Self promotion is a weird thing. I remember that as a young teenager I was very very shy. I remained a bit like that right up until I started playing gigs in a heavy metal band. Its hard to pull off the meek shy thing when you want to be yngwie malmsteen. I once read that metal leads guitarists were basically a mashup of musicians and strippers. Presumably only in the area of arrogance, and maybe leather trousers. Anyway…
What being a guitarist taught me is that people in ‘showbiz’ are so pushy and full of themselves that even people with no ability act like they are gods. So if you have actually knuckled down and learned to play guitar well you had to be AT LEAST as arrogant as them. Its not something that sits easily with a naturally shy English guy, but I tried. Anyway, here I am twenty five years later running a company and realizing that the public face of that company (me) is generally represented by five year old photos of me holding knives, bows or cats, and he really should get someone to take proper photos like these…
Which is kinda cheesy and embarrassing and probably necessary all at once. At least I didn’t do that typical tech CEO bullshit thing of having some photographer lie on the floor and take a pic of me next to a skyscraper. I think I have a long way to go before I reach ‘candidate on the apprentice’ levels of deranged self-belief, so thats good.
My accountant (jeez that feels weird to type) recently said ‘as your business has grown to a considerable size’ in an email, and it made me stop and think and go ‘yeah, I guess it has’. You don’t get a marching band show up at your door when your sales reach a certain level, all you get is a bigger tax bill, so its easy not to notice this sort of thing going on.
Anyway. I have proper photos now. I still cringe a bit looking at them, but if I didn’t do that I wouldn’t be British.