When I started my business my father called my action “the confidence of ignorance.” I didn't really know what I didn't know so I held my nose and jumped right in. And with some long hours, perseverance, the hard work of lots of great people, and some good luck it turned out pretty well. Yet almost thirty years later it's finally dawned on me that my dad was right – I often have no idea what I'm doing.
Do you?
Social media has become a critical part of our agency's branding and marketing. I'm promoting my ad agency, my speaking, and my books on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and whatever new technology has emerged since I wrote this post. But I have no idea what I'm doing.
I blog about branding and marketing and my own personal opinion about what's going on in those worlds. I post it all online and send it out to my mailing list and try to promote it on all the social media sites that'll have me. But I have no idea what I'm doing.
I travel around the world speaking at conferences and corporate meetings and attend acting classes and speaking workshops to try to make my platform skills better. Even with all the time spent and experienced gained, I still have no idea what I'm doing.
I'm starting to shoot videos and produce podcasts about branding and marketing and post them on YouTube. I'm taking videos of speeches I've given and learning how to edit them in Apple's Final Cut and sending them out online and on CDs. But I have no idea what I'm doing.
I wrote a couple books on branding and produced them with traditional publishers. Then I self-published the latest book and we distributed it ourselves. Finally, I wrote a novel called The Mouth of the South and didn't even self-publish it, just uploaded it to Amazon as a Kindle book. But I have no idea what I'm doing.
We're creating a new website, trying to make it as interactive, mobile-friendly and user-friendly as possible and all at the same time. But I have no idea what I'm doing.
When people ask me if they should promote themselves or their companies on Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn; if they should blog, tweet, email or send handwritten letters; if they should shoot videos, record podcasts, write books, or speak at conferences; if they should offer discounts on couponing sites, or run ads on TV, radio, newspapers or billboards, my answer is a resounding “yes.” When they tell me they don't know how to do it, I say, “don't worry, I have no idea what I'm doing either.”
I'm not smart enough to figure out SEO and SEM. I don't have enough time to respond to all the tweets I receive. I don't like Facebook enough to really want to dive into it. I think I only use about 11% of the capabilities of Final Cut. And not one of my books has become a bestseller regardless of how much time, effort, and money I've spent on them.
Why not? Could it be because I have no idea what I'm doing?
My marathon times aren't dropping, my harmonica playing's not getting much better, and the TV show I'm trying to create isn't rushing itself into production. You already know the reasons why. It's because I have no idea what I'm doing.
Are you starting to see a pattern here? Have you gotten the message? As much as I'd love to use this page to brag about all the brilliant things I'm trying to accomplish I have no idea what I'm doing.
Do you?
I think that my feeling is the true zeitgeist of what's going on today in the world of online marketing, new entrepreneurship, and personal development. Of course we can listen to the experts pontificate about whatever it is they know about, but just like the tip of the metaphorical iceberg, what they know and talk about is just a small portion of what's really out there.
What I have in common with those experts is that they don't have any idea what they're doing anymore than I do.
They just do it anyway. And so do I. And, truth be told, so should you.
The key, as Nike taught us, is to “Just Do It.” Microsoft has built an enormous company around the notion of implementing first and perfecting later. Or as my dad also used to say, “There's never time to do it right but there's always time to do it over.”
So blog, post, tweet, self-publish, promote, and sell, to your heart's content. And don't worry if you don't quite know what you're doing. Why not? Because I have no idea what I'm doing, either.