I have a friend from Puerto Rico who told me that they have a saying, “The shoemaker’s children have barefeet.” I’ve since found out that we have the same saying in English. The idea being that many times, people who are in a particular business don’t bother to do for themselves what they make a living doing for others. Fat personal trainers, broke financial advisors, lawyers without wills, and shoemakers with barefooted children.

When I was learning sales, we were taught, “Own what you sell.” It makes your more credible and authentic. And anyway, why would you sell something unless you believed in it enough to buy it yourself? Unfortunately, the obviousness of the “own what you sell” rule don’t dawn on nearly enough people, and so we continue to live in a world populated by poorly-postured chiropractors, doctors who smoke, and remarkably unhappy personal coaches.

Nowhere is the problem more ridiculous, obvious, and bad for business as with marketing people. If you are going to provide marketing services, website design, social media expertise, or sales training, there better be a complete 100% alignment between what you are telling people to do, and what you are doing yourself. If you are trying to convince people that your business building approach is the best, and worth paying for, why would you ever do something different yourself? That doesn’t make ANY SENSE AT ALL!

And yet, I see it all the time.

Do you think that a potential web development customer isn’t going to look at your website? Do you think someone interested in buying your social media training isn’t going to notice that you don’t use twitter? Or that you don’t have any videos on your website devoted to selling online video production?

They do notice.

Don’t go barefoot.