“A person is bound to lose when he talks about himself; if he belittles himself, he is believed; if he praises himself, he isn’t believed.” Michel de Montaigne

We are told to be humble, and let your work speak for its self. You might have grown up not wanting to be seen for fear of being judge, but if you want to have an impact you need to put yourself out their. You can’t wait to be found, for someone to appreciate your work you need to tell them why your work is valuable to them. People don’t automatically know what you do or sell or how you can help them. If your goal is to get paid for what you do, you need to promote yourself to others often, so they can learn the value you have to teach them. Being authentic, using the right words, these are a part of promoting your one person business.

In society we are taught to be humble. We all benefit from others speaking up about their experiences for example listening to podcast of someone who build their business from nothing. This advice helps us build our own business. But when we think about doing the same, our ego level is telling us that no body wants to hear what we have to say.

Most of us are a mix of introvert and extrovert and you need to find that extrovert side of yourself if you want to build a personal brand. To make a name for yourself you have to be outgoing and loud. You can use mindset of sharing ideas, your message or your product to be your main goal and you can use social media to do it. Everything you write needs to have that main goal in mind.

“You have to do a little bragging on yourself even to your relatives-man doesn’t get anywhere without advertising.” John Nance Garner

Do you know why bragging is an important skill to learn for your business, how do we brag effectively?

There three main points to bragging effectively:

Be your biggest fan

Repeat Yourself alot

Be Strategic

Be Your Biggest Fan

If you can’t champion your own work neither will anyone else. You are probably really comfortable talking about how amazing other peoples work is, but when it comes to yourself nothing comes to mind. You think your accomplishments are nothing interesting but your achievements are worth talking about. bragging is stating facts about yourself.

Share you point of view, your beliefs, values to resonate with people with similar interests will be attracted to you and your content.

This activity will help remind yourself how amazing you are.

Get Clear

Answer this list of questions?

what feelings to you have with the word brag?

If these feelings were fixed what would you be able to accomplish?

What have you done

list accomplishments

list new skills you have learnt this year

list things you have learnt about yourself in the past year

Who are you talking to?

what are your audiences interests

find your voice

Find three adjectives to describe the voice you want have.

e.g thougtful, funny and helpful

for each post You want to fufil at least one of these adjectives and your long term intention

Noteworthy, creative, genuine

Maybe inspiration from people you follow. For example Nigela Lawson, she is know for her seductive voice and word choices or maybe Rich Myers from Get Baked who loves to use pr

He posts critisms to his instgram page, most are banter the he wants the customers to critise his work

what not to say

use an ative voice instead of a passive one.

instead of saying like I hate to brag but, say I would love for you to read my new articl I postd to the blog link below

we are not concious when we undermine our own work. if you make the reader feel like you cannot support your own accomplishments then why would your readers.

Establish a You Voice

Using your voice to help other people not just yourself- people want know who you are, what you do, what your about, what you beleive,, what your product unless you tell them

you need to share you point of view it is valued

Repeat Yourself A Lot

keep introducing yourself online

once a month write encase your new here this a link to my website, i run a website called kuchen where you get free recipes and a weekly newsletter. Remember people don’t read your bio so you need to remind them what you do and where you want them to go next.

Remember people might not have seen your past content before

If you have a cake you sell in your bakery don’t post it once and assume people know you sell it you need to post about at least once a week maybe show parts of the process. your customers eating your cake. remind people what you have to offer them.

Be Strategic

to figure out a strategy answer these questions

what do you want to be known for? to stick out in someone’s mind you have to know what you want them to see.

Consider your audience you are talking to- what level of awareness are they, who are you bragging to and how are you going to get engagement on your platform. Engagement could come from someone else’s platform.

Know the voice of the person you want to collaborate with. An example is Get Baked, Rich Myers promoting another local baker. This local baker is aware that Rich likes customers that banter back at him, he finds it encourages engagement within his specific customer. Millies cookies is giving value to Rich as he can post this on his Instagram and Millies Cookies gets Rich’s audiences eyes on her business.

Sum Up

“If you done it, it ain’t bragging.” Walt Whitman

We need to stop saying I’m not that kind of person to brag. you need to if you want your business to grow. if you brag about yourself you think you are seen as insecure. I know I said it before but you really you are just stating facts about yourself.

To brag is to state facts, remind people of what you do and share beliefs and values that resonate with your audience.

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