On Voting and Beacons
I heard a lyric today, “You can’t be a beacon if your light don’t shine.” (I think it’s from Donna Fargo.) Sort of fits in nicely with my philosophies that “If you don’t blow your own horn, there is no music,” and “shameless promotion.”
No one will follow you, let alone accept your advice, if you’re not so confident and enthusiastic about your value that you can’t assertively pursue others with it. People have to recognize you as a thought leader, object of interest, provider of value.
Today, in a critical off-year election, we will have a relatively low turnout of registered voters. Many of the primaries leading up to today had voter turnouts below 30 percent. Yet many people who are too lazy to vote—or claim they are “too disgusted,” meaning they’re simply not willing or able to discern who would best meet their self-interests—will complain about the results and those elected for the next two years, before they refuse to vote again.
If you’re not trying to influence the system, then you’ve lost my respect to complain about perceived injustices.
And if you’re not actively engaged in trying to promote and build your business, your complaints about the economy, technology, competition, outsourcing, and conspiracies don’t carry any weight with me. The benefit of being a solo practitioner is that you can engage in your own marketing and promotion without restraints from the “corporation” or “the boss.”
Yet too many otherwise fine consultants are working for a tougher and less enlightened boss than they ever suffered under in the corporate world.
You don’t get elected without building a constituency and devoted followers. You don’t build business without the exact same dynamics.
Light up someone’s life if you want to prevent a shipwreck on the rocks below.
© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.
Aaron F Stanton
Regarding ‘The benefit of being a solo practitioner is that you can engage in your own marketing and promotion without restraints from the “corporation” or “the boss.”’ – a sole practitioner who fails to self-promote actually has been blocked by “the boss” – himself.
That said, any boss who vetoes promoting the business has effectively condemned it to failure, whether it be the boss of a large corporation or a solo.
(Embarrassingly, my own website is terribly lacking in content. This post and comment alone is incentive to get to work on it. My only “excuse” is that I’ve been providing service to a client – but how will get more if I don’t fix this?!)
Tim Wilson
Alan,
I agree it’s easy to complain all one has to do is open their mouths as start talking. But to stand up and take action, well that’s another story altogether. As you put it if you’re unwilling to try to influence the system then you don’t get the right to complain how the system works.