Art of Marketing You- What do you practice?

We all have strengths.  We are grateful for them because these strengths come more easily than our weaknesses.  They are fun and we love practicing them. 

I know when my son goes to the driving range to practice his golf, with the choice of clubs, the one he most likely will chose to use, is the one that he’s good at hitting.  It think this is probably true of most golfers at the driving range.  It takes real discipline to take out the club that is hardest to hit and practice with that.  It’s not as fun.  The success is harder to come by.  We all want what’s easiest.  It requires less energy and results in less frustration.

However, in order to grow and improve we need to embrace our weaknesses.  Our weaknesses are the things that others notice first.  They don’t notice as much, our strengths.  If we just work on those, only slight improvements will come.  Slight improvements aren’t as noticeable as appreciative improvements which will come with working on our weaknesses.  

Where can we start evaluating our weaknesses?  Have you ever conducted a SWOT?  I talked about this at my presentation, The Art of Marketing, at the PMC Guild Conference in 2008.  This is a really good exercise at improving your business or yourself.

Here’s how you do it. Take out a piece of paper and fold in half, and then in half again.  Open it back up and in the upper left hand corner, write Strengths.  In the upper right hand corner write Weaknesses.  In the lower left hand corner write Opportunities.  In the lower right hand corner write Threats.  Now take a moment to get clear about the goal of this exercise.  We want to know what we need to work on and what we are good at.  If nothing will come when you write, try placing the pen in your left hand and write whatever comes to mind.  This in itself can be a revealing exercise.

• Strengths: things we are really good at
• Weaknesses: things we avoid doing, things we need education on, things we should delegate or practice
• Opportunities: things we could do to grow ourselves or our business
• Threats: things that challenge us or our business

Now if you want to take this exercise to a whole new level, pick your favorite role model in business.  Pick an artist that you think really does it all.  They are their brand, they are successful, they thrive in their business.  Now make out a SWOT for them.  

To complete this exercise, compare the two SWOT’s.  What can you do to improve, to be more like them?  What weaknesses do you have?  Are you willing to work on those weaknesses daily?  Can you hire people to help you with improving your weaknesses?  How important is it to you to grow and improve those weaknesses?  

I’m looking forward to hearing about your experience with this exercise. Get out that piece of paper and try it.  Commit your thoughts to paper.  Involving your hands in any exercise makes it more real.  Paper and pen are essential elements to change.  As an artist you know this of course.

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