find marketing and promotion boring and choose to focus on what I enjoy.

You find writing ad copy and reading marketing books flat-out boring? Are you five years old?  If not, remember that part of being an adult is taking responsibility for our own life.  Each day includes some tasks we find tedious--and that's a part of life.  Why anyone would avoid acquiring the skills to help him nurture his business is beyond me.  Even if you couldn't care less about making more money, an obvious benefit--often overlooked--is that the better marketed your business, the more people you can help!  I understand the desire to focus on what you most enjoy, but you can spend a great deal of time enjoying yourself while effectively marketing your business.  Further, learning to build passive income, and leveraging technology to market and promote for you, frees up even more precious time to focus on  enjoying yourself.  Bottom line:  stop acting like a child and learn the arts of sacrifice and delayed gratification.

I'm an artist, not a promoter.  I want to focus on my craft and leave the business stuff to others in order to retain my artistic purity.

Of the above excuses, this is the worst, implying you're simply too cool to learn to market and promote yourself, that somehow these skills undermine artistic credibility.  Such thinking is beyond nonsensical.  Yes, people can go too far with over-the-top marketing...but even that offense is better than doing nothing!  The bottom line?  You can effectively promote yourself and your business in a way that fits your personality and style.  The key is actually learning the ground rules of effective marketing and tailoring what you learn to fit your needs.  Get over the notion that it's beneath you, unless you think surviving and thriving are beneath you, too.

A great example of an artist as a master of marketing and promotion is legendary rocker Gene Simmons of the band Kiss.  I'm not much of a Kiss fan but I'm a huge fan of Simmons’ book, Sex, Money, and Kiss, and I highly recommend it.  In the early days of Kiss, Gene Simmons did all the marketing and promotion:  he booked all the venues for the band and successfully dealt with the business side of being in a band.  He turned the band Kiss into a brand and merchandised the hell out of it.  There are bands better than Kiss in terms of musical talent; few however, have been able to achieve the success and sustainability of Kiss.

What separated Kiss from other bands was Gene Simmons and his willingness to learn--and work--the rules of marketing and promotion.  He didn't see himself as above learning these skills nor did he delegate them to others.  He used intelligence and did what it took to ensure his band's success.  The result?  Taking a band of unexceptional talent and turning it into a cash-making machine spanning several decades!  Whether you like Kiss or don't, you'll learn plenty from the story of how Kiss rising from obscurity to cultural icon.

Here is an action step:  Find some people who are successful in your field and decode their websites.  If they don't have websites, decode their promotional material, such as magazine or television ads.  Look at the layouts and take notes of what is there--and what is not.  Decode each page of ad copy until you get a clear idea of why each line is where it is.  Done correctly, this will take several hours, or even longer.  Use this exercise to learn the principles of what they're doing and tailor it to your own business.  Avoid straight-out copying--you're looking to understand principles and concepts, not plagiarize. Take a page from Warren Buffet, "You have to think for yourself. It always amazes me how high I.Q. people mindlessly imitate."

At the end of the day, it all comes down to choices:  either you want to be successful or you don't.  Either you're willing to acquire multiple skills to support that beloved skill upon which you hope to base your career--or you're not. An unwillingness to learn the rules of effective marketing and promotion indicates you're either satisfied with your current level of success or simply disinterested in further business growth.  And there's nothing wrong with that, just don't complain (from your couch, in front of the tv) about your business going nowhere instead of doing something about it.

 

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