TGHarris Consulting

I am always paying attention to what business owners do to promote their businesses and I continually get amazed at how many of them have a FEAR of promoting their business. What is even more amazing is how comfortable they are promoting other businesses. I will see them wearing designer shirts , hats, glasses, jackets, t-shirts and carrying around a name brand coffee mug and so on. I think you get my point.

To really make my point I want to share a story with you that recently happened to me.

I was walking by a store front of a gentleman that I have over time become quite familiar with. He owns a franchise business that is fairly new to our area. Over a period of time he has asked me for some advice on promoting his business. I have given him about three ideas that would give him great exposure to his target market and would cost him virtually nothing but he has never acted on them. Anyway back to my story. This gentleman always has a cold coffee drink every time I see him, so I commented how he must love coffee. He then proceeded to give me a 15 minute commercial on Costco’s Kirkland brand coffee and how much better and cheaper it was versus’ Starbucks. As I listened to him endorse this coffee brand I kept thinking how I wished he would do the same type of endorsement for his own business.

You see he had never followed up with the promotional ideas I gave him because he was too EMBARRASSED to let the organizations I had referred him to know he was soliciting their help in the marketing for his own business.

Why are we so comfortable PROMOTING someone else’s business and so EMBARRASSED to PROMOTE our own?

In today’s economy SELF PROMOTION is not SHAMELESS it is SURVIVAL!

Please tell me your Self Promotion Story.

Terry

The Business Coach