Fixate on Strength or Weakness (7/1/14)

Early on in the writing of Average Joe’s Story a friend of mine and I were talking about strengths and weaknesses. Her point to me was you can’t be great at everything. Work to improve your shortcomings, but focus on your strengths. Logically that makes sense.

When I flew out to LA for Author 101, a writers conference, I knew what I was going to spend money, and I wasn’t going to buy another thing. I wasn’t going to invest one more penny than I had to. Well I spent about 700,000 more pennies than I wanted to, and I think it was one of the best investments I ever made. I hired an image and branding coach.

You see I describe myself the same way David Hancock has described himself to me in the past…”I have a face made for radio.” I invested the money on Starley Murray because of my aversion to TV. If I had taken my friends advice I would have not spent the money on Starley, and just dealt with TV when it came up. The problem with that is I would have had a terrible showing and reenforced my preexisting negative attitudes to a medium that any public figure needs to embrace.

I choose to not just work on my weaknesses, but fixate on them. I don’t want to camouflage my weaknesses with a little polish, I want to completely eradicate them. Will I ever be a celebrity image and branding expert? No, but by focusing on my weaknesses I might end up being one of those celebrities Starley works with. You can do as you will, but for me I see more growth potential by focusing on my weaknesses, and that is the path that I’m going to take.