Hi, I’m Jeremy, I’m glad you’re here.
No matter what you create, I’m guessing you spend a good amount of time feeling lost, hopeless, and unsure about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.
So do I. And so does everyone doing creative work.
This is the Creative Wilderness.
Every week, I publish a new article in my Creative Wayfinding newsletter about how we as creators and marketers can navigate it with more clarity and confidence.
If you’re building something that matters, but aren’t quite sure how to take the next step forward, I’d be honoured to have you join us.
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Latest Post
Release Valves: The Lubrication Behind Efficient Creative Systems
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.
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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Collect & Connect
At it’s simplest, being a great content creator is all about collecting and connecting dots.
Whether you’re a podcaster, blogger, Youtuber, etc, your role is to provide fresh insight and knowledge related to your topic.
But where does that insight come from? What makes for “insight” in the first place?
I think about insight as connecting two previously unconnected ideas for your audience in a way that is instantly clear. It’s about turning on lightbulbs for them by giving them a new way of thinking about a problem or topic that brings clarity and understanding.
Delivering insight, like wisdom, however, feels like a lofty goal to commit to delivering on. It feels like something for other people, you know, the real experts to come up with.
It doesn’t have to be though.
First Collect, then Connect
The simple formula for developing more insights is to collect more dots–data points, information, experiences–and to look for patterns and similarities between them.
It’s often as easy as simply stopping and think about them and the connections will take care of themselves.
The best part is that this is a trainable skill. Once you develop the habit, your brain will take over the collecting and connecting process on autopilot. Pour more inputs in and your brain will do the work of churning insight out that you can then pass on to your audience.
Once established, it becomes a generative cycle. The more dots you’re able to connect the more interesting the world becomes, which leads to looking out for and noticing more interesting things in the world, which then leads to more interesting connections.
There’s a reason the very best content creators stand out above the rest of the pack in any niche. They’re the ones doing the generative work of connecting–rather than regurgitating–ideas.
There’s nothing special about them. They’re not some special kind of talent or genius. They’ve simply built the habit of collecting dots and connecting them.
Now, It’s Your Turn
Start small. Create a note app on your phone and start by writing down five interesting things you notice today. They don’t have to be meaningful or important, just interesting.
For each of these, think about what makes it interesting to you. Is it interesting to other people as well? Why?
That’s it. Simply build this practice into your life and watch the dots start to collect and then connect.
You have insight worth sharing. All you need to do is cultivate it.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/your-audience-needs-translator-f4936335341chttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/your-audience-needs-translator-f4936335341c
Ownership Is a Prerequisite to Progress
When you’re looking to improve some aspect of your work, it’s essential to understand that until you can take ownership of the current situation, progress will be difficult.
You might not be entirely responsible for your current less-than-ideal circumstances, but you almost certainly have some level of responsibility.
You can blame bad luck, algorithms, or even your audience when your work isn’t resonating with it’s intended audience. But without addressing your role as the single source from which the work flows, finding the problems, let alone the solutions will be difficult.
Taking ownership is about taking a hard look at yourself even when you’re not sure that you’ll like what you see, and accepting it.
Then commiting to do better.
To take ownership of creating the problems is to take ownership of creating the solutions.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
Improve On Mediocre
When you’re looking to start a new business or create content for a new niche, you’ll probably hear advice along the lines of “Find a gap and fill it.”
The problem is that sometimes it’s hard to find a gap that fits your interests, expertise, and skill set.
But while there might not always be obvious gaps or glaring faults with the existing players and their content, there will always be more than a healthy dose of mediocrity.
To you, and your audience, mediocre content is as good as a gap in content as a whole.
The bonus for you is that your competition has already laid out your content plan and provided market validation.
All you need to do is find mediocrity, put your head down, and make something better.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/what-hasnt-been-done-before-340b93e57a80https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/what-hasnt-been-done-before-340b93e57a80
Your Audience Needs a Translator
One of the most valuable roles you can play for your audience is as a translator.
There’s more than enough content scattered around the internet for them to piece things together for themselves. But even if they have the information, they won’t necessarily know what it means.
Being a translator goes beyond connecting the dots when it comes to your subject matter, however.
