Entrepreneurial cojones. 

(please note lack of graphics since I couldn’t think of an appropriate picture to post with this)

No matter how honest your work is, or how beautiful, or how pure, or how simple or true, the fact is, if you want to get the word about your work out to the world and separate yourself from the masses, you better have a pair.

Because as long as it’s sitting on your hard drive, in  your art studio, in the back of your gorgeous mass of grey cerebral tissue that sits on your momentarily well-tanned shoulders, your work is very much NOT DONE.

Love Thyself, Market Thy Work

Producing work you love is the easy part.  Having the guts to take it to market and see it fly is quite another animal and doesn’t always come naturally.  Because it means engaging in the time honored tradition of selling thyself.  The world needs to know about you and all you do!

It was not too long ago when I thought that I had no idea what this meant.  I was engaged in an online discussion and feeling very much like a pesce out of water because the subject was content marketing your small business through social media.

A couple of hours later, I thought, now wait a New York minute here:

Who’s kidding who?  There’s a  successful B&B in the middle of the Italian countryside where there was once a pile of rocks.  Oh.  And there’s that thing hanging on my wall… what does it say when I read the fine print?  Right. Bachelor of  Science in Marketing. 

Turns out I do know something about this stuff, and I better start using rustling up everything I’ve got in my backpack, because to be honest I’ve got my hands in a plethora of creative projects right now, enough to keep me busy to my eyeballs. And every single one of them needs marketing attention. 

There’s my novel, True Vines, published by Gemelli Press  that will be hitting bookstores and and online shops in late October.

There’s my B&B, booked to the gills until the end of October.  (Oh, the end of October is going to be a crazy time.  I see it already.)

There’s a new art charity donation project that I’m working on with some fellow artists.  It’s all hush hush for now, but our goal will be to change the world in a small way with beautiful art.  Stay tuned.

I’m coaching clients on life change.  This is huge, and something that I’ve very quietly working on for a long time.  I’ve started with a very limited number for this summer and fall, and I’ll be opening my coaching schedule in early 2013 and taking on new clients.

Last but not least, I’ve written and self-published Your Truth:  Changing the Path Back to Yourself, an ebook about having the courage and conviction to be who you really are and take on the work you were meant to do.   It’s for sale here as a PDF and on Amazon.com in Kindle form. 

And that’s just the start of the list. Hey, I’m a busy girl.  And it’s not going to slow down anytime soon.

But enough about me. Let’s talk marketing  strategy:

I am going to share with you one of my best marketing ideas to grow entrepreneurial cajones:

If you have work you want to market, I am going to assume you have a blog already. Go and visit blogs that say what you want to say, only to a larger audience.  Follow those blogs, read what those people write.  If there’s a match between what you do and what they say, write to them. Make contact. Be nice.  Use good grammar.  Be helpful if you can.  Don’t expect them  to do anything for you if they’ve never heard of you before.  The internet is all about relationship building.  Start stretching those networking muscles, as uncomfortable as it may feel at first.

After you’ve managed to establish contact, write up a guest post (and proof read it ten or twenty times) that directly relates to what the larger blogger is all about.  Send her/him the post.  It might get posted.  If it does, make sure that you have a stellar blog post up on your own blog that day to link back to and  show off the best of who you really are.  If they don’t post it, offer it to another blog.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Make contact.  Your work is important, and people want to know about important work.

For those of you who come here for anything other than marketing advice, consider this:  we create.  We put ourselves out there and we risk so much just by being who we are.  Marketing our goods is just the next step in founding our path.  One foot in front of the other.  We can do it and be honest and true to ourselves.  We can stand up and say, this is what I do/make/have to offer.  And people can decide whether they want these things or not.  But they can’t decide if they don’t know about us in the first place.  So stand up for yourself and put yourself out there.  Don’t be afraid.

Now it’s your turn. Give us your best on-line and social media related marketing ideas.

I’m offering 3 free copies of my ebook  Your Truth for the three best online marketing ideas for entrepreneurs.  While I’ll be the final judge, I’ll probably be calling on marketing mentor guru hunk-types like Marcus Sheridan and John Falchetto  to help me decide.  These guys have hunky marketing grey matter on their tanned shoulders.   

Remember, your work is your work.  It’s you in manifested energy form.  You’re an artist, and you have something to give the world.  Oh, and one other thing.  Thanks, Marcus.  Your post today gave me the whole cojones visual to work with.  HA!!