Focused - 13: Promotion Can Feel Gross

Episode Date: January 24, 2017

Being good at what you do isn't enough. You also need customers, clients, or whatever else you need to pay for shoes. That may mean you have to do a little promotion of your own. But you can be really great at what you do and still terrible at self-promotion. Tricky stuff!

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in the digital age. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason. Hi, David. How's it going? Good.

We're back. We took a little break behind the scenes of recording over the new year, but we're back in action with more episodes. And we have some exciting news, which I think we should probably, since it's brand new, we should probably mention it. I tacked on a mention at the very end of the last episode. But in case you didn't get there, we started a Facebook group called the Free Agents Group. Now, not everybody loves Facebook, but I think we were trying to find a fairly easy-to-use platform that people could get on or they were already on where the effort to create it and maintain it was pretty low and that the um that the functionality of it works in terms

of having a a bunch of discussions in a small group and i we did this for the incomparable and i've seen other podcasts do it i know some people really hate facebook if you don't have a facebook account you could create like a generic Facebook account and get there. And I think we're open to the possibility that we might do other stuff in the future somewhere else. But largely not because we're trying to be selective of like people we want in the club or not. It's much more like people who are there are Facebook spammers, and we want to be able to keep them out or kick them out when they come in and, and have it just be a nice conversation that among among all of us who are making and listening to the show. And in fact, I would say the number one goal that we had in making it was for this conversation that we have on the podcast to extend to the listeners and let them, you know, our listeners have so many experiences that we don't have as people relatively new to this and in our specific professions, that what I really want that Facebook group to be is a way for the people who listen to help each other and discuss issues with a level of depth that we can't always bring

to it because of our own personal experiences. Yeah, well, we've created, in essence, a free agent's water cooler. So go and have fun, talk to each other. I put up a note in preparation of these two shows and got some great ideas from some of the listeners. So some of the stuff that happens there finds its way into show content as well. So I recommend doing it.

If you don't like Facebook, that's cool. It's not mandatory, but we were hearing from people that they wanted something like this, so here it is. Yeah, far be it from me to suggest that you should just create an alias and create a... You're not on Facebook, just make up a person with your name,

with no information or fake information, and then join as that. That's fine. If that's the way in, and if you don't want to be on, that's fine. It is not mandatory. The Facebook URLs are weird. If you're on Facebook, you can search for free agents, and you will probably find it, and look for the hat and the sunglasses. But you can also go to tinyurl.com slash freeagentsgroup, and that will redirect you to the Facebook ID. And just ask for admission, and we will let you in and join the conversation. And we do that about once a day. So once you ask, it may be a day before you get the email back. But we're letting them in as fast as we can right um you know when you were mentioning making up like a fake id and coming

into facebook that kind of is consistent with the you know the free agent spy theme so ah interesting i uh if you're going to do that i think you should go hard at that just go all the way yeah facebook will you're not supposed to do that on facebook, but you know, again, will they know? Will they not know? Maybe that's part of your job as a good agent is to, you know, have a good cover. Exactly. But that's not why we're here today. We're here today because being good at what you do isn't enough. You also need customers, clients, or whatever it else you need to pay for your shoes. That may mean you have to do a little promotion and self-marketing of your own. And that is something that is really hard for a lot of people getting into this free

agent business. We're going to get into the hippie segment early this week, which is interesting because oftentimes where we talk about our feelings happens later on. But I think we're going to talk about it pretty early because this is hard this is hard stuff it's um you can be this is something that david that you noted in our little uh show document later on that i think i should probably even say right now which is people who are very good at what they do uh are very good at what they do it has not it has no correlation or very little correlation into your skill and comfort in being a self-promoter. Yeah. And that's a sad thing because, you know, getting business is how you keep this running. And if you can't figure it out, even if you're great at what you do,

it could be a very easy way to find yourself out of the independent worker business. Exactly. And I know people as an independent, and we'll get into this in greater detail, I know people who really relish the other aspect of doing a business that is not the core. And that can be somebody who likes managing the books and making it all work, or who likes selling advertising or doing client management or things like that, that are, that are sort of outside the core, but they relish it, but other people don't. And I, I'm a, I'm a great example of that. Like, I don't want to be an ad salesperson, but a lot of my revenue, most of my revenue that my business generates is from advertising. And so either I have to do something I don't like or i have to find somebody to do it

