Semi-Urgent: When Your Decision Not To Self-Promote Turns You Into A Big Fat Jackass

First off, the semi urgent part. I’m contractually obligated to tell you that the Self Promotion for Nice People and Wimps and Whatever starts on Wednesday. If you’re planning to get in on it, you might want to get on with it.

We all have conflicting needs. Maybe you want a stable marriage but you also want to run away with your Spanish teacher. Maybe you like your children but you think you might be happier if you just took them to the pawn shop and traded them for Mario Kart on the Wii. Maybe your coke habit conflicts with your mortgage payments.

My conflict is this: I like to be right and I like to be honest.

I can’t tell you how much of a pain in the ass this is for me. And right now, while I would like to say nothing, I’ve tried to make a habit of being as embarrassingly honest as possible on this blog. (You’ve seen me in thigh highs and topless, for God’s sake.) So I have to say something.

Because of the whole filthy marketing whore thing, I worry A LOT about promotion. I’ll tell my clients to pimp themselves out not until the cows come home, but until the cows are actually long dead. I try to craft hundreds of sneaky and ingenious ways for them to get their name and their product out there at every available opportunity. But myself? Uh, no. See this post as an example of my astonishingly poor self-promotion skills.

(Yeah, I’m the one teaching a course on self-promotion. And yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that. Because I know how to do it, I just don’t like self-promoting to YOU GUYS. You guys are my friends and I get weird going all BUY RIGHT NOW, ONLY THREE SPOTS LEFT on my friends. Strangers, fine. Y’all? Nuh-uh.)

My partner-in-crime has no such compunction. She’s been pimping this course — in her gentle, Havinator way — until it begs for mercy. She’s been out there, telling people what’s going on, helping them, guiding them, answering their questions, soliciting their concerns, the whole nine yards. What have I been doing?

Thinking, “I don’t want people to think I’m trying to SELL to them!”

Uh, right. Because this is a fucking charity?

Anyway, Havi has been getting a bunch of questions and freak-outs, and she decided that instead of staying up for 72 hours straight and answering them all, she’d write a blog post addressing common fears and objections. (If I know Havi at all, she answered the emails, too.) When she told me this, here’s what I said:

Naomi, to herself: Don’t do it, dude. You’re promoting too much. They’ll all grow to hate you!

Naomi, to the Havinator: God, I really, really love melted cheese.

Anyone else and I’d be all “Slap up a set of fuzzy dice and PIMP that bitch!” But my good friend? I’m telling her to shut the hell up and cross her fingers. Nice, huh?

Because here I am, sitting in my totally self-absorbed haze, thinking “people don’t want to hear about this. Leave them alone and go back to handing out free advice peppered with swear words”. (In her case, it’s free advice peppered with crazy yoga speak.)

The Havinator, on the other hand, is sitting there saying, “People have questions. They have objections. They are concerned that they might have to commit to something scary. They need me to be gentle and guide them and help them.”

Yeah, Havi’s a lot nicer than me. I never promised you I’d be nice.

Anyway, today she gets this email, reprinted with no permission whatsoever:

“i totally am signing up b/c your blog post about my probably objections answered my objections. =)

a) i will probably listen to the recordings, not call in and
b) i did think “oh i know this stuff already but haven’t implemented it” and
c) i did think “oh but i don’t know really what i want to do yet.”

Guess what! I was totally wrong. Havi was totally right. Shocker.

So here’s a twofold piece of advice to those of you planning to, you know, run a functional business:

People will have objections. You have to learn to gracefully, persuasively, and professionally deal with them. Please go read and copy everything Havi does in this blog post. Steal this shit. Slam it away in your swipe file. (Unless you’re a “habits educator” as well. In which case, I wish you the best of luck as you have a formidable opponent who comes with her own duck.) But seriously, awesomely done.

Even if you think you are over fear, you’re not. If you’re letting your fear get in the way of doing what you feel is right, just stop it. It’s stupid and it’s costing you money. I don’t know how much it’s cost me, but I feel like a right moron right now.

By Naomi Dunford