So you’re fired up and ready to launch your media career…and then you see it. The giant mountain of Self-Promotion, looming ominously, standing between you and your goals. It’s ugly, it’s craggy, and it can come with a degree of altitude sickness.
Self-promotion feels icky for most of us.
Fear of self-promotion ranks on our list of worst fears right behind losing all our loved ones, tsunamis, and gas station sushi. These are all rational fears.
But while some fears are helpful (like gas station sushi) because they keep us from making harmful mistakes, other fears don’t actually serve us—instead, they let the possibility of pain eclipse our potential gains.
Take it from us: When it comes to self-promotion, you have nothing to fear but fear itself. (That’s how that quote goes, right?)
So let’s face those fears one at a time:
You’re afraid you’ll come off as selfish or arrogant.
Self-promotion doesn’t require Kanye levels of self-aggrandizement. It doesn’t require you to oversell your abilities or skill set—in fact, exaggerating or lying about yourself is a surefire way to fail at self-promotion.
Self-promotion means owning your hard work, expertise, and authority.
It requires recognition of your goal—to help as many people as possible—and putting yourself out there in order get the word out. If you want to reach and help more people, you can’t wait for them to come to you: You have to step into the spotlight and draw attention to the problems you’re solving—and how you’re solving them.
At the end of the day, self-promotion is hard work. If you stay centered by your why—helping people—it ends up being the very opposite of selfishness. You have something they need and it’s a disservice if you don’t tell them about it!
You don’t feel like an “expert.”
An expert is literally defined as, “A person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.” Please note that it does not say, “A person with multiple Phd’s” or “A person who can definitively prove they are the absolute best in the world at this.”
Truth is, you know something that we don’t. You have experience and skills that we lack. You have researched and field tested solutions to my problems—and the world needs your help! Accolades and degrees are nice. But if you keep playing small out of a fear of not being big enough, you’re guaranteed to limit yourself. And you’re denying us—and the world—the help we need.
Will there be people who scoff at you? Undoubtedly. But they’re not your audience. And you do your audience a disservice when you silence yourself out of fear of criticism—or value your opposition more than your followers.
You’re afraid of failure.
Of course! The heartbreak of failure is scary, for sure. But leaving your potential untapped because of fear? That is the literal definition of failure: “A lack of success; the omission of expected or required action.” Yikes.
Look, failure is a guarantee in media, no matter which way you slice it.
There is a learning curve for crafting a pitch, knowing whom to pitch, killing it on air, and getting booked again and again. (If you’re interested in how to do all this – hop on our waiting list for our premier training course).
You’re bound to blow some leads, have a few slip ups, and learn a few hard lessons. That’s the price of progress. Teachers pop up everywhere. But, if you’re willing to learn and grow, those failures can become the chisel that refines the potency of your message, the specificity of your brand, and the power of your reach.
Facing your fears is, in many ways, the true marker of success. Or, as Teddy Roosevelt said (and Brene Brown reminded us),
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…who… if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Use this moment right now as permission to talk about what you know best. You could reach people whose lives will change forever all because you were generous enough to share your gift.
Think you’re ready to be a media star?
Take the ultimate media-readiness challenge. It’s the one thing that you absolutely, no exceptions, must be able to do in order to kill it on TV or in print.
Be able to explain what you do and why it matters—to a fifth grader.
Yup.
Here’s why: Fifth graders are bright, inquisitive, and skeptical, have no context for your niche, don’t understand your jargon, and have a lot competing for their attention.
You have one minute or they’re moving on—and that’s being generous.
…Sounds a lot like your average producer.
The perfect media expert can break what they do down into terms anyone can understand. They know how to connect the dots to make the problems they solve universal. And they raise the stakes just enough to grab people’s attention, and are engaging, practical, and relatable enough to keep it.
So, can you explain what you do to a fifth grader? Here’s a few tips.
Assume nothing
First things first, jargon is a definitive no-no: It will quickly isolate anyone outside of your field, when what you want most is to connect.
For example, “I provide customized growth solutions to private, entrepreneur-led tech companies,” sounds like you’re speaking French. Or Dothraki. It’s total nonsense.
