Professionals Promote Others; Amateurs Don’t

In a world full of “buy my product, buy my product” kind of messages, it’s nice to hear someone promoting somebody else. This is not common and differentiates the great networker from the amateur. It also says a lot about the character of the promoter. When someone is only thinking about themselves and their business, they tend to see every human interaction as an opportunity to promote themselves and their business. When someone is interested in others’ success in addition to their own, they find opportunities to spread the wealth.

In keeping with Bob Burg’s maxim: “All things being equal, people do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust”, it serves us well to promote others who we feel are worthy of promotion. But don’t do it from the perspective of the promoted person then “owing you”. That would be insincere and manipulative and what goes around comes around. Do it because you don’t operate from the perspective of a limited-sum game. Realize that there are not limited slices of the pie, the pie just keeps getting bigger.

This is very important to understand and will influence many decisions you make in life and business. When we come from a perspective of abundance, we don’t worry about competition as much as we think about value. Reread that. Yes, competition exists. But value trumps it. Always be adding value to everyone.

Promoting people is adding value. And it says a lot about you. If you know someone who you feel should be better known, talk about them. Promote them. There will be time to talk about yourself. Speaking well of others will actually let the listener know that you’re a person to be listened to. And you will be when the time is right. Spread the love. In a more and more interconnected, over-caffeinated, hyper-competitive, Crackberry/Blackberry, Mach 5 with your receding hairline on fire world, what goes around comes around. Literally at the speed of light.

Spread the love. It’ll come back.