In making any product, there is a balance of making it better or spending time and money promoting it as it is. Without knowing what will be the best return on investment, it is hard to decide on either.
The same is true in your career. You can either spend your time broadly in two areas: schmoozing or getting your head down doing actual work. It is difficult to know where to draw the balancing line especially if your natural tendency is to plan out improvements, get stuck in and execute rather than shout out, self-promote and take credit. But you must spend the time to cultivate this. Assuming you are not already, many a person has made a career and risen the ranks just by attending the right meetings and being close to the right people despite being mediocre best. If you do not believe in yourself, who will? If you do not champion yourself, who will? If you do not shout about yourself, who will? Well, some people will, and most will not. Elon Musk has said in the past that he does not spend a penny on advertising Tesla, instead preferring to invest in making the product better. This is a good model to strive for, but he does put on press conferences, do talks, interviews and publicity stunts, so he is still getting his message out there. He is still investing his time into marketing even if his money does not follow. How can you get noticed today? What can you do to push yourself out of your comfort zone today? Who can you model yourself on that is really good at this? What would they do? |
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