for me but this is this is the challenge and and self you know self-promotion and marketing is is like that it's you're selling yourself and and and your material and so although it's not quite the same as being an ad salesperson or selling a product directly it is kind of that and not everybody's comfortable with that yeah the thing I wrote in the outline is promotion can feel gross. And, you know, really it can. And sometimes it is gross. I am recently, I do a lot of different things to try and get business and I've got two different businesses that are super different. So it's, it's a, it's a fun experiment for me. But one of the things I do as a lawyer is I go have lunch with people and I look for people and we'll talk about later some tips and things we do. But one of the things I do as a lawyer is I go have lunch with people. And I look for people, and we'll talk about later some tips and things we do.

But one of the things I do is go out with people in complementary businesses and talk to them about their business and mine. So we kind of have a knowledge of each other. And I did that recently with a guy. And it was really gross. I mean, the guy was, you know, it was so, he was so going overboard with the whole thing. And the capper was at the end. He pulls out his briefcase. He hands me the sheet.

And he's gone through my LinkedIn, because I'm on LinkedIn like everybody else, although I barely use it. And he's highlighted all of my friends and people that I'm friends with on LinkedIn. He says, these are all people that I think would be a good fit for me. Would you please just send them my contact information? I looked at the guy. I for me. Would you please just send them my contact information? Yeah. I looked at the guy. I'm like, are you kidding me? That's my problem is I can't keep it silent, Jason.

So I'm like, this is not going to work. And I walked out of the restaurant. And there was another guy with us. It was like three of us having lunch. And I looked at the guy. I said, this is insane. And I threw it in the trash. And I turned around.

And the guy was standing right there looking at me. And I guess, you know, like I said, it can get gross. Yeah, I struggle with this all the time. And in my business, you know, so much of it is just sort of promoting stuff, self-promotion of articles I've written or podcasts that I'm on or things that I'm doing. And I don't want to be a spammer, right? And this is a challenge. One of the things that's good about having a presence on social media is that it can be good for self-promotion. But another thing that it's good for is being a person and being authentic and connecting with your audience. And there's

this line that I always am worried about crossing, which is going from being genuine somehow to pushing the relationship too far. And, you know, instead of it being, you know, everybody gets something out of it. Now it's really I'm getting something out of it and forcing that on other people. And so I always worry about that. And I see people who do similar things to what I do, who are relentless with the self-promotion. Like there are people I follow on Twitter. There are also a lot of people, quite frankly, who I like a lot, who I don't follow on Twitter because they do this, where they will tweet out the piece that they've worked on or the project that they just finished. And they'll do it five times in a day or two. And they push every minor thing that they write. There's a tweet or two

about it. And it's just kind of an avalanche. And I don't want to be one of those people because I do value kind of that in other people. So I want to kind of do that myself too. But I will say that it's also really easy to lose perspective on how others perceive you and think that any minor step you make is going to be perceived as negative. And the fact is, there may be some people who see you do any small amount of self-promotion and get offended because there are people who are offended easily by advertising and promotion and marketing in any way. is that most people are not like that. And that it's far more likely that I personally underestimate my audience's appetite for information about what I'm doing, rather than overestimating it. That generally, I'm not promoting enough out of fear of overpromoting and out of fear of one person pushing back that they don't

want to see it because that's the person that's literally the person at the far end of the distribution that's the most sensitive person who you're triggering there and you may just need to blow through that but that's been an ongoing process for me. Just the idea that do people care about what I'm doing? Do people want to hear from me at all? And that's stupid, right? Because people who follow you on whatever marketing channel you have, whatever social media, mailing lists, whatever, they are saying they want to hear from you. They do care about what you do, but it can be a real challenge to get over that and accept the fact, and I realize this goes to issues of self-esteem and imposter syndrome and all sorts of things like that, but it is a challenge where you have to kind of like take a step outside your own body and think of your business as something different, and that people, you know, that people do want to

hear about it. And that you can, you can overdo it. But I think I think the bigger risk is that you do nothing. And like I sell, I'm still selling the sponsorships on my website, I don't have a person to sell those. And they don't sell as well as they would if I did a better job of pushing it. And I feel bad about it because that's money that I'm not making because of some fear of bugging people about the fact that I am selling sponsorships. And that's probably not rational. And I need to get over it. And I'm still working on it.

