One of the things I have struggled with the most as an entrepreneur — and, to some extent, still do — is how to promote my products and services without feeling like I am bragging. How do I sell my services without constantly asking myself, “Are they really worth the money this person is paying me?”
These questions have followed me throughout my entrepreneurial journey, and perhaps they are even more difficult for me because of the industry I work in. In coaching, people are not simply buying a product. They are buying the person: my experience, my way of thinking, my presence, and my ability to create a space where they can reflect, challenge themselves and grow. In other words, if I want people to understand the value of what I offer, I need to talk about myself.
And that doesn’t always come naturally.
We are not necessarily taught to talk about ourselves
I grew up in a culture where self-promotion is not particularly well regarded. There is an implicit expectation that if you are good at what you do, if you work hard and do your job properly, eventually people will notice. Your work should speak for itself.
For a long time, I believed that too. But entrepreneurship has taught me something different: being good at what you do and promoting what you do are two completely different skills. You can be excellent at your work and still struggle to attract clients. You can create something valuable and still have very few people know about it. And you can genuinely help people while still needing to tell them that your service exists.
Being good at what I do is not enough. I also need to learn how to communicate its value. And that has forced me to rethink what self-promotion actually means.
We like to think we are rational. We aren’t.
There is another uncomfortable truth I have had to accept. I would like to believe that we are rational people who carefully analyse our options and then make rational decisions. But human beings don’t really work that way. We are emotional, impressionable and influenced by the people around us, by stories, experiences, reputation, social proof and by the way information is presented to us.
We often make decisions emotionally and then use our rational minds to explain why that decision made sense. Which means that selling is, at least to some degree, about influence. And that immediately raises another question for me: where does influence end and manipulation begin?
Influence is everywhere
The more I have reflected on this, the more I have realised that we influence one another all the time, often without even realising it. We influence through the way we communicate, through the stories we tell, through our expertise, our behaviour and the reputation we build. The higher the perceived social authority, the greater the potential influence we have on others. In fact, the power of influence has become so visible that we now have an entire profession built around it: the influencer.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether we influence others. We do. The real question is whether we do it consciously and responsibly.
And for someone like me, who has always had a strong need for power, this is particularly interesting. When I say “need for power”, I don’t necessarily mean the desire to control other people. I see it more as the desire to leave something behind and create an impact. That can manifest as wanting social authority, a title, the opportunity to lead people, or simply the desire to make a meaningful contribution in your field.
If we accept that no meaningful impact is created entirely alone, then influence becomes a necessary part of creating that impact. Seen from this perspective, perhaps self-promotion isn’t such a negative thing after all. Perhaps being able to talk about what we do and why it matters is simply another skill we need to develop.
So when does influence become manipulation?
This is where I believe the distinction becomes important. For me, the fine line between influence and manipulation is intention. If my intention is genuinely good towards the person in front of me, I am influencing. If my intention is to take advantage of that person for my own benefit, I am manipulating.
The distinction sounds simple. But when it comes to selling, things become much more complicated.
When I promote my coaching services, I genuinely believe that I can offer something valuable. I know that coaching can create meaningful change for people who are ready for it, and I know the experience and knowledge I bring to my work. So my intention is to help.
But I also want to be paid for my work.
And that is where the uncomfortable question comes back: if I benefit financially from influencing someone to buy my service, am I still influencing — or am I manipulating?
Selling is not charity
I have eventually come to a fairly simple conclusion. Wanting to help someone and wanting to be paid for helping them are not mutually exclusive. This is commerce. Not charging for my services would be charity, and that is a completely different conversation.
There is nothing inherently wrong with creating something valuable, communicating its value and asking people to pay for it. The difficulty, for me, lies somewhere else. I want to have a clear conscience about the value I am offering. And so I keep coming back to the same question: are my services worth the price I am asking for them?
The impossible question of worth
The problem is that this is probably an impossible question to answer objectively. The value of something is not the same for everyone. One person may consider a coaching session expensive, while another may see it as an investment that can completely change the way they approach their career, relationships or life.
The same service can have completely different value depending on who is receiving it, what they need and what they are willing to invest. So, for now, I have found a very personal way of dealing with this dilemma: I tend to set a price that I would personally be willing to pay for the service.
Is that the best pricing strategy? Probably not. But it allows me to feel at peace with the exchange. Until I rewrite some of my beliefs around money, value and worth, I will probably continue to set my prices this way.
Maybe, in time, I will become more comfortable with the idea that the price of my service does not have to be justified by whether I would personally pay it. Maybe I will learn to separate my own perception of worth from the value another person can receive from my work.
For now, I am still learning to promote myself. Still learning to sell. Still asking uncomfortable questions. And perhaps that is actually a good thing, because I don’t want to become someone who sells at any cost. I want to become someone who can communicate value without losing integrity.
Someone who can influence without manipulating. Someone who can say, “I believe I can help you, this is the value I can bring, and this is what my work is worth,” without feeling that I need to apologise for it.
Maybe that’s not bragging.
Maybe that’s simply owning the value of what I bring to the world.
