2011-11-01-Business Roundtable-Self-Promotion
Seminars@Hadley
Business Roundtable with Urban Miyares: Self-Promotion
Presented by
Urban Miyares
Moderated by
Tom Babinzski
Larry Muffett
November 1, 2011
Tom Babinzski
Good morning, again. I’m Tom Babinzski. Let’s get started on the second presentation that is: Self Promotion. This is going to conclude our seminar and tomorrow we’ll be back for two more presentations. Urban?
Urban Miyares
Well, thank you, Tom. We’re going to cover an issue that probably is the most important of all issues related to employment of the disabled as well as success in business or self employment – and that’s self promotion. I’m convinced the number one reason people with disabilities are not getting hired as much as they should be getting hired, or as successful in business as they could be in business, is that they don’t know how to self promote themselves. Self promotion starts with your appearance: how you look, act, dress and so forth, and what other people think about you on a first impression visually when they see you. Then it goes into your communication – and, by the way, when you dress you’re communicating visually as well as when you start talking to other people.
So let’s start right away before I get into press releases and photos and how to self promote yourself so that when someone Google searches your name online you’re going to be in 10,000 or 50,000 websites. It’s little tricks on how to do that. If you ever Google my name you might be quite surprised at how many websites I’m on. Your appearance: it’s critical how we look in front of others. If you might like the way you look, those around you who love you love the way you look but if you’re still looking for a job or can’t figure out why customers aren’t buying from you or someone won’t lend you money or invest in your business or some other trait – nine times out of 10 there’s something wrong about you or how they feel about you. It’s your impression you have on others.
As an example, when I first came back from Vietnam, I stuttered terribly due to, some say, the actions of war and what I experienced in combat. I went to Toastmasters to learn how to speak like I’m speaking in front of you right now. Forty three years ago, I couldn’t do this. The mic would be in hand and I would not be able to say a word. I had to self improve that. That’s part of the self improvement that we all go through.
Then comes your appearance, your hairstyle, some people have the same hairstyle they had when they were in first grade, it seems. Nothing has changed. If you’re having difficulty at a job and you’re not getting promoted, this also falls into your category of: why aren’t you getting promoted and others are being moved up ahead of you? Your appearance and communication skills are critical. This is part of what is known as soft skills.
Hard skills are the technical abilities you have. And that’s what great about self employment – you don’t need any hard skills. You don’t have to do anything. I owned an electronics company that did printed circuit boards for nuclear weapons. I knew nothing about electronics or printed circuit boards. I hired the engineers to do it – that had all the skills and all. I had no hard skills but I focused on my soft skills and that was convincing purchasing agents to contract with us and, of course, the other issues related to my job as president and founder of the company.
How you look and all – if you could see what your appearance is you might say, “I look okay.” But, again, if it’s not working for you, something has to change from your dress. You don’t need a lot of money to improve or enhance your appearance. Sometimes it’s a simple haircut, as I said before. For the guys, it might a shave. There is something others could tell you and I suggest that you go to a third party – not your spouse, not a family member – to say, “How do I look? How do I dress? How do I sit?”, whether you sit in a chair or sit in a wheelchair. I know when I was in a wheelchair I started slouching a lot and I started swaying to one side, and I had to change that.
You don’t go to a job interview with sneakers on, as an example, unless you’re trying out to be a track coach or something like that. You’ve got to look the part that you want to be, not the part that you are today. Again, as I said in the earlier session this morning, we’re all actors on stage. So every time we go out, either looking for work or something related to our self employment activity, it’s as if we’re going to an Academy Award and walking down the red carpet. We’ve got to look that way and represent who we want others to think we are.
I love giving the story about the time I was flying from San Diego to Boston on American Airlines and the plane had a stopover in Dallas. I was sitting in First Class – and if you’ve never sat in First Class before, it’s a different type of personality. You can always tell the people who have never been in First Class before and they’re there for the first time. They’re so excited. They love it, you know, “Oh my goodness!” And then they come around and say, “Would you like something to drink?” and they go, “How much is a drink?” I said, “Free. It’s free! It doesn’t cost you anything.” “You’re kidding me!” They’re just so excited about it.
Yet those who have traveled First Class constantly sit down like ho, hum, nothing to it, open up the paper. Or today, flip open the laptop or iThis or iThat, iPad, iPod and start doing it. And breakfast came, as an example, on this flight, it was a morning flight. In Dallas, there was a change, I stayed on the same plane and new passengers came on and, to make a long story short, the gentleman sitting next to me says, “What do you do for a living?” and I had my first dog, Cameron, a seeing eye dog guide. He goes, “What do you do for a living?” like he was surprised to see me in First Class. I said, “Well, I’m a business person and I help people with disabilities start and run businesses.” I said, “What do you do for a living?” He said – again, soft skills, you’ve got to have this assertiveness in self employment, he threw it at me first, I’m just playing tennis and giving him the ball back.
He says, “Oh, I work for a bank.” I said, “No, you don’t. You’re in First Class. You don’t work for a bank.” He said, “Chairman of the Board, Austin National Bank.” I said, “Interesting! We just sent a business plan to you from David [Saynes] and your bank denied it.” Now, mind you, this is before cell phones. I had him from Dallas all the way to Boston. We got to Boston, David got his business loan.