I think for our audience, the biggest problem is going to be that you're not doing it enough. I doubt there's people that are going at it too hard. And honestly, if you're worried that you're going to go at it too hard, then you won't. It's just you're going to take care of that problem yourself. But you do need to get out there. You do need to find a way to promote yourself and sell your business because the whole idea of being an independent worker is to remain an

independent worker and you need business to do that. So let's talk a little bit about that. But before we do that, I think it's time for us to talk about the sponsor of this week's episode, David. This episode of The Free Agents is brought to you by FreshBooks. Get a 30-day unrestricted free trial by going to freshbooks.com slash freeagents. If you're listening to the sound of my voice, you're probably already a free agent or seriously thinking about it. As we've talked about, that means racing against the clock to wrap up three projects, prepare for a meeting, all while you're trying to tackle a mountain of paperwork. Welcome to the world of living as a free agent.

This life can be challenging, but our friends at FreshBooks believe the rewards are worth it, and they built tools to help make getting paid easier for all of us. With the growth of the internet, there's never been better opportunities for being self-employed. But you need to get paid, and to meet this need, FreshBooks has been working tirelessly on an all-new version of their cloud accounting software the new freshbooks has been redesigned from the ground up and it is custom built to work exactly the way you do with freshbooks you'll be able to be more productive and organized while being paid quickly the all-new freshbooks is not only

ridiculously easy to use it's also packed full of features. You can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. You can build invoices in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface, so you'll see them exactly how your client will. You'll be able to set up online payments with just a couple of clicks, and this is why FreshBooks customers get paid up to four days faster than people who don't use FreshBooks. One of my favorite features is the ability to see when your client has viewed the invoice. Now you don't have to guess as to whether they received it or not. You'll know whether they saw it. And that allows you to avoid those chaser emails. FreshBooks also has an all-new notification system that you can think

of as your personal assistant. Every time you log in, you'll get an update of what's been changed with your business and what needs your attention. All of these new features are coupled with a beautiful redesign focusing on simplicity and clarity, giving you a bird's eye view of your business at all times. One of my most common bits of advice of people getting started with a new business is always to keep track of their money. Where are they making money? Where are they losing it? Where are they getting paid? And where are they getting stiffed? Well, FreshBooks is your friend for all of those questions. It helps you keep track of that stuff as you get rolling. It presents your financial data clearly and simply to you. And best of all, FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to listeners of the free agents.

Just go to freshbooks.com slash free agents and enter free agents in the how did you hear about us section so they know you came to them from this show. And thank you, FreshBooks, for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. All right. So how do we get away from the gross stuff and do self-marketing that is not gross, does not make you feel like you need to take a shower? One of the first things, when I was a young lawyer, one of the things somebody told me, because I had no idea how to make business and get clients, they said, the best source of business you have is the work right now on your desk. And I think that applies to almost any industry.

If you've got customers or clients you're taking care of right now, taking really good care of them can be a great source of business as you go into the future. That's, I mean, I guess that makes sense, right? That your best customers are the customers you already have. Well, it's not only that, it's because you're doing good work for them, they tell their friends about you. And I get a lot of work, both, well, mainly on the legal side, because that's where I really have clients, but I get a lot of work from my existing clients telling their friends. I mean, many of the new clients I get say, oh, Joe Smith told me that you did a really good job, and I want to, you know,

share this with you. Now, that is a passive thing that happens. It's, it doesn't involve any self-marketing unless you decide to make it. So when I, when I first left the big firm and, or the small firm, whatever you want to call it, when I first went out on my own, one of the things I did is I called all my clients and they, you know, they were all with me and coming with me to the new, to this new thing I was doing. I said, you know, I would really like to get some additional clients. If you have any friends or colleagues that you think I would be a good fit for, I'd really appreciate it if you let them know. And it was just a phone call. I didn't like send out this bulk email. I had this personal conversation with a select group of clients that I knew really loved what I did for them. And that turned it and they all went out

