Nearly every week for the past three years, I’ve written and published an issue of this newsletter.

While the time required to produce an issue has varied over the years, according to my time tracking, the average is about 8 hours per week.

Eight hours a week is no small amount of time.

Eight hours times 136 issues is an even larger amount of time (1,088 hours, or 27 forty-hour work weeks).

All spent without any direct ROI.

To this point, I’ve never sought out sponsors for the newsletter, and while I occasionally mention my paid products and services, the topics I write about here are not directly aligned with or related to my paid offers.

As pure content marketing for my business, in other words, it’s hard to justify the continued creation of the newsletter.

Any strategist worth their salt would advise I quit the newsletter (or at the very least streamline it) and put the time I’m currently spending on it to use creating content that is more clearly aligned with my actual paid offers.

And yet, despite this misalignment, it’s clear to me that in many less intangible—but no less real—ways, the time spent creating this newsletter has a positive impact on every other aspect of my business.

The reason is that the newsletter acts as something of a release valve.

And despite the seeming inefficiency of spending a full day each week on a task that doesn’t directly support the business, it plays a vital role in easing pressure elsewhere and allowing my larger creative system to function more efficiently on the whole.

Since becoming aware of this phenomenon in my own work, I’ve become convinced that more creators could benefit from their own creative release valves, inefficient though they might seem.

To understand the role Release Valves play in our creative systems, we first need some context for the role our content is currently playing in our businesses and creative platforms.

The Content–Art Spectrum

One of the core frameworks I teach in  Podcast Marketing Academy  is what I call the Content–Art Spectrum.

Anything we create exists somewhere on the spectrum, though we’re rarely aware of, or intentional about where.

At one end of the spectrum is Pure Content, work that is created only for an audience with no thought for our personal interests or creative fulfillment.

At the other end is Pure Art, work created only for ourselves, with zero regard for existing demand or audience interest.

Some creators are able to exist and thrive at the extreme ends of the spectrum, but for most of us, the sweet spot is somewhere in between.

Finding that sweet spot, however, is easier said than done.

There’s no denying the fact that it’s vastly easier to gain traction and build an audience by creating work that aligns with what an existing, clearly-defined audience is already looking for and consuming.

But there’s also no denying that while we might recognize the business value of Pure Content, for those of us who skew towards the Art end of the spectrum, creating an unending stream of it is an unsustainable, soul-sucking endeavour.

And this is precisely where having a Release Valve comes in handy.

How A Release Valve Unblocks Your Creative Work

My personal struggles with the Content–Art Spectrum go back almost 10 years.

In 2015, I wrote around 50 articles for my photography blog.

In 2017, I began my first stint publishing to my podcast blog, which lasted about 9 months and resulted in around 40 articles before I ran out of steam.

In 2020, I had my second podcast stint publishing another 50–100 articles over a several month-span.

Most of the articles I published during those years are work I’m still proud of.

And yet, despite the solid output in both quantity and quality, however, I never really gained traction with my writing, and always, ultimately, ended up stalling out.

In hindsight, the reason for both of those outcomes is clear.

I was stuck in limbo between Content and Art.

While my articles were often addressed at existing podcast creator questions and pain points, they tended to skew toward the philosophical. They were long, expansive, and—while heavy on thoughtful questions and insights—were light on actionable, clearly defined next steps.

As a result, they didn’t align with what my potential audience was actively looking for, nor did they align with the work I truly wanted to create.

It wasn’t until my third podcast writing stint, in the Fall of 2021—coincidentally, a year and a half into writing Creative Wayfinding—that I finally found my groove.

The difference was immediately apparent.

With Creative Wayfinding as an outlet to follow for my more expansive, philosophical explorations of creative work, I was free to take a more Content-oriented approach to my podcast writing.

The result was more useful, tactical, and consumable writing on the podcast side, which almost immediately found traction and began to grow.

This is the power of a release valve.

Benefits of a Release Valve

The primary benefit of a Release Valve might be in how it removes the pressure of your business-serving content to satisfy your personal artistic needs and vice versa.

But the benefits don’t end there.

Another obvious benefit is that because Release Valve projects are typically only tangentially related (if at all) to our businesses, there’s less pressure on them to perform.

This gives us more freedom to grapple with unpolished ideas and experiment, both with the components we use to create them—format, style, tone, medium, etc—and how we market and promote them.

And while the experiments we run on our Release Valve projects may not directly lead to the growth of our commercial projects, the lessons learned often apply directly.

Another benefit is that without the pressure on your work to ultimately lead your audience to an outcome—most likely a sale—Release Valve projects often feel more honest, authentic, personal, and generous.

The reason is that they are.

Pure Art, after all, is created primarily to satisfy your own curiosities and impulses.

When our Release Valves skew to the artistic, then, there’s a good chance that the people who engage with us are getting a pure and genuine insight into who we truly are as people.

The irony is that when people have an opportunity to get to know us in this deeply personal way, they’re much more likely to want to work with us.

At least for my creative business, the data backs this up.

During the last  Podcast Marketing Academy  launch, 75% of customers were subscribed to Creative Wayfinding, while only 58% subscribed to the more directly-aligned  Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter .

Of course, not everyone’s Release Valve projects will have such significant cross-over interest from their commercial projects.

But in my experience, there are always members of any audience who care more about the person behind the work than work itself.

Release Valves give them an opportunity to go deeper with a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the creator’s brains.

Which in turn, ends up making it more likely that they’ll ultimately buy when the right offer presents itself.

Find Your Release Valve

While the benefits of Release Valve projects are clear, committing to them isn’t easy.

Most of us already have endless lists of tasks and projects that are directly related to audience growth or revenue generation.

In the face of those lists, adding a significant time expense that doesn’t lead to the tangible growth of our businesses feels absurd, if not outright irresponsible.

And yet, what’s the use of pursuing more directly relevant projects and tasks if we’re undermining them by trying to shoehorn both sound business strategy and creative fulfillment into them?

The truth is that for most of us, the work required to build a business around our creative work requires significant compromise on our default artistic impulses.

But that doesn’t mean we need to ignore our art completely.

It just means we need to find a way to channel it productively.

When we have a Release Valve for our purest creative impulses, we’re better able to commit to the less fulfilling (but necessary) work on the commercial front without feeling as though we’ve sold out or lost touch with an important and vital part of ourselves.

This doesn’t mean that your Release Valves won’t be valuable to an audience or that your Content won’t make heavy use of your artistry. It’s just that they’re not optimized for them.

If you’re one of the rare few who can sustain yourself both creatively and financially by living on either end of the Content–Art Spectrum, I envy you.

For the rest of us, the next best option is to create a system in which our energy and ideas are channeled to the outlets where they provide the greatest fulfillment and sustainability on both the artistic and commercial fronts.

The first step is realizing that no one channel needs to satisfy each need.

Then, identify the points in your own system where the pressure is building up, install a Release Valve upstream, and let your creative energy flow.

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Explore how to navigate a creative life that matters

This article originally appeared in my weekly Creative Wayfinding Newsletter. Each issue is the product of a week of work, and contains something not available for sale.

A fresh perspective, a shot of encouragement when you need it most, and maybe even some genuine wisdom from time to time.

Each week, we explore a different facet of the question “How do we navigate the wilds of creating work that matters?”

It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to share it with you.

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