Image is everything -- especially if you're in the business of selling ideas. The amount you are able to charge and the speed at which your company grows are often directly proportional to the degree to which people perceive you as a celebrity in your field. Yet when a client calls with a pressing concern or last minute deadline, all the writing, posting, sharing, and speaking you need to do to get closer to this goal tend to fall to the bottom of your list
Imagine how much easier life would become if you could rest assured these activities would continue uninterrupted regardless of what else is going on in your business. Turns out, there is a way to make this happen, but it is probably not what you think.
Think More Like a Factory Owner
There is a certain well-known Internet marketing guru who likes to boast that upon waking up, he immediately sits on the toilet and furiously Tweets while evacuating his bowels. While this may seem to some of you like a pleasant way to spend the first hours of your day, there is no getting around the reality that working like this has a lot in common with the do-it-yourselfers who got obliterated by the Industrial Revolution.
I don't know about you, but I prefer to be on the winning side of any revolution. Stop thinking like the hard-working artisans of the Bronze Age and more like a factory-owning robber baron.
For example, let's say you knew that if you wrote book, it would take your career into the stratosphere but you've been trying to muscle through it for months to no avail. The answer is to build a system and enlist others to work it for you. Instead of greeting a blank page each morning, outline your book in advance. Then block off a full day on your calendar and record yourself talking through all the chapters. Next, get the recording transcribed and hire a freelance writer to turn those transcriptions into your masterpiece while bringing on an audio editor to transform your raw recordings into a podcast.
For only one day's work, you will have produced the same amount of material it takes other aspiring thought leaders a year to generate. What's more, it will all, quite literally, be in your voice.
Whatever specific image-enhancing activities you choose, it is amazing what will happen when you stop worrying about finding the time to do it all and focus instead on creating a structure that frees you from having to do it at all.
You're Measuring the Wrong Things... Stop It!
I regularly run into professionals that make their living selling a service that costs five or six figures who are completely obsessed by how many people are visiting their websites or reading their Tweets.
I don't get it.
Sure, if you sell a product that costs ten bucks, quantity matters. But if you are, say, a high-end consultant or premium service professional, you really only need a handful of important and powerful people to notice you each year.
Start paying attention to the measurements that matter.
Often the number of lunches you have with powerful people mean a lot more than how many people hit your home page. And an invitation to speak in front of an audience of prominent industry influencers could be a much more relevant signifier of success than how many retweets you're getting.
In short, figure out what success metrics help you achieve your biggest goals, focus all your attention there, and forget about all the rest. Because when you pay attention to how to get the most exposure and impact from the smallest expenditure of time and resources, you get the image you want while holding onto the energy you need.