of their way. I mean, I turned my clients basically into my marketing department. And that is a very good way. Now, whether you're doing app development or, you know, anything, you could do that. Yeah, I think the idea of this goes back to saying, you know, reluctance to ask, reluctance to bother people with your needs. This is a good example of about as low impact as it gets to say, to go from, boy, I do a really good job for them. I hope they tell their friends about me to saying, hey, if you like the job I'm doing and you know of somebody who could, you know, could do it, could use my skills and talents and might, you know, work well with me, let them know. Let them know that, tell your friends basically, right? And that is not a particularly dense bit of marketing,

right? It's really just reminding them that you are in this business and want more clients, want more work, and make them think of the most basic connection of, do I know anybody who, oh, yeah. And then if they do, great. And if they don't, or they aren't that happy with your work, then they won't. And it's fine either way. But that is as low impact as it gets, I would think. Yeah. And it is, in terms of bang for your buck. I'm assuming that you've got these good relationships with these clients. It pays dividends. I mean, I think anybody listening to the show, if they got on the phone today and called their five top clients, their five happiest clients and had that speech, you know, I'm just looking for some additional work. If you know

someone like you that you think could use me, I'd really appreciate it. I almost, I don't want to say I guarantee, but I think it's super likely that you will could use me. I'd really appreciate it. I almost, I don't want to say I guarantee, but I think it's super likely that you will have more business within the next two or three weeks. I like the way you think. Be right back. I got to call some. No. I'll leave for after the show. Yeah. I mean, right. I mean, your, your happy customers know they have their own network. They have their own contacts and And that is, it's only logical. The other thing is kind of the top of mind thing where you say you want them, you want them to think, you know, if I need someone to help me write something about Apple, I want Jason Snell. You want to be on the top of their mind about this stuff.

And I think the way you do that is finding ways to kind of show up on their radar more often. With Jason's stuff, it's, you know's getting regular posts out at Six Colors. I'm going to talk about the legal side a lot for a lot of this show today. And for me, it's them reminding them that, hey, there's this business lawyer out there that's a pretty smart guy. So putting together a newsletter every couple months or something where if you don't have a way to get in contact with them to do actual work for them you still remind them that you are in the universe and still able to do work yeah and the there there's a cynical way to look at this which is what you're creating is advertising and honestly coming from an editorial background i think that there are a lot of people who have

been i've worked with over the years who would say oh that you know they're just trying to get you to pay them for something it's like like, well, of course they are ultimately, but the transaction here is if you can create something that is useful and that they don't have to pay for, then all you're really asking is to be kept in mind in case they have, in case they have business down the road. Now, I think that the bad examples of this are things that do read like advertising flyers that like, well, I'm not going to give you any actual help unless you pay me, but I'm going to fill your inbox or back in the day, your mailbox, your physical mailbox with something that looks like it's got information in it, but it's really

just kind of garbage and advertising. And that's not the way to do it. But giving away, this is, in my business, this is the case too, giving away content in order to make a connection and then build up value and maybe it leads somewhere. Now, my business model with Six Colors is not particularly extreme, but there are other people in my same business, more or less, who do this this where like Ben Thompson at Stratechery, he is an independent writer that Stratechery and is what he does. He also has a podcast. That's about it. But he gives away one piece of content a week. And then the rest of the stuff, he does a daily email and only that one piece is free. And the rest of it, you have to subscribe for. Six Colors, I write a lot of stuff and then

there's some extra stuff that is for people who pay. And that's just a matter of sort of deciding your business model. But the premise is really strong, which is to stay connected to people and give them some good stuff that's an example of why they should keep you in mind if they want to take this relationship further and spend some more money. I just went to a college night last night. It's like college test prep thing at my local high school. And there was a guy there and he has a college prep test business, but his presentation was entirely content. And he gave everybody a book that his company does that's entirely content now why does he do this he does this because he's going to get first off everybody who comes and

listens to him is a potential client like the target the target audience is perfect it is you know these people are all all potential clients every single one of them nobody's sitting there hoping to get a free weekend at the resort if they hear the pitch for the timeshare, right? Every single person there is either about to apply to go to college or has a child who's going to apply to go to college. the guy who has the college test prep company a couple of towns up the road from me. And if my daughter, if I do want my daughter to do something like, you know, get some direct counseling for college exam prep, well, guess what? He's number one in the book now because of that. But it doesn't take away from the fact that he kind of earned it because he did give up content. And if what I had gotten from him was an ad at the high school where this meeting was, I would have not thought as highly of him.

