I just read an excellent blog post on Copyblogger, a site I subscribe to. There are a number of excellent posts on the site, but I don’t read all of them. Sometimes the email, and the internet, is overwhelming, isn’t it?
Anyway, this particular article by Marcia Hoeck entitled, Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?, caused me to reflect on my own particular insecurity. The message deals with “entrepreneurial-courage.” It’s focus is on the basic human condition of not wanting to have people laugh at you, or question your ability. So, we don’t take action. We don’t do things that call attention to ourselves. We “hide in the shadows,” living lives of quite desperation – a line from a Pink Floyd song.
In the past few years, I’ve learned how to convert digital images to video for YouTube using Animoto. I’ve learned how to use Sony Vegas Movie Studio to edit video from a camcorder. I’ve learned how to produce internet radio using BlogTalkRadio.
I know how to use popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube. But I’m not an expert in any of them, so I tend to feel unqualified to teach, or coach or help someone who doesn’t know how to do those things.
I tend forget there was a time, not long ago, I didn’t know how to do any of the above tasks, and desperately sought help from someone who did. Until I learned how valuable Google and YouTube are for “how to” information, I was frustrated and disappointed with my own lack of progress.
Now that I understand a few of the options, I realize I can be helpful to someone who needs some guidance.
My friend Ray Pelletier Sr., a motivational speaker who died in 2005, used to say he thought of himself as a tugboat, leading the ships thru a channel and out to open water. At that point, he said, “I’d let them go and they were responsible for making it to the next port.”
Marcia uses an analogy of a lighthouse on a stormy night.
Both work for me.
We all have skills that someone else would like to learn. Are we willing to teach them? Or, are you like the fellow I met at a foreign trade luncheon in the early 90s. He was a customs broker. I was the executive director of the Miami Foreign Trade Association. There were no training programs at that time for young people who might like to get into international trade. In fact, it was true then, as it is now, when you say Trade School in the United States, people think of carpenters, plumbers and electricians, not customs brokers and freight forwarders. Anyway, when I told the guy at the luncheon I wanted to create a foreign trade school to teach high school students how to be a customs broker and asked if he would help, he looked at me as said, “Why would I want to create competition?”
I thought, then, as I do now, that was a narrow-minded position which limits the opportunities of students and lessens the quality of our workforce.
Well, I don’t think teaching someone how to produce an intenet radio program, use social media or create a video from digital images, is going to create competition for me. It would, in fact, make me learn more to stay ahead of the students.
So, If you’d like to know more about online marketing with audio, video and social media, let me know: DaytonaBeachVideoMarketing@gmail.com.
If you’d like to listen to an internet radio program about social media, check out: BlogTalkRadio.com/SchoolofSocialMarketing. Dr. Ron Capps, aka the Nicheprof, and I do the show every Sunday @ 12:30 PM ET. It’s the longest running social media show on iTunes. We’ve done more than 200 episodes since August 2008. If you’d like to learn more, check out his current promotion: lenq.me/65thbdb. It’s a collection of social media information products, available until September 1st, 2012.
