Show How Great You Are

Most of the leadership advice you read on the Internet is crap.

Thousands of supposed internet leadership gurus quote some long dead philosopher or military strategist as a tagline for their blog or podcast. They use the quote as clickbait. Click on this link, run to my website. I have all the answers to your problems. Trust me, they don't.

In truth, it is a cry for help. Not for you, for them.

99.99999% of all these leadership gurus know jack shit about leadership. They know what you know. The only difference is that they wrote a book claiming some sort of mastery, have a shit on of followers on Twitter or Instagram or TikTok, and a pretty website.

I hate the word guru. Well at least the English bastardization of the word.

In Sanskrit guru was the first ten leaders of the Sikh religion. In Hindi, guru means master. There are few masters in this world. Few women or men, no matter how much money they make or the businesses they built, should be called master.

The Netflix film I Am Not Your Guru is about Tony Robbins and the time he spends during of one his more well-known seminars, Date with Destiny. The title shows that even a man like Tony Robbins - who many would call a guru - runs from the honorific.

Write a book, usually an eBook, and you're automatically considered an expert. However most self-help or leadership books are weak and hardly qualify as unique.

I blame Tim Ferris. His book The 4-Hour Work Week was written so well and easily understood, everyone believed they can and should write a book.

His 4-Hour A Week books showed the world how to hack their way to success. Tim gave the world the ultimate shortcut to making money, working out, cooking, and even better sex. Damn him. Where was he when I was skinny, pimply faced 15 year old. 

The internet offers everyone the opportunity to be a modern day Socrates. Maybe not Socrates, he never wrote anything. Plato and Aristotle at least. Today our words carry the same weight as Emmanuel Kant, Nietzsche, Peter Drucker, Nelson Mandela, and Muhammad Yunus.

The internet as a whole is an amazing platform. Thomas Friedman, New York Times author, was right naming his book The World is Flat back in 2005. With the internet there are few mountain size obstacles to overcome.

In the nineties, we bought books at the bookstore. Now we buy and read them online.

If you wanted to get published you had to submit your work to dozens of publishers, and pray like hell one of them would accept your work. Today you can self-publish your book on Amazon.

Once you had to go to college to learn any computer programming, philosophy, physics, or even calculus. Today, everyone is self-taught. You can learn anything taught at a university at Cousera, edx.org, or Udemy.

Universities are being flatten by the internet. Long distance phone calls used to be expensive until voice and data packets were transported over the internet.

Mobile phones, Zoom, and Facetime has the eliminated the need for a landline and paying for long distance phone call.

The internet made a billionaire out of 19 year old Harvard student when he created Facebook.

As the internet flatten industries and made billionaires, untested men and women to call themselves experts, gurus, the answer to your problems.

It took Joe Weider, creator of Mr. Olympia and the founder of magazines like Muscle and Fitness, over 40 years of working in fitness, training and mentoring men like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Colombo, to be considered a fitness guru.

With a cell phone, a good physique, some editing software, any nineteen year old from Lithuania can call himself a fitness expert. And maybe he is.

Deep knowledge on any particular subject has no relevance. All you need is the internet, the audacity to sell your brand, the desire to shout your message out to the world, and the confidence and strength to ignore your naysayers. 

The point of this post is not to hate these supposed gurus or masters or whatever the fuck you want to call them, but rather to learn from them.

Most people are afraid to say how good they are. They're not afraid to do the work. They just don't know how to market themselves so more opportunity comes their way.

Many of these extremely talented women and men (especially women, but that's for another article) suck at asking for raises or promotions.

They're self-conscious of their abilities and talents, believing they are not as good as most people think they are. Speaking up risks being caught. You risk your boss thinking you're a loser. You risk failing. Or worse, you risk being taking seriously and asked to do the job.

Maybe speaking up is the point. If the mediocre can boldly proclaim they know more, that they have a special insight into the way the world is managed. If they can tell you how to become the next Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bill Gates, then perhaps the first step to becoming a leader, or successful, is to state that you already are.

The long and short of this post is for you to speak up. There is an old saying in sales - in order to get the business, you have to ask for the business. No one will know who you are, give you the job or promotion you want, become your client, or meet for coffee unless you speak up and ask. 

Don't just say you're good. Show it.

In my freshman college writing class I was taught not to tell what was going on in the story. I had to show it. Life is the same way. You will not win until you show the world how good you are.

Show it. You have the skills. You have the talent.

Ask for that raise.

Write that book.

Start that business or blog.

Change your LinkedIn profile to show how great you are.

Brag.

If you don't, no one else will.

_________________________

I have recruited the top 1% of talent across many industries and set up partnerships with technology companies. I know how to make candidates and businesses stand out from the competition. If you need help with your resume, business, or finding a way to brag, connect with me on LinkedIn. Mention this article.