Rethinking self-promotion

Swap out shame for purpose.

My first book and memoir, This Incredible Longing: Finding My Self in a Near-Cult Experience, comes out in February. After seven years of working on it, I’m excited to have people other than my friends and family read it. To ensure that they do, I’ll need to commit to ongoing promotion. But the thought of hawking myself to get the book into those unknown readers’ hands fills me with dread.

What if I end up just shouting into the void? What if people get sick of me posting about it? What if my work sucks? Self-doubt and shame run the show until I remember that I’m thinking about promotion in the wrong way.

Gifts

A decade or so ago, when trying to fill my women’s leadership workshops, I complained to my mentor about being embarrassed and exhausted from the constant self-promotion required to get people to sign up.

“You’re not promoting yourself,” he said.

“Really?” I removed the phone from my ear and scowled at it. “Because it sure seems like I am.”

“No, hon. You’re promoting your gifts.”

Photo by Ekaterina Shevchenko on Unsplash

That statement gave me a new perspective and energy. What good are gifts if they’re all wrapped up, tucked away on a back shelf in the closet? They require sharing.

And what were my gifts anyway? Suddenly it was clear: in that context, I had a gift for uniting people in the pursuit of self-discovery, and creating structured experiences that filled them with a bigger sense of themselves and each other. I contemplated all of my gifts, and wrote them down. Defining them made me feel relaxed and proud. There was a paradox: I realized that even if I’d spent time cultivating these gifts, I didn’t have that much to do with them; they were innate or inherited. And yet, naming them helped me step into a type of ownership, and I felt more keen to share without apology. This was the start of shifting my thinking about self-promotion from calling attention to myself, to sharing what I have to offer.

If you struggle with self-promotion, naming your gifts could be the first step in rethinking it, followed by connecting to a purpose and strategizing towards it.

Step 1: Do a Gift Audit

It’s likely you have several gifts beyond the ones you’re trying to promote. Write them down, connecting them to their impact. Examples: “I make gorgeous presentations that are actually interesting and deliver value to audiences.” “I have a beautiful voice that soothes those who listen.” “I listen in a way that makes people feel deeply known.”

If the thought of doing this makes your stomach turn, you can ask for help, assuming that asking for help also doesn’t make you nauseous. Invite people you love or work with to share their perceptions of your gifts and their impact. It’s a lovely way to learn about them. If you feel too shy to ask outright, send an email. Here’s a script:

I’m trying to get more comfortable with self-promotion, and this HI lady on Substack told me to ask others how they would describe my gifts. Do you feel comfortable writing down what you see as my gifts and their impact?

Most people really enjoy the opportunity to do this. Plus, the practice of asking others helps build the tolerance for putting yourself out there.

Doing a gift audit won’t prevent the old shame and dread from snooping around. But when I remember (to remember) my gifts, and then follow the subsequent two steps, those feelings don’t stay for long.

Step 2: Connect to a Bigger Purpose

Promoting your gifts has a short-term end goal (sell more tickets, build a platform, etc.) but when you connect your gifts to a broader purpose, it can really help motivate you. So, for example, if you’re a classically trained actress and your gift is portraying Shakespearean characters in a modern, honest, and accessible way, some examples of your purpose might be:

• To bring Shakespeare to the next generation.

• To deepen human empathy through the poetry of theater.

• To keep the classics alive.

But your gifts don’t have to serve such lofty purposes. They could simply fulfill a larger life goal: to keep getting work, and even: so I can afford to send my kids to college. Whatever purpose you connect to your gifts, the next step shows how to conduct your “self” promotion in service of it.

Step 3: Use Purpose(s) to Strategize

The aforementioned Shakespearean actress was a client, and she got a job with a theater that required their actors to go out on the street and sell tickets. As you might imagine, she hated it. So much, that she thought about bagging the whole job: “I trained to act, not peddle!” But connecting with her purpose to share Shakespeare with a new audience helped her move beyond her distaste towards a creative approach. Instead of just yelling TICKETS! COME SEE TWELFTH NIGHT! She started conversations with passersby. Ever hear of a playwright named William Shakespeare? Yeah. Cool. Have you ever seen one of his plays? Nope. Well, here’s your chance to discover what the fuss is all about… only some conversations resulted in sales, but she had way more fun connecting with people and sharing about her passion.

What’s interesting about this last step, is that sometimes the gifts that you are not promoting can help promote the ones you are. One consultant I know who’s purpose is to help teams embrace creativity writes little ditties about teamwork and creates videos of her singing them with her ukulele. She uses her singer-songwriting gifts to promote her consulting work (and models creativity in the process).

Some lucky players are able to do the work they love and promote it without issue. Others leave the work of promotion to a team. But for so many of us— whether we’re creatives, employees that want to get ahead, or entrepreneurs — it’s up to us. Following these three steps can help you minimize any shame and dread that self-promotion kicks up. Instead of forcing yourself through the dread, they can help you relax into the task. And maybe, just maybe, have some fun.