Self Promotion- The Donald Trump Rules of Business

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the first or second episode of the current season of The Apprentice there is a scene in the boardroom in which Donald Trump says that many talented people fail to succeed because they do a poor job of marketing themselves. I have no disagreement with that, many people do a very poor job of articulating their accomplishments and their strengths. During harder economic times such as now that is something that can be fatal.

You can break that up into two kinds of self promotion/marketing. We’ll call the first visual. That ties into your appearance, resume, portfolio, blog etc. These are not the areas that deal with the substance and or ability of your work and who you are. The flip side of the self promotion/marketing coin is your ability to do just that, promote and market yourself. You may be the among the ten best machinists/artists/athletes in the world but the value of your abilities is diminished without good marketing skills.

In other terms it is called building your brand so that it is recognized as being among the best. Do that well and good things will come to you. So as part of my shameless attempt at self promotion allow me to share the picture below with you. As you can see my fabulous blog is being used as an example of how to use the term, steely eyed. Pretty cool stuff.