There’s a lot of noise out there.

A lot of it is spam, a lot of it is amateur, a lot of it is vapid.

But a lot of it is good. Really good.

You already know that of course. You might spend your days trying to shout above that noise in an attempt to be heard.

You know your work has an audience out there that can be impacted by it, who can be changed by it, who may be actively looking for just what you’ve got.

But they’ve done their best to tune out you and the rest of the noise out of sheer exhaustion.

You strain your vocal cords, shout just a little louder, hoping to break through, catch just a sliver of their attention.

You’re sure that once they hear your frantically delivered pitch they’ll be yours for life.

But you can only shout so loud for so long before your voice gives out.

What if getting heard wasn’t about shouting though?

What if getting heard was actually about dropping your voice and speaking directly, intimately to people who were willing to lean in to hear what you had to say?

What if instead of trying to share your message to a football stadium of people waiting for you to finish so the game can start up again, you shared it around a campfire, to a small, rapt audience who huddled closer, eyes fixed on you, ears tuned in to your every word, your every gesture.

This is what building an audience today is about.

This is how to create and share work that changes people.

It isn’t quick. It isn’t easy.

It requires you to commit to the long game. To show up again and again to a small group of people when what you really want is to show up for everyone.

It requires you to build up trust, person by person. To speak so intimately to them that they feel like they’re the only one you’re speaking to at all.

It requires you to understand that movements are built by creating a culture and an experience that people rave about, share, invite others into who could benefit.

Be incredibly generous with your work, your knowledge, your time. Give everything away to your audience for now.

Understand that the attention, the returns and the impact will come, there is a time to reap and a time to sow. Besides, you’ll have new work, better work, more meaningful work to share when the time comes to charge for it.

But that time is not here yet.

Prove your work can change even just one person, hone your message and build up just a little more momentum every day.

You’re going to need to push the thing yourself at the start, but do the work and eventually, it will pull you forward on its own.

Find out how to get in front of the right people where you don’t need to yell to catch and hold their attention, but where you can intrigue them enough to lean in a little closer to hear what else you have to say.

This is the way for people like us to change the world.

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