Alright? Soft skills did this. My presence did this. Normally, he would have just said, “Nice dog” and went on reading his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal or whatever it was. He was wondering what I was doing. So when I dress up, I even dress when I go on an airplane. Even if it’s for a social visit because you never know who you’re going to sit next to. So this is an area that we have to be conscious of all the time – especially if we’re in business.
If you’re looking for employment and you happen to be traveling this Christmas holidays to visit family and friends, your future employer might be sitting next to you. And you won’t know or open up the doors unless you’re dressed appropriately. There’s certain colors you were and colors you don’t wear depending on the meeting or the agenda that you’re doing or the occasion. These are things that you’ll learn and we’ll be covering this with Hadley School for the Blind.
But more on the self promotion – the first thing you need to do is take a press photo of yourself. This generally is a photograph of you from the shoulders up, what’s known as a head shot or profile shot. If you’re in a wheelchair or you use a wheelchair, if there’s a headdress there somehow, make it so it’s not showing that you’re in a wheelchair. And, of course, if it’s from the head up or if you use a cane or other prosthetic device, it won’t show in the photo. If you’re blind, unless you’ve got scarring of the face, make sure the photographer has set your eyes correctly, if you have eyes. If you wear sunglasses all the time and the flash bothers you, try to get the sunglasses that have the least impact – as far as on the photo showing black – on the photo as you can. Press photos are critical for self promotion later on.
If there’s a consciousness about you that is such that you really don’t want your photo shown anywhere, do it from a distance, especially if you have something that is most obvious on your facial expression – scarring, we deal with a lot of people who are burned, especially those coming back from the war who are blind and burned on their face, who have had their face restructured and they’ve got scarring all over. Really, a close-up doesn’t look good, so we take it from a little distance. Don’t be scared to have them put makeup on. What I’m saying is, don’t have your friend get the cell phone and take a press photo of you. It doesn’t work.
You want to have something on hand in business just in case the occasion comes up where a newspaper story wants to quote you in an article and would love your photo. So you have that. The whole thing about self promotion is to be aware that you’re always promoting yourself somewhere. The other way is writing your own press releases and if you want to be humble, there’s a way of doing it: third party is the best way. We recommend a number of people and we have a number of people who have done this, who’ve set up a dummy business in name only so they may call it Reggie Jones Public Relations and your name may be Bill Miller – I’m sorry, Bill Miller, if I used your name if you’re out there. You would send press releases about Bill Miller’s company under the name of Reggie Jones – you’d get a separate email address.
So it’s a little trick that you do in promoting yourself: create a dummy press release. There are tons of books out there on how to write press releases and a proper format to do it, the structure of a press release and how to do it all. We don’t have time here to get into how to structure a press release. A press release primarily answers the questions, Who?, What?, When?, Where?, How? and Why? That’s basically what it does and the opening sentence, as well as the heading, has to be fantastic, exciting or something, for people to read the press release and go on.
As an example, I’m speaking here at the Guild for the Blind in Chicago. What would a press release title be? Urban Speaks for Guild for the Blind. That doesn’t mean anything. That’s not exciting. But Blind Learns Self Employment at Guild for the Blind or Nationally Known Speaker Featured at Guild for the Blind – you’ve got to hype it up. The use of adjectives is critical. Action verbs ending in –ing, things like that are so important in press releases.
Seldom, if ever, do you write a press release in the past tense. In other words, putting the letters –ed at the end of a word. “He once said”, as an example, or something in the past, something that was in the past, and you try to avoid negatives – unless the negative is a newsworthy story. I recently was asked to do a press release for a company on diabetes and, of course, I did negative. I said, Diabetes is Epidemic or a Tsunami in Diabetes is Coming, Tsunami Rings Out in All.
With today’s internet and everybody’s using internet you want your heading of your story to have keywords that people would search for, the single keywords. You can get this from Google and all, the most common searched words. Try to include those in your press releases. When you go for a job – recently I had someone who came to me with a business proposal. This gentleman came to me and said, “I want you to invest in my business…” and we’re doing this and that “and your return will be 38% and I’ve been in business for 15 years.” I Googled his name – nothing came up.
And the same thing happens to you when you go for a job. If they Google your name and nothing comes up, whatever you write on your resume – especially if it’s hype or awards or recognition – is questionable. Is that true or not? So you’ve got to start doing it and that means by having either a website, writing press releases, getting to these blogs. Get involved with the internet more, because that’s how everybody’s doing it. Including press releases now are broadcast more over the internet than they are through regular mailing a press release or emailing a press release to a magazine, newspaper or a news station. When contacting magazines and news stations, you first build up a relationship and then your press releases will get in there quicker.
To just send somebody a press release for the first time and they don’t know who you are, it really goes into the garbage pile. There’s no ability to promote your business unless something exciting’s involved: a celebrity is here that’s known by the local media. An example, if Gary Sanise came and visited the Chicago Guild for the Blind, you think the media would come here? They sure would. Gary is local and involved with the plays and coming here. But if you just, “Urban here” they don’t know who Urban is, Urban Miyares – they don’t know me here in Chicago.
Unless I happen to know, or a newspaper reporter or editor here knows me from the past, and then there might be an interest. So, again, self promoting is critical. If you Google your own name on Google – do a search on it – what comes up? If you have a criminal record and all, I’m sorry. And, by the way, if you check criminal records, almost in every city in the nation, and I do a lot of that with homeless and ex offenders who are blind and disabled, where we help them go into business.