A few years back, I had a friend who would say, “Barbara, you’re on the cusp. You are right there. I can see that you’re going to be famous!”
(Yeah, I know. We need to hire her to hang out with us when we’re having bad days, right?)
I would smile and thank her, knowing that my job as a ghostwriter was to stay in the background. I had been “center stage” and while I enjoyed it, I thought it wasn’t really what I was about anymore. I didn’t need the attention.
I was wrong. Sort of.
I didn’t need the attention for my ego’s sake. But my business certainly needed the attention.
You can go about quietly doing quality work for years, thinking that the right people will find you. And yes, some do. Word of mouth keeps me fairly busy and is, without a doubt, the best form of marketing there is.
But you can’t control word of mouth. You can’t scale it up. You can only keep doing good work and hoping (and hinting) that people will think enough of you to recommend you to the next person.
If you want to grow your business, if you want to reach more people and create as much good as you can in this world, you need to step out from behind the curtain and own your talent.
We can contribute to this world or we can just take. Sometimes you need to put yourself out in front to do the most good you can do.
