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

20 Most Important Lesson of 2020

// A THREAD //


It was a fast and weird year.

The year of change.

My life changed a lot and I learned even more.

Here are the 20 most important lessons - which will shape the upcoming decade for me.


1. Systems Are Better Than Goals

In the past, I failed many of my goals.

This year I've realized that it could be caused by the fact that they were goals, not systems.

Thanks, @ScottAdamsSays for helping me realize this.

Short article on the topic:
https://t.co/lyBqGBR0yM


2. Use Notion More

@NotionHQ is definitely the most useful tool I've discovered this year.

I use it for:

- Twitter
- Freelance CRM
- Content Creation
- Website project management

And for personal use, it's completely free.


3. Email Is Immortal

This year we saw on social sites:

- Shadow bans
- Normal bans
- Decreasing reach (e.g. during the presidential election)

That's why I believe building an independent audience e.g. email list is mandatory.

P.S. https://t.co/iuhQJIf80K
big louis winthorpe III energy


i almost feel bad for the guy, because someone this absolutely clueless about how he sounds really shouldn't be allowed to post under his own name.

he seems like someone who *genuinely* means well most of the time, but it extremely easy to excite and wind up, and who is just profoundly dense about the wisdom of getting wound up the way he does in public.

on the other hand, the tara reade business was indefensible, exploitative, and gross. if there is ever a writer who desperately needs an editor to save him from himself, it's nathan robinson.

i had a few friends in high school who were well-meaning, wealthier than they realized, and in drama class, and most of them grew out of their nathan robinson stage because, well, it was oklahoma. there's almost something a little charming about the fact that he didn't.
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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The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed
The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.


This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/


A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/

https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/

https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/