Overcome the fear of selling yourself

Most would admit to wanting more feelings of purpose. We spend most of our time at our jobs. It would be logical, then - to ensure that our jobs have this purpose. If you're a developer and you don't have "a speciality", "a niche" or "a brand". It could be the first step you take towards achieving feelings of purpose.

I’d always hated the idea of “selling” myself. The thought of interviews made me sick. It felt so egotistical. I even asked my father to fill out the about me section of my CV. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I will never be able to sell myself
I told myself. It took several years to re-write my faulty beliefs about “selling myself”.
 
Looking back… I was right. Selling yourself is weird. That’s because no-one ever asked anyone to “sell themselves”. Instead, we’re selling our impacts, our value.
 
Ryan Holiday calls books that rock your world Quake books. For me Key Person of Influence (Revised Edition): The Five-Step Method to become one of the most highly valued and highly paid people in your industry by Daniel Priestly was one of these quake books.
 
Key person of influence is all about acknowledging your story. Then using that story as the basis on which to “sell yourself”.
 
I’m going to plagiarize Daniels metaphor for a moment:
 
When you’re standing on a mountain of value, you can’t see your mountain – only other people’s.
Dude – look how far you’ve gone, you’ve achieved so much!
We say to others.
 
Yet, we don’t say the same thing to ourselves. When we’re on our own mountain, looking at everyone else’s we cannot see how far we’ve come.
Derek Sivers’ short video “Obvious to you, amazing to others” highlights this well.
 
Reading Key Person Of Influence had me hooked. I soon went in search of other books talking about “influence”. I discovered some amazing reads. Tribes: We need you to lead us by Seth Godin. And Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook to Find Your Message, Build a Tribe, and Change the World by Russell Brunson.
 
These books all spread the same message. As individuals, we have something special about us. It’s locked in our story. That “selling ourselves” is not about selling us. It’s about selling our story. It’s about selling how we impact others and make a difference.
 
Mastering “selling” ourselves affords us the opportunities to create impact. “Selling yourself” shouldn’t feel weird. In fact, it should feel good. It should feel generous.
 
Russell sums this up well in his first line of Expert Secrets:

How do you find ‘selling yourself’? Easy or hard? Why?

Lou Bichard
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