WHY YOU MUST SELF-PROMOTE YOURSELF

If you don’t promote yourself, who will?

I. Promote yourself, or die.

Okay, so the worst lie you’re told is to not self promote.

First of all, why not self promote yourself? You need to publish and share and promote your own work or else nobody will ever see it.

I know for myself, when I started off in photography, I was afraid of self promoting myself because I didn’t want to look like a egotistical dick.

But honestly you will never be able to make a living from your passion if you fake humble and don’t promote yourself.

II. Self-reliance

For me, I want full independence. I don’t want to wait until someone “discovers me”. I want to create my own opportunities in life. I don’t want to be a slave to chance.

The more you produce and put yourself out there the more likely you are to hit a home run (or score a goal).

Consider, life is like basketball. The more you shoot, the more you practice the more you refine your craft, the more likely you are to increase your field goal (shooting) percentage.

I know for myself the more risks I take in photography and life the more home runs I’ve hit.

I’ve written 2,600+ blog posts from 2011-2017. Only 10 of those blog posts have gone “viral.”

I’ve also been lucky, because the more risks I took, the more opportunities came to me. In 2011, my buddy JJ from Leica reached out to me to contribute to the Leica blog. As I’ve started to hustle harder more opportunities came to me. I’ve collaborated with brands like Samsung, Ford, Fujifilm, Ricoh / Pentax.

You can’t sit on your ass and be timid.

You gotta be aggressive. You cannot keep playing defense your entire life and expect to win.

III. Create value for society and yourself.

Of course self promotion isn’t just constantly saying how awesome you are. Rather, try to build value.

An easy rule:

If I created this thing, would I find it useful?

When I blog, I blog about things I wanna read. I make photos that I would like to look at.

If you create a photo or piece of art or offer some service or consulting, ask yourself:

Do I like what I do?

If you can make a potential customer out of yourself, you have identified a potential market.

IV. Do it.

NIKE: JUST DO IT.

Life is taking risk. Make a blog post even though you think it might be shitty. Hit publish.

When you go out, always be making photos. If you take 100,00 photos in a row, you are likely to get at least 1 good one.

For finding your partner in life just go on more dates.

And don’t be shameful of self promotion.

If you believe in yourself, your photos, your art and your services, and your self-value, you are doing a disservice to humanity by not promoting yourself.

If you’re afraid of self promotion, be a self promotional asshole, conceited Eric Kim, arrogant, Egotistical Eric Kim. You can blame it on me :)

Be strong,
Eric