Why promoting yourself/your business/your ideas feels uncomfortable:

You must repeat things that are obvious to you until they become obvious to others.

This is why most people hire marketers or outsource the amplification of their message.

The problem with that is no one is an invested as you are, and no one knows your message like you do.
And why those who break through their discomfort reach an escape velocity that eludes most.
This is a difficult and unnatural process, hence the upside on the other side.
Another way to think about it is the famous shelf analogy:

No one wants a drill they want a hole, no one wants a hole they want a shelf, no one wants a shelf they want to a place to put books to look smart, etc.

People care about the 2nd, 3rd, 4th order effects of your work.
And the further away from the perceived benefit you are, the harder it is to market what you do.
I have a narrow and incomplete perspective on this but want to share incase it can be helpful:

Start by helping one person, and pay a massive amount of attention to how they feel as a result of having worked with you.

That's the feeling you're marketing.
Originally, when I worked as a designer/consultant, that feeling was:

"I feel much more confident in my ability to explain exactly what I do as a result of building out this visual narrative."
Until you have this locked in your marketing will feel like an absolutely brutal process.

It's a chicken and egg scenario, hence why the "permissionless" approach is a great way to start - market by solving the problem vs. talking about solving a problem that you haven't solved.

More from Jack Butcher

More from Marketing

Reading this article, the story sounds pretty wild. But I spent a weird amount of time with Martin Shkreli, and I’m not surprised the journalist fell in love w him

A few years back my team built an app called Blab. It was like clubhouse before clubhouse.


When he first joined the app I had no idea who he was. I just saw that his live streams instantly had 3-4K viewers. More than anyone on our tiny platform.

I googled him and it came up: “Martin Shkreli, most hated man in America”

I assumed he was bad news

And he was... but also he wasn’t.

He was a douchebag, but he was in on the joke. He was a dick, but he was also very entertaining.

In the mornings he would live stream himself analyzing stocks or walking through drug discovery pathways.

In the afternoon he’d let people call in and debate him live on air. A CNN reporter tried to get him to go on TV, he refused, and said debate me here on Blab, no edits, no tv time limits.

At night he’d host late night convos - and eventually fall asleep on cam

The guy was a pain in the ass but man he drove traffic.

We had big celebs like Tony Robbins, the Jonas brothers etc... he outperformed them all.

At one point he was bringing in 100k users per month directly to his channel. And Bc he was so entertaining, they stuck.

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