...what does that say about the cobbler?

My mother is full of idioms and good old country phrases (we call them Phyllisisms) and, upon hearing the difficulties I will describe forthwith, she immediately respond, "Of course, the cobbler's children have no shoes."  (I was much happier with this comparison than that of the little boy in "The Ransom of Red Chief," which was how I was often described as a child by my father.)

The point is, that parable really stuck with me, and in no uncertain terms it bluntly illustrated to me that I was the living embodiment of the cobbler; only the industry was different.

The plain truth is that I don't market my company well.

Ok, we have a good website, and sure, our marketing collateral is pretty nifty, but a lot of online activities, especially social media, is lacking.  Gravely lacking.  As a company whose task load is usually about 85% internet related, and considering I speak frequently on social media for small businesses, this is pretty pathetic.

You practice what you preach.  I was raised on that belief, and sometimes sat back with haughtiness while judging others who fell guilty to a lack of commitment.  But I am oh-so frequently in that same boat.  I preach the unbelievable value of blogs, the importance of quality e-mail marketing, of updating your website regularly, and of engaging and conversing to no end on the social networks.  But, alas, the spigot doth not flow as it should.  At the end of the day, it's the clients work that comes first.  "Our stuff can always wait," I think.

My burden and embarrassment were somewhat eased when I regaled this problem to fellow business owners, and frequently they responded that they found themselves in the same boat.  I was further relieved by, when researching the phrase "cobbler's children" on Google for this post, I came upon page after page of not folk tales, but rather articles and blog posts from experts, authors, and other business owners describing the exact same phenomena.  This recent article by Peggy McColl in the Huffington Post is probably my favorite, and deserves a read.

So, what is my solution to this problem?  Well, I'm not quite sure.  If I was, I wouldn't still be in this position.  Here are some suggestions I have if you're in the same boat:

• Set a schedule of the activities you need to do and actually stick to it.
• If need be, schedule a meeting with yourself.
• [Like with all goals], ask a friend or colleague to be your accountability partner, and reward yourself when you've achieved your target.
• Remember that this is what you do for a living, and you know how easily it can be done and how wonderful you can do it!

I suppose the fact that I'm writing this very blog post is a move in the right direction.  I have some lofty marketing goals for my company, and perhaps I need to listen to my own suggestion above and think of some incentive.  12 months of solid marketing = an Android tablet?  A weekend getaway?  Perhaps just the felling of the two-fold accomplishment - both surpassing a huge goal and doing our marketing - is reward enough.

We shall see.