I’m coming close to launching my first app and I’m reluctant to promote it.
The source of my resistance is likely three things:
I’m an introvert
Introverts don’t really like drawing attention to themselves and the act of promotion runs counter to that.
I have an odd aversion to sales-speak so it feels wrong that I practice it myself
Maybe it’s the natural resistance I’ve built up from dodging on-the-street salespeople in NYC, or it’s the unfair image I have for the “used car salesman” type. Both types of sellers seem to open with warmth and friendliness, but my skeptical mind can’t help but warn me that there’s a cold transaction waiting underneath. I feel the friendliness isn’t genuine and I’m indirectly being lied to.
If the product is a failure then I’m failure
Isn’t it fair to say that pouring your time and energy into something makes it a reflection of you? And by proxy, if that thing is a failure, that means your thinking and prioritization of time over the last X weeks/months is a failure, too?
Let examine these one-by-one.
Do all introverts avoid sales and promotion?
Tim Ferriss is the most obvious counter example to this. He’s a self-admitted introvert yet he’s sold multiple New York Times best-selling novels and has a podcast where he regularly promotes products, shoutouts his newsletter, and does ad-reads for sponsors.
Are all sales people scummy and inauthentic?
No. In fact, James Dyson, the inventor of the cyclone vacuum cleaner (and my personal entrepreneurship hero), strongly encourages engineers to get comfortable selling. The act of sales makes you a better engineer because it forces you to interact with the customer. Direct customer interaction helps you understand a problem more clearly so you can then better engineer the solution.
If my product fails, is that a reflection of me?
When others publicly fail, do I believe they are failures? Nope. I actually admire them for trying. Casey Neistat failed 24 times before he ran a marathon in under 3 hours. He ran 24 marathons, that’s 24 different attempts, and each failed attempt is, in my eyes, admirable.1 If I can can give him grace, why can’t I do that for myself? Maybe the lens through which I view self-promotion is tinted too dark.
Subjective reality
Clinical psychologists believe that no one has access to objective reality. In other words, what each of us experience day-to-day is a subjective, filtered view of reality. That filtered view is different for everyone and it’s based on big things like our past experiences, and small things like whether we’ve recently eaten anything. Maybe my subjective view needs some readjusting.
Let’s try it.
I’m an introvert
Alternative view: I’m not drawing attention to myself, per se. I’m drawing attention to the product. Sure, it takes energy to put myself out there but doing it in bite-sized iterations can keep it manageable. Besides, an ad or tweet published today doesn’t need my constant energy to continue to work. It’s an asset that promotes for me while I sleep.
I have an odd aversion to sales-speak so it feels wrong that I practice it myself
Alternative view: Don’t think of it as “sales” instead, think of it as problem solving. By building this product and promoting it, you are sharing your enthusiasm for a problem you have solved. Your promotion is an attempt to help others with a problem they have
If the product is a failure then I’m failure
Alternative view: To echo a great line from
, treat products like cattle, not pets. Don’t treat products as personal reflections of yourself. Treat them as experiments that may or may not work. A failed experiment is by no means a reflection on me
If this feels like an exercise of “lying to myself,” remember that objective reality is not accessible to any of us. Instead, we all live in subjective versions of reality. Life is viewed differently for a Hindu that believes he was reincarnated vs. a Christian that believes heaven, hell, or purgatory follow in the afterlife. You may feel $1500 is a lot for a TV but you might quickly change your mind if you learn the original list price is $1900.
So, time to put on the rose-colored glasses. I’ll promote my app on next week’s post. I promise. :)
Good Beats
♫ Rose colored glasses glued to my face when she always came around, attaching memories to these sounds ♫
A 50¢ word (aka words that say a lot with less)
Metanoia (noun):
A fundamental change of mind.
For Your Thoughts
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
—Nelson Mandela
Yours,
-Rahul
P.S. a reminder you can reply directly to oldmanrahul@substack.com, or you can tweet me @oldmanrahul about this edition. Thanks for reading and supporting my writing :)