So, that's part of it too, is give genuinely good stuff as an example of your good work. And I think good will come back to you. Like on my legal side, one of the things, and I haven't done this yet, so now I'm kind of preaching to the choir a little bit, but I have a newsletter list. When I set up the practice, I put it on the website. I can see there's a nice list of people that have signed up. I've never sent one. But the intention is to send out every couple months. I'm going to try and do this in 2017. Just a short newsletter that gives a few updates in the law that I think are relevant to my clients.

A couple laws have changed, something you should be aware of. And this is going to be content that's usable to them. It's not really an advertisement. And I'm only going to do it at most every two months. I'm thinking probably every three months because I want to be there once in a while in their inbox, but I don't want to be that annoying guy in their inbox. And on the Max Barkey side, I give away videos all the time. I do little screencasts. I sell them, but I also give them away.

were a design professional, you could send out a newsletter to your client list and potential client list talking about trends in design, you know, and say, how's your logo compared to what things are, you know, where things are going and give people true information. I think you'd be surprised how much work comes out of that. Yeah, that's great. I too have, am somebody who built a newsletter list and didn't use it for a long time. Right? And that goes back to that reluctance, I think a little bit and it's work. I mean, let's let's also say that this self marketing can be affected by a mindset that marketing has no value, which I know is illogical. But again, people don't always behave logically that if you value the core of what you do, and you don't put any value on anything

else, it's very easy to see why you'd rather go ahead and do this work that you consider real work instead of going and doing the newsletter that you're giving away for free to people who aren't even paying you and aren't really clients. And your priorities can get all out of whack. And so it's another case too, where you have to kind of remind yourself that there's a bigger picture here and that there is value in this thing, even if you don't see it immediately. Another source of self-marketing, I think, in addition to going to your customers and clients, is it going to other people in your industry? And even, I guess I would say your competitors, if they're friendly competitors. In the legal business, that happens all the time.

Other lawyers send other lawyers work all the time. I get conflicted on a case. I can't go forward. I send it to another lawyer. Or there's somebody who I know who does something that my client needs a little better than I do. And I want the client to have the best service. I don't want them just to have, I don't want to take everything. I want to get them the best service. So in whatever industry you're in, look for specialization areas. And maybe I'll use the design professional thing again. Maybe there's a guy who's really good at making icons and you're really good at making user interface or, or magazine covers or something else. Hang out with that guy or that gal and get to know each other and start sending each other work, you know, and

get the best to the best person. And that works out because then you get to do the stuff that you're really good at and the stuff that you really love. And you get to know that the people that come to you get the best service. Yeah. Being a, we've talked about this, I think in other episodes, but being really open and it's the miracle on 34th Street thing. For those who haven't seen that movie, one of the pivotal things in it is that Santa Claus is working at Macy's department store and a child asks him where they can get this toy that isn't available at Macy's and the mother's very upset. And Santa Claus says, oh, you can go to Gimble's and it's a very good value. and it's got it's a very good value and the whole point there is you can be a real jerk and say if it if I can't do it it nobody can I can't help you or you try to take on work that you're not it's not appropriate for you or you don't really have time for it and or you can do the right thing and provide good customer service and recommend them to someone

else you know who is a good fit for that kind of work and that that has so many benefits it has benefits for your client because they trust you to not just take all the work but to to uh that you're looking out for them and it has this real benefit with the people you recommend and refer people to because they will respond in kind eventually at some point most of the time it will all it will all work out but you do have to get outside of the idea that um i'm scratching for every single little bit of business here and i'm not gonna you know share my clients with anyone which which I've seen people do. Yeah, it doesn't work. You know, it comes back. I mean, all this stuff comes back to you if you are generous and share with the right people. I mean, you got to make sure you're sending them to somebody who knows what they're doing. And then you just get this trust circle built and

it's very lucrative for you, frankly. What about social media? I mean, this is the third rail of this discussion, right? I mean, do you go to social media with your self-marketing? Well, I mentioned it earlier. I have to. I really do because that's in the media business. That is absolutely part of what I do is if I write a big new story about something, I need to promote it. And I did create for my podcast network for The Incomparable. I created a Facebook group.

