There’s a difference between believing that our work and our ideas have the potential to change the world and believing that people will actually be excited to enroll in what we’re doing and help move our vision of the world forward.

If we want to change the culture for the better, both are essential. But they’re not equally easy to come by.

Most of us doing work that drives us have the former. We really truly believe that we’re on to an idea that could benefit those who interact with it.

You could argue that we may even place outsized importance on the work we personally are doing and exaggerate, at least in our minds, the potential impact of our work, but that’s a topic for another time.

For us, the problem isn’t a lack of belief in the potential of our work, but rather a lack of belief that people will be eager and willing to sign on for the journey.

Our lack of belief is probably based on perfectly reasonable past experiences.

We’ve created work we believed in before, released it to the world, invited others to take part…

…and got crickets.

And so while we believe in the potential of the work once we can get it into people’s hands, we don’t believe in our ability to get anyone else as excited about it as we are.

That feels too salesy. It feels arrogant, too pushy, too intrusive.

What do we know? Maybe our work, products or services won’t actually work for anyone else.

If we’re going to change the world through the work we do, at some point we need to get over this doubt, or at least shoulder it aside and ignore it long enough to do the important job of sharing our work with the people it was designed to help.

We need to believe that there are people out there who are actively looking for a solution to their problem, the one we have the answer to.

We need to believe there are people out there who won’t feel like we’re intruding when we show up in their inbox or their newsfeed or on their doorstep.

We need to believe that there are some people who spend all week looking forward to our newsletter, our podcast, our live video, and they will be disappointed if we don’t show up.

If you believe in your idea and your work, you owe it to everyone who could benefit from it, everyone who is waiting for your solution to their problem, to actively seek them out and share your work with them.

Create your work, hone your message, then find the people who will circle the calendar on the day you show up to share it.

This is how you build a movement.

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Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!

https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/you-cant-yell-loud-enough-but-you-don-t-need-to-7435abacafa8https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/you-cant-yell-loud-enough-but-you-don-t-need-to-7435abacafa8