What to do when marketing yourself makes you want to hide under your desk
Last week, a group of Female Lawyers’ Club members got together for a roundtable on marketing ourselves. I opened by admitting that the whole subject makes me want to hide under my desk, and that I’m sometimes the person who’ll spend far too long agonising over a two-line LinkedIn comment. It turns out I’m not the only one.
Why some networking events feel effortless (and others don't)
You know the feeling. You walk into a networking event and you're on. You remember names, people laugh at your jokes, you leave feeling like you could take on the world. Then a few weeks later, you walk into the same room and you can barely string a sentence together and are dreading speaking to anyone. You want to leave the second you arrive.
You're the same person, with the same skills, in the same kind of room. Yet the experience feels completely different.
How can we be two different people? The answer may be hormones.
Is apologising gendered?
Occasionally the idea for a blog doesn't so much suggest itself as smack me in the face and insist that I write it. This is one such occasion.
This was prompted by three separate incidents in fairly short order. I was on the receiving end of suboptimal behaviour from three different people, and on none of these occasions did the person apologise. I say “people” when what I actually mean is “men”, and it gave me pause to wonder whether the propensity to apologise, or not, is gendered. I had a suspicion that it was, and this prompted me to look into it further.
You’re not the only one who hates marketing yourself
At our recent FLC masterclass on marketing yourself as a female lawyer, "blowing your own trumpet", with Rachel Brushfield, founder of EnergiseLegal, she asked us a simple question partway through: what do you most dislike about marketing yourself? A few people answered in the chat box, and said much the same thing, just in different words.
I thought I was the only one
"I quoted lower, but I could have quoted higher. Why did I never learn?" (said by a senior lawyer at a Female Lawyers' Club fees and billing session)
For years, saying my fees out loud made me want to apologise mid-sentence. I'd say the number and immediately look for ways to make it sound better, or justify it. I assumed this was a personal failing, something everyone else had grown out of.
It turns out it wasn't just me at all.