And for another podcast I do, we created a facebook group and uh for another podcast i do we created a facebook group oh that's this podcast right i mean there are there are you know i don't get in the faces of the people who are my relatives on facebook about every story i post right because that's not a good audience for it but twitter is a place where i i go all the time i also have a business twitter account for everything I do that's separate from my personal. And so for me, one of my challenges is what do I push hard on the personal side, knowing that the business side can promote everything because there are more people following me as a person than following Six Colors as a website or The Incomparable as a podcast

network. And so I have to do some calibration there about it. But I think it's very important. I think social media's importance can be really overstated, even if you've got I mean, I've got I don't know how many 1000s, 10s of 1000s of followers on Twitter now. But I think I think you can. I don't think that necessarily drives business or traffic as well as people might think it, it's not a solution unto itself, but it's part of the story. And that's where you really have to kind of take a deep breath and say, yes, I'm going to stand up on this, on this box and shout to the world. I have a thing that I did that you should see or buy or whatever it is. And I think,

but I think you have to, you have to do that. You have to get over the fact that you're calling attention to yourself. If you're like me, you have to get over the fact that you're calling attention to yourself and you're kind of asking for money or attention and feeling like, you know, is this impolite to ask for money or attention because you know, you're an independent worker, you need to survive and make a living. And so you kind of got to get over it. Yeah. And if you're in a business that makes kind of has a churn of clients or customers, maybe you're selling a product where people just buy one or two of them and then they're done, or you have a service where they only need it once. A good friend of mine is an estate planning

attorney, you know, and she, the biggest problem, her business is that people hire her, she makes their estate plan, and then they don't need her anymore. So she's got to constantly be refreshing that pipeline. And I think a business like that, you've got to get serious about social media. You should be looking into Facebook advertising and Google advertising and the various elements out there. You shouldn't go into it blindly. You should be smart about it and track analytics and see if it pays for itself or not. But those things are certainly out there. And if you need those services to get the kind of clients that you need, then I don't think that you should say no to it. Yep, I agree.

Another one, and you kind of mentioned this earlier when you're talking about advertising for Six Colors, is you don't have to do all this yourself. If this truly is grocery and you just have a real hard time doing it, there are people out there that will help market your business for you. My guess is they'll do it more aggressively than you would like because that's what they do. But if you just want to hand it over to somebody, there's a way. I think everybody has to do some self-marketing, right? Everybody has to do that. But you can figure out as your business grows, is this something you really can do effectively or not?

Is there somebody you can do to help you? And I know you're thinking like, oh, well, yeah, but it's still my Twitter account or whatever. It's still my name on it or I need to do the content. It's like, yeah, there's some degree of this that you have to do. But you can get help from people who are better at at some of this stuff than you are, depending on your size of your business and your abilities, you can get somebody to design that newsletter for you, or you can get somebody to come up with a social media strategy or whatever it is. And in my case, like advertising is a good example. I'm trying for as many parts of my

business as I can manage it to get somebody to do the work of selling the ads for me, because that's just not a job that I want. And that's not quite marketing, but that person may still say, you need to post this, you need to send this out to your customers, and then you got to work with them on that. Because in the end, some of it's going to fall to you regardless as an independent person you're going to be perceived as being the same as your business to a certain extent and that means your voice has to be present in what happens otherwise i i feel like people will you know if you're marketing you but without you present in the marketing i'm not sure if that works yeah but but like getting back to the social media stuff, you could certainly hire somebody to manage that for you if you didn't want to.

Totally. A couple recommendations from the listeners from Twitter and Facebook. Ray said, attend conferences in the industry. He finds that's a really good source of self-promotion and getting new work, which is a good idea. And it kind of goes on the theme we were talking about earlier about talking to people that work in the same business as you and finding who the specialists are. And Brad wrote in and said that the best source of business for him is having lunch with existing clients.

