|
Your Small Business Marketing, Self Promotion
and Your Business Values
The core premise of Authentic Self Promotion
is that showing up, serving, and thriving are interrelated. Promotion,
or putting yourself forward, is part of showing up and is essential to
having a successful business. Having a successful business is essential
to being and sustaining an offer of service. In other words, you cannot
serve if you do not take care of business.
Authenticity is the cornerstone of effective, sustainable self
promotion because being authentic draws on a renewable resource, i.e.,
your core values and strengths. Put it all together, and you have Authentic
Promotion.
Authentic self promotion is grounded in
the conviction that you have something of unique value to offer the world
and that you are willing to discover how to embody that offer, to show
up and serve, and to thrive in the process.
Authentic self promotion reconciles values
of service and integrity with the tools and practices of effective small
business marketing. Authentic promotion of
your small business rejects the easy dismissal of marketing and
sales as shallow, manipulative, and inauthentic. Instead, Authentic self
promotion claims that marketing and sales are vehicles for creating enduring
relationships and delivering substantial value.
If you choose the path of authentic self promotion, you will learn
that marketing your small business effectively
will challenge you to evolve continually as a person and as a professional.
Authenticity is intimately involved with creativity, evolution, and change.
It is closely allied with the notion of authorship, thus of owning and
being accountable for one's actions. Authenticity acknowledges that
we are always creating or writing our life stories. Expressed in business,
such authenticity will step up to the challenge of making strong, clear,
valid offers to prospects who are likely to benefit from those offers.
When we do business in an authentic fashion, we understand that we will
be affected and even changed by the processes of doing business. Authenticity
is dynamic. When you extend yourself authentically in the world, you expect
an authentic response—one that may touch you deeply and influence
your future decisions. There are risks, then, in authenticity.
Egocentric business practices, on the other hand, declare, "I don't
need to answer to anyone. I have no intention of being changed or affected
by you as we do business together. Either you like me or you don't.
You'll either find me or you won't."
Often this egocentricity is masked by a pseudo-authenticity, one that
pretends to stand for immutable values and unassailable principles but
that is really a declaration of self-absorption, "My way or the
highway." A better test for authenticity is whether or not we are
willing to be affected by our transactions. The authentic expression of
our deepest values and most closely held principles will always open us
to the risk and blessings of new possibilities.
Authentic marketing and self promotion says,
"I'm here to connect with you. I expect that we will both be changed
in the course of our relationship. I am willing to discover you and myself
in new ways as we do business. Come on down, let's see what we can create
together."
I propose that the very real excesses and evils of some business practices
can be countered in a powerful way by independent professionals and artists
who use their businesses as a vehicle for showing up, serving, and thriving.
It's about more than making a living. Though, unless you do make
a living, you will not be able to express your gifts to the fullest.
Authentic self promotion is about trying
on business and marketing practices and adapting them to fit your values,
your resources, and your unique gifts. It's about having enough integrity
and courage to welcome the inevitable breakdowns as occasions for learning
and platforms for future success. In order to be truly authentic - in
other words, to authenticate our values and our standards—we must
act in the world. We must show up to serve, and we must stop pretending
that commerce is something the bad guys do. In this way, we will shine
a light on unfamiliar or inadequate practices for the sake of devising
better practices.
What will those better
self promotion and small business practices
be?
* * *
Learn more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive
small business marketing resource that turns marketing and self promotion
into a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood.
You can look forward to promoting your work. (It is possible.)
* * *
Self Promotion Index
|| Self Promotion, Small Business Marketing, and Your Business Values
|| Expand
Your Vision of Your Small Business Marketing and Self Promotion Practices
|| Your Effective
Self Promotional Marketing Tool - The Rule of Threes || Preparing
Your Promotional Marketing Materials - Inventorying Your Unique Appeal
|| Preparing
Your Promotional Marketing Materials - Inquiries || Elevator
Speech || Self
Promotion Resources: Websites and Books || Reprint
Terms for Self Promotion Articles
* * *
Contact an acknowledged expert
on self promotion Molly Gordon at:
Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com
As a business coach and small
business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater
Seattle Area and internationally |
