Unfurling Your Impressive Dossier {Yeah, You!}

This is Part 3 in a three-part series about tooting your own business’s horn in a way that makes your right people love you and become more addicted to what your business is all about, as opposed to just thinking you’re a self-important big mouth, which is what you’re afraid of, anyway.

Check out Part 1 of the series, “Brightening Your Business’s Star Factor” and Part 2 on “Who Owns Your Coolness? Your Right People Do.”

A little righteous horn-tooting goes a long way, and a moderate, healthy horn-tooting paradigm in your business can take your biz to places you never thought possible.

The first part of all this is realizing that unless you share what’s great about your business, no one else will ever know about it, and thus won’t have a chance to think anything of it — good, bad, or indifferent. Sadly, “no one” includes your right people, who’d gladly start to promote and do more business with you if only they knew how and why to start spreading the word.

And remembering to connect your accomplishments and accolades to the support of your clients, customers, readers, and fans and to the influence of teachers, peers, and mentors — wow. Now you’ve really done something special. Your good news is no longer just about you. It’s about the network of people who have helped make your success possible — and not just possible, likely.

This last post in the series is a challenge to you, talented creative entrepreneur.

I want you to look at what in your entrepreneurial dossier needs to be unfurled.

I don’t need to give you a bullet pointed list of suggestions of what those things could be. You know what they are.

Chances are, they are the accolades you’ve written off as a fluke, or the honor you’ve minimized as “no big deal.”

Who cares what you think? These are facts, remember? They are the same deal as the name of your business, your tagline, a description of your right people, how many years you’ve been doing this, etc.

I dare you to make a short list of these accomplishments. Aim for five. It’s a good, beaming number.

Now practice saying aloud, in a casual, cool, matter of fact voice, that you are the recipient of X, the winner of Y, and the person who made Z happen. If you can say it with conviction, you can write it with conviction. Later.

Don’t worry about sounding stuck on yourself. {If you have a horn-tooting problem, you probably need to practice owning your coolness without fear or self-consciousness, anyway.}

Read your list of I won this/I earned this/I did this/I rocked this statements out loud to yourself two or three times a day for the next week.

At the end of the week, commit to unfurling one item from your accomplishment dossier to the world in the form of a blog post, an e-newsletter, a Tweet, a Facebook status update, or what not. It happened to you — or, more than likely, you made it happen — and it’s ready to be shared with the world.

Remember, this has nothing to do with delusions of grandeur, ego, haughtiness, or wanting to position yourself as better than other people. This has to do with giving your right people the full, right picture of you to wrap their minds around. Keeping things secret is not a way to do this.

Need some practice? Start here. In the comments, tell me about one thing from your impressive dossier that your right people would love to know about. Tell me how you connect this accomplishment to other people and their influence or support, too.

I’m waiting. So are your right people.