“I help young but established tech companies find the money they need to hit their next, big growth goal—like launching and developing a new product.”
Now we get it!
Connect what you do to what they know
Remember when your parents had to give you the birds and bees talk? Your job is to give us the birds and bees of your topic—using what we’ve probably seen or experienced to explain a complicated, totally foreign, and abstract concept—without making it awkward or uncomfortable (looking at you, Mom). And much like the perfect birds and bees talk, you should:
- Use clear metaphors and examples to connect what you do to something I know. How does the problem you solve manifest itself in smaller ways in everyone’s life? Where might I have seen it play out before? Relate the problem you solve to something they’ve encountered, even metaphorically, in order to help make what you do stick.
- Get as specific as possible. Much like “anything a bathing suit covers” creates more questions than it answers, the more specific and simple your language, the more likely your audience is to grasp it.
- Keep it light without compromising sincerity. Injecting humor and levity can make complicated, dense, or heavy subjects more accessible. But keeping it light is not the same thing as making light of your subject: We want your sincerity, high stakes, and vulnerability—just with a dash of humor to put us at ease.
Enthusiasm is contagious
Tell someone you want to talk about the wonders of science, and most people start counting sheep. But Bill Nye? There’s an entire generation of kids-turned-adults who would follow that guy into the jaws of the very polar bears he’s trying to save from global warming.
Neil Degrasse Tyson? Even Key and Peele wrote sketches about him! Think about that: A sketch comedy show lampooned a physicist and were confident everyone would know who he was. And we did!
Why? Bill Nye and Tyson are passionate. Their enthusiasm and love for what they do is so infectious, it makes people care. They’re not even on a mission to berate their audience into caring, or even to convince them why they should care. They just dial the complexity of what they do down to a 1 and the passion with which they share it up to a 10 (maybe an 11). And that makes us care!
Cass McCrory was waiting in line at Wegmans with a cart teeming with groceries, when the March issue of Oprah magazine caught her eye. She felt her pulse quicken.
She had been interviewed a few months ago for an article, but hadn’t heard back from the editor. There was only one way to find out if she’d made it in.
She tried to be super casual as she pulled a copy off the rack and started flipping through.
And then—there it was! Her name, her words, her business right there, in black and white.
That’s when the tears came. When she stepped up to the register she held out the page for the cashier to see and said, through happy tears, “See that? That’s me! I’m Cass McCrory. I’m in Oprah!”
How did it happen? At our urging, Cass responded to a query from Farnoosh Torabi (author and host of the So Money podcast and her own CNBC primetime show) who was looking for experts with unique insights for her finance column in O Magazine. We knew that Cass, founder of The Subtraction Project, who joined our Lights Camera Expert course in 2016, had a unique take on decluttering that would be a perfect fit for Farnoosh’s spring cleaning article.
Farnoosh interviewed her in November. And then—as it always happens—the waiting game began.
Months later, the surprise gift blind-sided Cass at the grocery store. We were, of course, beaming with pride for her even when she texted us this:
“You guys, I’m crying in Wegmans crying!”
As anyone who’s experienced it knows, that moment—seeing your name in print for the first time—is euphoric. It’s pride and bliss and Judd Nelson pumping his fist in the air at the end of the Breakfast Club.
It’s also attainable—if, like Cass, you know how to pitch, close, and deliver.
Cass has since seen a bump in her Instagram following and hits on The Subtraction Project.
But the very best part? Cass was able to leverage this article to grab more spots in the media.
She sent out emails with fresh pitches to local TV stations and publications—and now, they were all clamoring to have her as a guest!
She sent pitches to the local CBS station about more ways to subtract things you don’t need in your life. Then she fired off another to the Rochester Business Journal about how she’s helping business owners with courses—and how that’s streamlined into networking and opportunities.
She reached out to The Rock Girl Gang (the cool girl’s lunch table) and they’re going to do a feature on Subtraction Project. She put herself out there, with Oprah by her side—and everyone said yes.
That is our goal for you. We want you to have your Wegmans moment. And then, we want you to leverage that moment to get booked again and again. So that when people think of your field, they think of your face, your brand, and your business.