Calistri's Corner

I didn’t.  In fact, mildly dyslexic, I chose an engineering program as an undergraduate in college because it only required one semester of English.  The other thing I never wanted to do was work in marketing.  And now it seems I am in a place where I do both, willingly. Talking about marketing, here is a small addy for you, if you are looking for a really superb deal, join Full Tilt Rakeback campaign now and get back up to 27% of your rake paid to Full Tilt. Check their site for more info.

I remember when I had meetings at IBM with the marketing people.  They would spend three hours debating the exact shade of charcoal the new servers should be.  When they’d ask for my opinion, I’d say I didn’t care if they were puke green as a long as they worked.  They’d then spend the next hour discussing if the buying public was ready for puke green.  I would roll my eyes.  And cold calling?  Forget about it.  I got kicked out of the girl scouts for “lack of motivation,” which I think translated to “not a cookie seller.”Â

When I went back to graduate school I had to write; a lot.  And I liked it; a lot.  When I realized that people got paid to write about poker, something I was already doing for free, I wanted in.  And all of a sudden, those charcoal color nit pickers made sense to me.  Doing research about what people wanted.  Finding the right niche for your product. Networking.  Cold calling.  I did them all.  When I started out, I actually would dedicate one hour each morning to marketing - or what I began calling my “shameless self-promotion hour.”  It took time, but it slowly paid off.  And the more jobs I got, the more writing and less marketing I had to do, which was the objective after all.    Â

I have a number of acquaintances that don’t write for a living, but feel they could.  There’s one guy who I’m pretty sure thinks he is a far better writer than I am and that I don’t deserve the gigs I’ve been able to get.  How do I know he feels this way? Because he’s said, “I’m a better writer than you are and I could have gotten those gigs,” about a dozen times.  He might have talent as a writer, but he sucks at hiding his feelings and subtlety is also apparently not his forte.  The first time he said it, I was a little taken aback.  All the rest of the times, I told him the same thing.  “You might be the best damn writer in the world, but until you actually write something and market it, no one’s going to pay you a dime.”  And somehow this leaves him feeling that the world is an unjust place, where talent continues to go unrecognized and I, apparently, continue to be the poster child for all that he deserves. Â

I often hear the same song here in Austin, where we probably have more musicians per capita than any other city.  Once a week I hear some wanna be musician claim they are a bigger talent than [fill in the blank with any recording artist].  Invariably they don’t have a demo, haven’t performed in even an open mike, and have never talked with any clubs about what they’re looking for.

Life is short, boys and girls.  If there’s something you want out there, you gotta find a way to just do it.  And I’m not just talking about writing.  Do you want a promotion at work?  When was the last time you updated your resume (just one more marketing tool) to reflect the skills you have that fit the next job that you want?Â

You think you can’t market yourself.  Think again.  Think poker.  You market on the felt all the time.   You establish a table image.  You think about positional advantage.  You study your target market and figure out what hands you can sell and to whom.  You have to have a real hand against a calling station and almost any two, with a raise, will do against the rock. Â

And you also know that if you’re going to win a hand, you’ve got to get in there and actually play one.        Â

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 6:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized.