A few years ago (okay, maybe more than a few), I saw this funny list of 15 ingenious ways to trick your guests into thinking you have your $#*! together, and I remember it each year as the holiday season approaches.
With holiday sales and New Years resolutions coming up, your business may be expecting more visitors than usual! So here are 15 ways to trick people into thinking you have your business S#*& together!
1. Get a quality logo and put it on a bunch of $#*!
Why have a plain t-shirt, water bottle or mouse pad when you could have one with your face on it? Or at least that logo that you spent 20 hours creating when you could have hired a perfectly capable graphic designer.
2. Choose some updated brand colours
Google “brand colours” and select some you like, then pretend you spent days searching for the perfect hues to match your brand personality. Now, become obsessed with those HEX Codes like your first high school crush.
3. Download a S#*!-ton of social media templates
No one needs to know that you aren’t a natural-born content creator. Grab one of those templates, slap on your new brand colours and pre-schedule that S#*t like a boss. Your followers will think you have social media management on lock.
4. Purchase a domain
Nothing screams Genuine Professional like rocking your own email domain. So ditch that @yahoo.com crap already and get your own. No one will know that you still use your soccer_girl.horse*fan@msn.com email for unending free Netflix trials. For bonus points, create an email signature that doesn’t suck.
5. Ditch your dark, blurry selfies and get some decent headshots.
For a serious vibe, put on your best pantsuit and solve some math problems in front of a brick wall. To trick people into thinking you have a sense of humour, sit on the arm of a sofa and laugh flirtatiously at the camera like the awkward SOB you are.
6. Don’t have a website? Get one.
Remember that domain you got for your professional email address? Use it to create a landing page and smother it in those d@mn HEX codes and headshots. Invest in some SEO and increase your reach in no time.
7. Get paid for your work by sending a professional invoice
Grab some free invoicing software and make yourself at least one decent-looking template. Then, your lazy @$$ can just input your hours and rates and send it off to your clients. So easy, even you can do it.
8. Clean up your social media
Update your profile bio and put that s#*t on everything. Seriously. LinkedIn, Instagram, Gmail, Tinder… literally everything.
9. Demonstrate you are capable of caring for living things, even if they’re fake
Go find some unkillable fake plants at IKEA and put them around your office… or in full view of your camera if you work from home. Just make sure to dust them from time to time, you filthy animal.
10. No more fake-out voicemail greetings
Seriously. No one is going to leave a message if you say, “Hello!.... Just kidding!” Pretend you’re an adult and record a new voicemail greeting with your name, business, hours and when you will call back. Then, call them the hell back.
11. Speaking of working from home, you still need to put on nice clothes…at least from the waist up
Have a Zoom meeting in 10 minutes? Grab your one clean shirt, comb your hair for the first time this month and hide your dirty dishes. This outfit-mullet will save you from complete and total embarrassment and will make people think you look this put together all the time. Thank g*d they can’t smell you.
12. Get featured on someone else's podcast
Call one of your seven friends who have their own podcasts and arrange to guest star on it. Send them a list of pre-approved topics ahead of time so you can appear intelligent and well-spoken like an Experty Expert.
13. Learn nonsensical acronyms like PMS, CRM, KPIs and SEO, and use the S#!& out of them
For example: “We need to update our SEO to decrease our CTR and BR” or “Let’s review our KPIs by EOD so we can GTFO and get BOGO at the BAR.”
14. Take pictures of your hands typing… or something
For branded photos to use on your website, social media, product photos etc. Take pictures of your hands typing, writing nonsense on notepads, holding your phone or pointing at literally anything.
15. Hire a Virtual Assistant!
The best way to make people think you have your $#!t together… is to actually get your $#!t together! A Virtual Assistant can do everything above and more. Not only will you look like a total boss, but you could actually be one. Imagine optimizing processes, automating tasks and delegating action items. No more trickery for you, my friend!
There. Now you, too, can pretend that you have your $#!t together and impress all of your new clients this holiday season!