Promoting like Arnold: creating is half the job

I stumbled upon this extract from Schwarzenegger's memoir a few weeks ago.
It caught my attention because it talks about promotion. Something that only comes naturally to some product-oriented entrepreneurs and artists.

Whenever I finished filming a movie, I felt my job was only half done. Every film had to be nurtured in the marketplace. You can have the greatest movie in the world, but if you don't get it out there, if people don't know about it, you have nothing. It's the same with poetry, with painting, with writing, with inventions.

It always blew my mind that some of the greatest artists, from Michelangelo to van Gogh, never sold much because they didn't know how. They had to rely on some schmuck (some agent or manager or gallery owner) to do it for them. Picasso would go into a restaurant and do a drawing or paint a plate for a meal. Now you go to these restaurants in Madrid, and the Picassos are hanging on the walls, worth millions of dollars.

That wasn't going to happen to my movies. Same with bodybuilding, same with politics--no matter what I did in life, I was aware that you had to sell it. As Ted Turner said, "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise."


Arnold Schwarzenegger's biography "Total Recall"
source: Trung Phan on X

It is challenging to wear several hats. Traditional education formats people into jobs with one predominant skill or type of task. When you are working for yourself, you've got to do product and marketing. And you've got to be good at both.

This goes beyond the responsibility of self-employed people. Being good at promoting your work is a skill that will help you climb the corporate ladder faster.