I am a Highly Accomplished Sustainability Professional

And I’m no longer going to hide this for fear of making people feel bad or because I am worried about being too self-promotional

Being a business owner is scary. In my experience, it takes a willingness to constantly step outside of your comfort zone, a willingness to put yourself out there over and over again without knowing if you will produce results, a willingness to try new things that you had not been open to prior to being a business owner, a desire to learn new skills so you can attract customers and putting your heart on the line over and over again.
One of the new things that I am doing as a business owner, which is way out of my comfort zone, is writing my own press kit. Writing is well within my comfort zone and something that I do extremely well, what is outside of my comfort zone is self-promotion. I have had a disdain for self-promotion for quite some time, partially because I feel like talking about my accomplishments makes other feel like they are not doing enough and partially because I downplay my accomplishments at almost every chance that I get.
I am typically really good at producing results and producing them quickly and for almost all of my life I have thought that the things that I have accomplished require no special skill, no talent, and are things that anyone can do.
To make this a real example – I have worked with over 60 hotels, restaurants, commercial kitchens, stadiums and grocery stores in 7 different cities and states to help them divert over 5,000 tons of food waste from the landfill and prevent 4.2 gigaton of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and until 2 months ago I would never share that I produced these results with people. I have also helped these same 60+ clients cumulatively reduce their waste hauling bills by over $600,000. I also conducted food waste audits, labor audits, designed and presented ROI reports to my clients and have trained over 1,000 kitchen staff members of the clients that I have worked with.

Yet all I would tell people about the work that I have done in this realm that I was working with over 60 hotel, restaurant, grocery store, commercial kitchen and stadium clients throughout the country to help them reduce the amount of food waste that they send to landfill. I would hide my accomplishments because I thought that I did nothing special and produced nothing out of the ordinary and 2 months ago I realized that I have done amazing work that not everyone could do successfully. I also had no prior experience in this field, created the food waste audit and labor audit processes and reports from scratch with zero outside influence.

My previous uncomfortability with self-promotion has kept me from reaching my business goals and while I have worked through some of this fear over the last few months, the thing that is pushing me over the edge is having to write a press kit. As I learned from a friend who has been in PR for 15 years, a press kit is just a massive self-promotional package where you talk about your accomplishments, speaking engagements that you’ve had, breakthrough results that your business has produced and more. I was so uncomfortable doing this and I committed to going past my fears and writing the press kit. It took a few tries and not quitting and the work has been worth it as I already am more comfortable talking about the work that I have done and am less afraid to share it with people.

If you were just as scared as I was about self-promotion I highly recommend that you write a press kit. It will push you past your comfort zone, which is so crucial for a business owner. I have been pushed so far out of my comfort zone in founding and marketing Pure Love Sustainability Inc. It honestly has been tough and it also has been worth more than its weight in gold.

Michael Forman is the founder of Pure Love Sustainability Inc. Michael Forman is a native of New York City who moved to Boise in Jan. 2018 because he wanted to be able to help Boise citizens, communities, businesses, organizations and local governments reduce their environmental impact and reduce their impact on climate change. You can schedule a food waste audit and/or energy-efficiency audit for your home, business, building or food establishment with Michael by either calling (208)584-1492 or sending an email to purelovesustainabilityinc@gmail.com