How To Be Selfish

One of the best ways to make yourself invaluable involves doing what may seem unthinkable:

Putting yourself first.

“No!” you, my selfless reader, are thinking. “My client comes first.” “My family comes first.” “My team comes first.” “My friends come first.” “Society comes first.” “The planet comes first.”

Wonderful sentiments.

But what about you?

I’ve come to appreciate selfish altruism more and more.

Maybe that’s because most of the time I’m being helpful to someone, I’m getting something out of it.

If I refer someone I respect for a job, I add value to both parties while keeping myself top of mind with someone in a position to hire others.

If I recommend the job resources in my newsletter, I may gain a subscriber.

If I give someone an invite to my community, I give them access to 2,000 brilliant marketers, and I gain a deeper connection with one more.

When I created my cheat sheet for how I can help others and shared it via the link http://bit.ly/howdavidcanhelp, I was being selfish in the above ways. I was also saving time from having to email this over and over or get on more calls. That one link can assist with quite a few of the out-of-the-blue notes I get.

There’s another kind of selfishness too, and that’s about taking care of yourself. You can’t always be the servant and never get served.

Amanda Goetz, a brilliant marketer who is one of the more open people I follow in terms of discussing life rather than just business, recently posted about what she’s doing for herself.

She tweeted, “2021 has kicked off with a lot of life changes for me – trying to embrace this with hope instead of sadness. I will continue to seek stability in my 3Rs: Routines, Relationships, Rituals.”

That’s all about self-care, doing what you need for yourself so you can better support others — your clients, loved ones, employees, and others who rely on you.

Given what has happened in this country this month, we’ve seen what can happen when selfishness takes an extreme form and turns into treason. 

I also know my share of narcissists. They’re not that fun to deal with.

Most people I know, however, err on the other side. They’re too selfless. 

Ask yourself how you can best help others. What can you offer? How can you offer it? Is there a way to offer it more efficiently than you do now? 

If those offers benefit you, that’s okay. Don’t let that stop you from doing what you can for others. 

Keep the altruism front and center.

If you’re selfish in the process, that’s the selfishness that the world needs a lot more of.

Happy New Year. Please be sure to let me know any way I can be helpful to you this year, whether or not it benefits me.

Want to share your selfish altruism with others? Post it in the Serial Marketers #offers section. 

David

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-Naming / Nomenclature (Company & Product/Service)
-Logo Design / Visual Identity / Brand Guidelines
-Brand Strategy / Positioning / Messaging
-Marketing Collateral 
-Website Design & Development 
-Connections to a curated network of agencies & consultants 

To support the startup and small business community, their project minimums remain at a much-reduced $1,000. Email chris@thompsonandprince.com if you’d like to learn more!

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LEARN. TRY. SHARE.
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Thanks to Michael Browne, Michael Marzano, Claudia Strauss, E.B. Moss, Candice Grobler, Keren Unrad, Jaimee Kniffen, and Chris Gorges for spreading the word about the newsletter recently.

Here’s your own personalized link, with more referral rewards for sharing the newsletter. Visit https://referralhub.page/serialmarketer to see how you’re doing. 

http://www.serialmarketer.net/subscribe/?rh_ref=823bcd55
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EVENTS
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Please send over any events you’re hosting or attending, and I’ll add them to the list. All events below are virtual, and all times are EDT.

• Ad Ops Online: Job listings for ad operations, programmatic account management, sales operations, and more.
• Advisable: Get instant access to top marketing freelancers
• AMA Job Board: Listings from the American Marketing Association (maybe you can also ask them anything)
• Built in NYC: Jobs at a range of levels and functions, as long as you’re okay working in this quaint, backwater hamlet.
• CareerList: Here’s a form for companies hiring and a form for job seekers; here’s the public list with tabs for both 
• Content Writing Jobs: Content marketers, enjoy
• Creative Women of Color: List yourself in the database and find talent, via Women Who Create
• ExecThread: Senior roles spanning a range of verticals and cities; membership is free but fully vetted (this uses my referral ID to get you in faster)
• GLG: Get paid to share your topical expertise; it can lead to some interesting conversations at a potentially decent hourly rate
• Grace Blue Transitions: A portal for hirers and seekers with resources from this exec recruiting firm
• The Hired Guns: An array of jobs in marketing and related fields at brands, agencies, and media companies
• Hue: Amplifying voices of people in color working in marketing
• Hunterz: A way for connectors to get paid to introduce startups to large enterprises
• Lead5: A paid service for executive roles, plus intel on changes with companies and PE investments; you can try a risk-free weeklong trial to see if it’s any good for your needs
• Lunch Club: Match 1:1 around predetermined goals with accomplished professionals (free)
• NYC Ad Jobs & Networking: A popular Facebook group
• One Club for Creativity: COVID-19 jobs Board
• #OpenToWork: There’s a channel in Serial Marketers where you can share what you’re looking for
• Pangea: Where you can hire college freelancers (and college students can get gigs)
• Pocit: A platform connecting people of color with jobs in the tech industry
• Remotists: Remote startup jobs, chronicled weekly
• Sales Hustle Stack: Find platform-based gigs and other creative ways to earn some extra cash
• Startup.Jobs: There’s a section for marketing jobs
• Teal Job Tracker: A free Chrome extension to manage and enhance your job search
• TechNY Daily: While more technical, there are also some sales and marketing jobs at NY startups.
• VC Job Boards: Aleph, Eniac Ventures, Pear, Sequoia, Union Square Ventures
• VentureLoop: Free startup job listings; their paid option is $15/month and might surface more leads (but it might not).
• Wanted: Wanted helps top talent in tech and marketing find a job at your desired pay. Plug in your salary, stay anonymous at first, and connect with companies that want to recruit you.

Do you run or enjoy other job listing sites? Let me know, and I’ll share them.

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OFFERS (NEW SECTION)
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Below are offers extended to the Serial Marketers community. To share your own or access the Premium member discounts, review membership options here.

Secret
Sign up and use the promo code SERIALMARKETERS to get 20% off on any membership plan. Membership enables you to access all deals with unlimited usage. One deal should more than pay for itself.

Marpipe
Create an account and start a 7-day free trial for $125 in ad spend credit toward your first experiment with this multivariate testing platform. Redeem here. (Premium members get $175 in credit with a custom code)

Copysmith
Following a 7-day trial of this AI-powered marketing tool to generate ads, product descriptions, and more, use code SERIALMARKETERS for 35% off any plan for 3 months (premium subscribers get 50% off for 4 months).

Dokkio
Get lifetime access to this file management tech with three seats, all free. (Premium members get five seats; see the Slack channel for details and a custom link.)

PS: Thank you so much for reading this