Events happen and situations arise in the world and our communities that–even if they have nothing to do with your subject matter–affect members of your audience deeply and personally.
How does a stock market crash affect your audience of bird enthusiasts? What relevance does a worldwide pandemic have on your audience graphic designers? What opportunity and responsibility does your audience of podcasters have to speak up when yet another unarmed black man is killed by police.
Your audience doesn’t live in a bubble and neither should your content. One of the most valuable gifts you can give your audience is to take these disparate events and translate them into a cohesive narrative around how they impact your audience and why it matters.
If you can do this well, you’ll soon find that you’ve moved beyond the commodities market of information sharing and become the go-to source for actual insight and wisdom within your niche.
What Hasn’t Been Done Before?
Maybe the best way to grow an audience is to create work that hasn’t been done before.
No, it might not be completely original, in fact, it will probably be composed entirely of borrowed parts and ideas. But at least some part of your creative and marketing processes should feel new and fresh.
The offering itself might be entirely new, or it could be the format, the medium, a set of features, a perspective, opinion, nuance.
Or it could be that your offering is nothing new but the audience it’s being pitched to is.
Maybe it’s a new use for an old idea.
It doesn’t really matter which element hasn’t been done before so much as it matters that some element meets the criteria.
Otherwise, you’re creating a commodity. And it’s hard to build a loyal audience around a commodity.
Get good at articulating what makes you, your approach, your offering, or your audience different, new, fresh.
Then broadcast it.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/real-foundation-creative-work-cb1360180d2dhttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/real-foundation-creative-work-cb1360180d2d
Everyone Starts From Zero
Zero listeners, zero fans, zero reputation.
Every podcaster starts in the same place.
It’s easy to begrudge the big brands and media empires entering the space and instantly racking up millions of downloads, but don’t forget, they started from zero too.
Not in the podcast world of course, but they’ve spent years, decades, or in the case of General Electric–who’ve put out a couple of fantastic podcasts–well over a century building their brand, following and clout.
Audiences are earned, no matter who’s building them.
No doubt most of the brands and media businesses bringing their massive followings and name recognition to podcasting were once small, scrappy, one-person operations, struggling to garner attention, customers, or funding.
Their hustling paid off, and now they’re simply bringing the audience they earned and grew via other mediums to podcasting.
We all have to go through that process.
As indie podcasters, it’s not productive to rail against these behemoths changing podcasting from what we think it should be.
If the shows they produce are good? Great! We all benefit from more great content in the world.
If the shows aren’t good? Well, few people are going to listen anyway and they’ll move onto something else. I’ve turned off podcasts, Netflix series, movies, and put down bad books and I’m sure you have too.
Rather than begrudge them, your opportunity is to learn from these producers and apply those lessons to your own show.
You can’t beat them at their own game.
But by choosing to aim smaller, more intimate, more personal with your audience, you can choose to play a very different game.
And you can win.
Why Should Anyone Listen to You?
It’s a worthwhile question to ask for anyone looking to grow a podcast.
Of course, there are the million (and counting) other podcasts against whom you’re competing for listener’s time. But it doesn’t end there.
Most people who listen to podcasts probably also spend at least some of their time watching Netflix. They probably spend some of their time listening to music. They may spend time reading or listening to books.
As a podcaster, you’re not competing against other podcasts. You’re competing against all the media in the world.
Standing out in a Content Bubble
We’re in the midst of an ever-growing content bubble, with more and more free or cheap content of incredible quality showing up every day. With all this choice, you need an answer to the question.
Why should someone listen to you?
It might seem like it’s a lost cause, that there’s no point in competing against the Netflixes, HBOs, Disneys, and Apples of the world, and depending on the type of show you want to create, that might be true. You’re not going to beat any of these media machines at their own game.
But you don’t need to.
The answer to the question of how to create a show that is worthy of people’s attention is to not make a show for everyone, but to make a show for a tiny sliver of people, the smallest viable audience as Seth Godin likes to say.
Something to Everyone vs Everything to Someone
The answer to the question is to speak more knowingly, more intimately, more familiarly to your group of people than anyone else could possibly do.
Media companies need to go broad, they need millions of consumers to support their massive overheads.
