Self-Marketing in a culture of buzzwords…

I am guilty of trying too hard not to specialize. Or to be boxed into one genre, one area or one particular set of ideas. I don’t like being defined and yet, it’s that definition that initially gets you to a place where you can do lots of other things.

So, rather than create esoteric pronouncements of what you want to do or what you’d like to do in a particular business, being very specific about how your experience translates into something more substantial is an asset.

I’ll cut right to the chase. The real problem with marketing yourself in a culture full of buzzwords is that I’m not full of shit. I mean, I can be I guess. And I know how to write really lofty things and make myself sound better than I am. But I prefer to be real with people and there really isn’t a reward for that in the midst of marketing.

So in some ways, it’s very much like what I learned to do as a young professional in the vein of interviewing for jobs. I had the hardest time at first, trying to convince myself to ‘sell’ myself. I’ve learned that skill over the past few years and no longer come close to having the problems I once did.

The issue here isn’t so much about a dearth of expertise, as much as it’s being able to identify coherently what one does and does well. That is a challenge beyond others. I think being in a place where you can connect with others in your field is a good start. But when your expertise is online strategy to companies based primarily in rural areas, that’s a bigger challenge.

I think I’ve come closer to figuring it out now. But given that my primary business comes from my interactions with real people in real time, versus by online sites, it’s a lot easier for me to focus my energy on the areas that I’m better at then wasting time convincing netgeeks of my superior abilities using netspeak.

Which makes me pretty happy.

Why I gave up golf (and why toccer is better…)

After a NY Times story citing that More Americans Are Giving Up Golf, is apparently a trend:

The disappearance of golfers over the past several years is part of a broader decline in outdoor activities — including tennis, swimming, hiking, biking and downhill skiing — according to a number of academic and recreation industry studies.

It’s not that hard to understand. Golf isn’t active enough and not only that, but it’s expensive. The sport has prided itself on its elite roots and by intentionally shielding itself from people without monied backgrounds.

To this day, the most fun I’ve ever had on the golf course is at the Par-3 course at the public course near my home. I got a membership to the semi-private course in my hometown for my birthday one year, but I wasn’t really committed enough to the game to get out there and play then. I’d be better at it now, but the game itself is too sedentary for my lifestyle.

Growing up playing tennis, I enjoy playing a sport and truly feeling like I did something out there. Golf doesn’t offer me that. I think if I had friends who played the game nearby or something along those lines, it might be better.

But the sport’s outreach needs to be double that of any other sport, because it’s not only too expensive to play for the average person, but it takes a very long time to gain the skills to be more than just a hack.

It’s no different than what’s happened to baseball in recent years, as the game moved away from the sandlot and increasingly to manicured fields and semi-professional travel teams. Kids being left out of these sports are no different than those being left out of sports like basketball for different reasons.

One of the things I wanted to be sure of when we created tennis polo was to be sure to make it a sport that kids anywhere could play. Racquets aren’t hard to find generally, tennis balls are just dog toys and that’s all you need to play really. Even still, soccer goals are easy to find too, as are fields. That’s it.

Doesn’t require any money or special equipment and you don’t even necessarily need a team to go out and work on individual skills. You and your racquet on the field can easily work on drills and skills aimed at making yourself better at the sport. Toccer is just a sport where you can consistently get better, there are no “Michael Jordans” of Toccer, so you can immediately work to reinvent the levels of where the sport goes.

Another reason why I think the sport had so much success early on. Because when kids get out there and play, no one has any preconceived notions about superiority.

Whether or not it’ll translate into lasting success is anyone’s guess. But it’s something that was prominent from the start related to how to make a sport grow or at least, providing a foundation for its growth.