Everything that we see, have, or use that has value is the result of someone’s gift.  Some are individual works and others are the by-product of collaborative efforts from a group of 2 or more people.  What can you bring to the group of brilliant minds if you were called on?  Why should you be considered?  

You have to believe in yourself before someone else will trust you, in most cases.  Take some time for yourself to find out what it is that you do really well with the least amount of effort and build on that.  One of the best things you can study and one of the best people you can learn from are you and yourself — start with your routines and habits.  Do a deep dive and then do a clean-up and rid yourself of what does not serve you well.  Don’t make the excuse that you don’t have the time either as we all have the same amount of time in a day.

As we all know, there’s only 24 hours in a day so that means that you can’t create more time, but you can make more time for what’s important in your life — the things that really matter to you.  Once you have more time you can then magnify your gift which will then allow you to reproduce it and share it.  Your stock, meaning your value to the market or the world around you, and the gift within will continue to increase.  But you have to put it out there.  What good is inventory that just sits on the shelf, stashed away?

It doesn’t make sense to justify it by saying you lack the clientele or fanbase either.  Most things start with a relatively unknown audience or no fan base at all so don’t worry about the “how to” part of it.  That’s not your concern!  Just have your goal and your target audience.  What do you want to do and who do you want to serve?

When I was a kid we’d visit the food court in the mall and sometimes it would be hard to decide on what to eat.  What made it easy to choose would be the free samples that the different food vendors would give out.  They knew that giving testers would make people notice them and what they had to offer because in an area where everyone offered the same thing they had to stand out.  Think about it, almost all food smells good when you’re hungry, right?  

They simply advertised within their market (marketing and advertising).  Don’t ever think you can’t succeed in a place where others are doing what you do.  When you have a good product, people will gladly pay for it after they’ve tested it.  What do you have to give and what sets you apart from others?

Don’t just limit it to goods either.  We all have something way more valuable than goods and that’s OUR TIME.  We can never get back the time that we give someone or something.  What seed can you water?  Your gift can be tied to helping others or you simply have free time because your life affords it.  

Instead of being closed off and isolated you can volunteer.  One can never go wrong with giving back to a cause they truly believe in.  There’s abundance inside and all around us.  As long as you can produce your gift with honesty, integrity and with good quality then there will always be people and organizations happy to support you.  

I have, on multiple occasions, purchased a “re-release” of a particular retro sneaker.  Sometimes the shoe will come out in the same exact color as before with only minor details in the design that only a “sneakerhead” would notice and other times the entire shoe would just be in a different colorway to suit my palate.  

The shoe was produced because of a person’s gift (and for marketing purposes) and has been re-produced for decades afterward.  Frankly, I don’t see a slowdown in the market anytime soon and most of the advertising is done by the consumer these days!  There’s no need to talk yourself out of it because you feel that you’ll be redundant or repetitive either.