The Invisible Nail Tech

Look, all I'm sayin' is that you cannot build a business without promoting it. Yes, lots of people are shy — that's all well and fine — get your Mom to promote you then. Or your best friend, or your sister, cousin, daughter — whoever you have available.

And I realize not all of us understand the Internet. Even those of us with a little bit of skill with the Internet don't always have the time or the patience to wrestle it into doing our bidding ... I just wasted the majority of an unexpected and highly cherished break in my day trying to update photo albums on both Myspace and Photobucket only to discover that Myspace only uploaded four out of 50 photos and neither site bothered to save all the captions that I painstakingly entered.

BUT Myspace is free. So is Photobucket, Facebook, and the new NAILS Magazine Nail Art Gallery. Point being, there are websites out there that don't require a financial commitment or degree in programming.

There is no excuse to not have at least one of these pages for your business — or for you as a professional, however you choose to think of yourself.

I recently met another nail tech and had a little chat with her. I'll spare you the eye-rolling portion of that conversation, but her tone made it clear that she thinks quite highly of herself and maybe not as highly of me. I smiled and nodded and shook her hand and asked for one of her business cards anyway. As soon as she was out the door I Google'd her.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zip.

If I enter her name in quotes I can find her personal Facebook page, but if I enter her name and "nails" — NOTHING.

There are probably a handful of disappearing exceptions around the globe, but the Internet is where new customers are looking for you, for me, for their Avon and Tupperware lady. The Internet is the new yellow pages. Remember Steve Martin in “The Jerk”? When he gets the new phone book, finds his listing and runs out screaming "I AM SOMEBODY!"?

If an Internet search on any major search engine for your name + what you do doesn't include you at all, you don't exist as a professional.

You can hardly run around sniveling about being slow if you haven't even bothered to make sure people know you exist.