He just goes to lunch with them, talks to them, and suddenly work comes in. And my guess would be that not only does he get work from those clients, that they discover something they need him to do, but maybe it also puts them him at top of mind and then they can refer their friends as well. Yeah, that's I mean, it goes back to the idea that if you remind your customers of your existence, and that you're seeking work, that work will come to you from them, they'll be reminded, oh, yeah, I do have more work I could give you. Or they'll be reminded to recommend you to others, or they'll know a friend who also needs work in that area. So it's staying in touch, right? Staying in touch doesn't

necessarily mean a tweet or an email. And in fact, if you're in a business where you have clients that you can see personally every so often, I think it's totally worth doing that because the human connection is going to, I think, beat out an email every time. A few tips. Get out of your comfort zone on this stuff. If you're really afraid of it, find a way to not be afraid or at least fake it. You know, next time you're in a room full of people, move around. Treat it maybe as a game.

You know, we all like to gamify stuff. Find a way to, you know, legitimately do a little self-promotion without being gross. Totally possible. You've got to find your peace with it. Be mindful of it, though. Look at what is working and what is not working. If you're putting a ton of time into Facebook and you're not getting any customers or clients out of it, then get out of it.

I tell people when they want to get into the stuff, start tracking their marketing time. In fact, that's some advice I gave to Katie Floyd, our last guest. You know, if you're going to join like networking groups, keep track of how much time you spend going to those groups and how much work that comes out of them and make the tough decision as to whether it's worth your time or not. Another thing I do that's kind of useful is I have a little system. It's just an OmniFocus, my task manager, where I have a repeating task. It's on a three-week basis because I want to do it more than once a month, but not a lot, where I just kind of look at what I've done in terms of marketing and is there something further I could be doing.

I just dedicate 10 minutes to thinking about it once a month, and you'll come up with some better ideas and you'll be able to kind of see what's working for you and what's not. I think a lot of these come under the category of apply some rigor to your marketing. And I think that goes to a larger point, which is a lot of marketing is scattershot. It is an afterthought. It's something you do because you have to, but you don't really want to. And the problem with that is that you may be throwing away your shot, right? That's not what, it's not effective that way. And you might be able to even do less if you focus on what's effective. So when you say having a system,

looking at what you're doing every so often, trying to have some metrics almost so you know what is working and what's not, that's all valuable, as well as keeping track of how much time you're spending on marketing, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure we missed some. We'll be doing a feedback show in the coming months, and this will be one of the things we cover. So if we miss something, let us know, and we'll get it in there. Yeah, absolutely. Anything else you got on self-promotion? Jason, are you at peace with it now? And I would say you're not alone if you struggle with this because I'm right there with you trying to find the right approach, not wanting to overdo it, but also talk and shake hands and all of those things that I just have. I struggle with every single step, but I also appreciate that it's required and that it's part of running your business is getting work. And so you have to put yourself out there

and you have to get over any hesitation that you've got. So I struggle with it, but I'm also on it and trying to pay attention to it. Well, just the idea of having to go get a job again, to me, is so dreadful. It puts me at peace with the idea that I need to do this marketing. As to whether I'm doing it right or not, I feel like I have a lot to learn and, frankly, just a lot to monitor going forward.

Because I'm already finding things that I did when I first went out on my own that, in hindsight, were a waste of time. And I'm trying to, like you said earlier, spend my marketing capital carefully. Not only is it the capital of the money and my time, but it's also my listeners and readers and clients' time and attention. So I'm trying to find smart ways to do that. But I think we're getting there. All right. We are here for you all. I hope this has been helpful. Definitely you pop on the Facebook group and talk about a little bit more and maybe

share your stories with others that would be great too um you can find out more about free agents and see all our episodes at relay.fm slash free agents and of course like we said the facebook group free agents group tinyurl.com slash free agents. And we will be back in two weeks with another episode of Free Agents. Until then, David, it's been a pleasure as always. Yes, it has, Jason. I'm looking forward to it. That was some self-promotion I did there. Did you see that?

Yes. Very clever. We'll see you next time, everybody. Thank you.