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On Being A Window Washer

May 26, 2008 · Print This Article

One particularly unpleasant online marketer (sorry can’t remember his name or his site as he was poisonous), one of those types that is constantly negative about other people, used the term window washer (or window cleaner) to describe someone who was looking in at the successful people and trying to emulate what they did, or stealing their ideas.

Now the term might be very common in IM circles, or just this guy’s little joke, but at the time it hit a chord with me.

I don’t know where I am in the scheme of things. I am not as successful as I would like to be (yet) and I seem to be pedaling but not in gear. I am watching and learning and in some things I think I am going pretty well, in others I fear I am considered a window washer.

Why is it there are probably 5 or more successful male IMs to each female? Is it because we don’t have that male self possession that drives you through these very doubts. Maybe.

I really need a mentor that I can bounce this stuff off….

Written by Allison · Filed Under Me-anderings 
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Comments

4 Responses to “On Being A Window Washer”

  1. Where Have All the Good Girls Gone? | audible marketing on May 26th, 2008 6:18 am

    [...] Reynolds wrote an interesting blog post “On Being a Window Washer” She related it to her own experiences, asking why there were fewer successful female [...]

  2. Lisa on May 26th, 2008 6:23 am

    I started writing a reply here and it got so long I turned it into a blog post of my own about finding female mentors in Internet Marketing.

    But I wanted to say that there is nothing wrong with looking at successful people and trying to emulate them (although stealing their ideas is wrong) but as you pointed out the person making these comments was a pretty unpleasant guy.

    And there are more women in IM than you would first think because a lot of them keep their heads down and just get on with it :) But, it is still a male dominated field. If I were you I would expand on relationships made in forums you frequent and see where that leads to.

    Lisa

  3. Clare on May 26th, 2008 11:08 pm

    nothing wrong with watching successful people and trying to emulate them, it’s what thousands of years of evolution encourage us to do, surely…
    (ooh, just realised how controversial that might be in a global forum!)

  4. Allison on May 27th, 2008 1:37 am

    Thanks for the comments Lisa and Clare. Much appreciated and supportive :)

    I think where I am can be summed up by this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE that serendipitously popped up in my Google reader.

    I am going to revisit this theme in 6 months and see what I think then. Maybe there will have been some considerable changes around the place. Maybe we will make them?

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