But you don’t.
You need a small number of people who care so much about the work that you do and the show you create to chip in a small amount of money each, and you can make a comfortable living off of your work.
This isn’t to say niching down is the only thing that matters. Your work needs to be good, there’s no escaping that. You need to be the absolute best option in the world for the people you serve when it comes to the topic of your content.
But it doesn’t need to be Netflix-good.
You can do what Netflix can’t. Go small, go intimate, go personal.
Find ten people who you can be the one and only to and treat them like your livelihood depends on them.
Because it just might.
Show up consistently with high-quality, ultra-relevant content and they’ll spread the word for you.
You won’t have to justify or pitch or sell why someone should listen to you anymore, because your audience will do it for you.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
All In
You’ll never know what you’re truly capable of creating until you go all in.
It’s not that you’ve knowingly been holding back to this point, but you probably haven’t dug deep enough within yourself to hit bedrock, the point beyond which it’s physically, emotionally, or spiritually impossible to go any further.
Once you reach that point and create at your greatest capacity, you’ll find that all your work up to that point has been a shadow of your potential.
Slow, rough, lacking depth, conviction, and energy.
Of course, creating at the very limits of what you’re capable of isn’t sustainable on a daily basis.
But 80% of your potential probably is, and it’s likely a vast improvement over your previous output.
Each time you test your limits, it becomes easier to reach them again, and perhaps go even further.
It might take some external pressure, and it will definitely take an internal drive, but if you want to create work that matters, you need to push yourself to find those limits the first time.
Once you’ve found them once and you realize what you’re capable of, you’ll have a hard time creating at a level less than that.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/healthy-compromise-b311851152bbhttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/healthy-compromise-b311851152bb
Two Simple Skills for Success in Anything
The more I think about the skills and habits that are most essential to achieving success in any field, the more it comes back to two simple skills we each already possess but often make little use of.
The first is awareness.
Rather than reading more books, listening to more podcasts, and taking more courses, all the information we need is laid out in front of us, waiting to be discovered and applied to our work.
There are likely hundreds if not thousands of people doing similar work to each of us. Many of them are successful at what they’re doing, many are not.
We can learn from both of them if we stop to look.
Once we’ve become aware of the information, examples, and data presented to us, the second skill comes into play: Simply thinking about what we’ve noticed.
We want to be told what is right and what is wrong, what will work and what won’t. We want the best practices, magic bullets, tips, tricks, and strategies to accelerate our ascent to the top.
But those at the top didn’t get there by following hacks. They studied the existing landscape, thought long and hard about it, and started experimenting based on this knowledge.
Applying the tips and strategies can help you make your way into the middle of the pack, but it won’t help you rise beyond it.
But while the rest of the pack is out chasing down and applying the next best prescriptive strategy from the guru of the day, we can choose not to learn those strategies, but seek to understand why they work.
If we can get to a place of understanding, the world will open up to us.
What resonates with us? Why or why not? Breaking down our own thought processes to understand them will give us so much more than a new strategy in our toolbox.
It will give us lasting insight that we can use again and again and again.
We already have everything we need to get started.
Become aware, become a student, then become a scientist.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/simple-secret-better-marketing-56cd30dfb35chttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/simple-secret-better-marketing-56cd30dfb35c
Progress Happens When the Bar is Raised
So often we defer to someone outside of ourselves to set the bar that dictates what’s expected of us.
It might be a stretch at first to meet that expectation, but after a while, it becomes rote, the norm, business as usual.
At this point, we could choose to raise the bar for ourselves, to go above and beyond what’s expected of us by our boss, our peers, our society.
But how far do we raise it? What’s the benefit? We’re already doing enough, aren’t we?
Besides, raising the bar for ourselves has the unwanted (by some) side effect of subtly raising the bar for those around us, who may now feel inadequate. That’s a surefire recipe to breed resentment.
Raising the bar, however,–even only for ourselves–is how progress is made. Raising the bar disrupts the status quo and leads to change, innovation, and forward progress.
If there is a change we want to see in the world, we can start is by raising the bar in regard to how we approach the issue personally.
