You need a medium to spread your awesomeness, as the path to
under-compensation is doing good work that never gets explicitly
pimped or attached to you. Yes, it’s unseemly, and your work and
achievements should speak for themselves. They don’t. Figure out how
you are going to reach 10, 1,000, 10,000 people who otherwise
wouldn’t have been exposed to your work and awesomeness. The good
news: social media was built for this. The bad news: it’s hand-to-hand
combat. I have 58,000 Twitter followers, which is good but not great,
and it’s taken me six years, fifteen minutes a day, to get there. Our
weekly “Winners & Losers” videos now get 400,000-plus views a
week. Our first, 138 weeks ago, got 785 views. Btw, it’s not me and my
nine-year-old in the kitchen with a camcorder. Animators, editors,
researchers, a studio, and substantial media (that is, we buy
distribution/views) have been constant investments over the last 2.5
years so we could become an overnight success.
Some people are better at words, some at images. Invest
aggressively in your strength(s) and spend modest effort to get your
weaknesses to average so they don’t hold you back. Everyone from
employers to coworkers to potential mates is looking you up. Make
sure what they see is the best of you. Google yourself, and if your feeds
can be cleaner, stronger, and more fun, make improvements.
Boom(er)
What if you’re not twenty-five and from an Ivy League—turn on the
car and close the garage door? No, not yet. I’m fifty-two, working with
a workforce that’s on average a quarter century younger. There are a
few of us old folks at L2. However, we all have one thing in common.
We have learned how to manage young people (clear objectives,
metrics, invest in them, empathy) and push our comfort zones with
the Four—we make an effort to understand and leverage them. The
fifty-five-year-old who says (proudly) he or she doesn’t use social
media has given up or is just afraid.
Get in the game. Download and use apps. Use every social media
platform (okay, not Snapchat, you’re too old) and, more important, try
to understand them (best practices, user reviews, Instagram vs.