Self-Employment and the Challenge of Self-Promotion for Introverts

As I mentioned from time to time, I am self-employed. In fact, I have been self-employed for many years now, and depend for a living on doing as well as possible with the things I do and pretend to call "work."

I am also an introvert. You know, those people who prefer to keep to themselves, generally avoid parties, public places with crowds and making much of a spectacle of themselves in public. Like most of my kin, I much prefer to interact with my people one at a time.

Of course, when you have a business — actually, I have several — you don't get to go very far unless you let the world know that you are there and what you're doing. Nobody's going to do it for you!

Which, in turn, brings me to one of my least favorite subjects in the world: the reality that I have to promote myself and what I do even though I loathe the process of doing so pretty much as much as getting a root canal without anesthesia.

As an interesting aside, I actually used to write radio scripts for advertising, and I created many many ads and sales letters for clients. And yet? I pretty much suck at it for my own account.

Even though I have long tried to dodge the particular bullet of marketing for introverts, the irony of it is that most of what I've ever done actually involves sales which by definition requires marketing. At least if you hope to get anywhere.

I find a minor degree of relief in the fact that most of my sales happen online rather than through a face-to-face interaction, so at least I can be hidden by behind a computer screen when I'm trying to market my artwork, my collectibles or my editing business.

Even so, I still have to "put myself out there!"

I expect that being Danish by birth isn't helping my cause very much, because I grew up in a culture where the very act of talking yourself up and drawing attention to yourself is considered in bad taste. Much as modern Denmark is different from how it was when I was a kid, the culture as a whole still labors in the shadow of the Jante Law.

One thing I have definitely learned over the years is that the old belief that "if you're really good at something, then the work sells itself" is not true. It may just be a cultural norm but people seem to expect to be given a pitch, rather than to simply determine that something is what they want and then acquire it be that a product or a service.

Squeaky wheel gets the oil, and all that...

I think what often plagues us introverts is the fact that when we are in a situation where we have to make a public presentation of ourselves, we tend to overthink it a bit and so we move very slowly. It's not really about being a perfectionist so much as it's about making sure that whatever you're doing isn't going to result in you making an ass of yourself.

Over the years, I've learned that it is somewhat easier to market the product rather than market yourself. That becomes a little bit difficult when you're talking about something like being a book editor or artist because it is really yourself or your skills that you are marketing not a free-standing "product" that you can detach from your own person.

Besides, one of the things I've learned from our periodic attendance as vendors at arts and crafts shows (with my artwork) is that people are often more interested in the person than they are in the actual artwork. They may like and admire the artwork, but they want to know what your story is.

Of course I find it much easier to talk up other people and other people's products, rather than talk up myself and my own products!

In some sense, social media makes the process a little bit easier, except for the part that I don't really enjoy meaningless jobber about virtually nothing not much rather be writing essays about stuff and marketing is definitely not about writing essays!

I don't really have any good answers here. But what I do know is that periodically I have to grab the bull by the horns and spend some time marketing because otherwise what I'm doing will pretty much wither and die.

As such, more marketing is among my goals and aspirations for 2024.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Weekend!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2024-01-20 00:37 PST
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