I bet if you look at your email inbox or spam filter, you'll find exactly the same thing I do. Emails with titles like these….
- The most amazing video ranking system ever
- Powerful SEO tracker
- 10 million visitors now!
Every one of them is promising the same thing:
they can help you become internet famous!
Let's be honest…
When it comes to the really important things in life, can we at least agree on these five things?
- There's something nice about feeling known and recognized.
- We're often looking for external approval.
- When popular people ‘like' us, we finally feel noticed.
- The joy is short-lived & we're back looking for acceptance.
- Twitter follower counts & facebook friend counts mean little.
I'm not saying that a dose of external appreciation and approval isn't nice – but I'm not going to spend money on an internet course to become internet famous. Because my goal isn't to be internet famous. It's for something far more valuable and much more attainable.
Locally Valuable instead of Internet Famous
Do me a favor – list out the things that are really important in your life. How many of them require internet fame?
Instead, if you're like me, the things I value most are close to me – family, friends, and ways to have impact. And it's that last part – a way to have impact – that sometimes catches us in a desire to have tons of virtual friends. But I'm going for something more important.
I want to be locally valuable.
I love connecting with people across the country, and I manage tons of folks in virtual teams, so this may be a counter-intuitive thing that you may not expect. But I'm not talking about things in pure distance. I'm talking about circles of trust.
Circles of Trust
Remember this clip?
I'm not saying that exact notion of a circle of trust, but something similar.
I want friends and family to think of me when they hit a wall and need some help.
I want to be locally valuable.
So to that end, I regularly work hard to step into more and more local circles of trust – communities where I can establish trust, develop relationship, and have an impact.
And there's no short cut course you can pay $99 to sign up for that will step you out of having local impact. It's the work of developing your relationships, developing your brand, and developing your presence in several circles of trust.