Chances are, when we hold ourselves to a higher standard, others will begin to as well until all of a sudden there’s a higher standard for everyone, and the change is made.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/already-inherited-everything-we-need-be9f218c7770https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/already-inherited-everything-we-need-be9f218c7770
Creative Wayfinding For Ambitious Optimists.
When You Have Nothing Worth Sharing
You might feel like you have nothing worth sharing.
No knowledge, no insight, definitely no wisdom.
Even the subjects in which you feel most competent already have all the information anyone could ever need readily available, and for free no less.
There’s certainly no room left for you to add anything new or contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way.
Here’s the thing.
We all walk around thinking everyone else knows at least as much as–if not more than–we do.
We think everyone sees the world the way we do, thinks the way we do, and makes decisions the way we do.
But they don’t.
Sometimes you don’t realize you have something to share until you start sharing.
Sometimes you don’t realize you have something to teach until you start teaching.
Sometimes you don’t realize your voice is unique until you start speaking.
So speak up, share what you have to share, teach what you have to teach, even if it’s been said and taught before.
No one will say it like you do, or teach it like you teach.
You have something to give.
So give.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/collect-connect-af39b5e823d7https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/collect-connect-af39b5e823d7
Collect & Connect
At it’s simplest, being a great content creator is all about collecting and connecting dots.
Whether you’re a podcaster, blogger, Youtuber, etc, your role is to provide fresh insight and knowledge related to your topic.
But where does that insight come from? What makes for “insight” in the first place?
I think about insight as connecting two previously unconnected ideas for your audience in a way that is instantly clear. It’s about turning on lightbulbs for them by giving them a new way of thinking about a problem or topic that brings clarity and understanding.
Delivering insight, like wisdom, however, feels like a lofty goal to commit to delivering on. It feels like something for other people, you know, the real experts to come up with.
It doesn’t have to be though.
First Collect, then Connect
The simple formula for developing more insights is to collect more dots–data points, information, experiences–and to look for patterns and similarities between them.
It’s often as easy as simply stopping and think about them and the connections will take care of themselves.
The best part is that this is a trainable skill. Once you develop the habit, your brain will take over the collecting and connecting process on autopilot. Pour more inputs in and your brain will do the work of churning insight out that you can then pass on to your audience.
Once established, it becomes a generative cycle. The more dots you’re able to connect the more interesting the world becomes, which leads to looking out for and noticing more interesting things in the world, which then leads to more interesting connections.
There’s a reason the very best content creators stand out above the rest of the pack in any niche. They’re the ones doing the generative work of connecting–rather than regurgitating–ideas.
There’s nothing special about them. They’re not some special kind of talent or genius. They’ve simply built the habit of collecting dots and connecting them.
Now, It’s Your Turn
Start small. Create a note app on your phone and start by writing down five interesting things you notice today. They don’t have to be meaningful or important, just interesting.
For each of these, think about what makes it interesting to you. Is it interesting to other people as well? Why?
That’s it. Simply build this practice into your life and watch the dots start to collect and then connect.
You have insight worth sharing. All you need to do is cultivate it.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/your-audience-needs-translator-f4936335341chttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/your-audience-needs-translator-f4936335341c
Ownership Is a Prerequisite to Progress
When you’re looking to improve some aspect of your work, it’s essential to understand that until you can take ownership of the current situation, progress will be difficult.
You might not be entirely responsible for your current less-than-ideal circumstances, but you almost certainly have some level of responsibility.
You can blame bad luck, algorithms, or even your audience when your work isn’t resonating with it’s intended audience. But without addressing your role as the single source from which the work flows, finding the problems, let alone the solutions will be difficult.
Taking ownership is about taking a hard look at yourself even when you’re not sure that you’ll like what you see, and accepting it.
Then commiting to do better.
To take ownership of creating the problems is to take ownership of creating the solutions.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
Improve On Mediocre
When you’re looking to start a new business or create content for a new niche, you’ll probably hear advice along the lines of “Find a gap and fill it.”
The problem is that sometimes it’s hard to find a gap that fits your interests, expertise, and skill set.
But while there might not always be obvious gaps or glaring faults with the existing players and their content, there will always be more than a healthy dose of mediocrity.
To you, and your audience, mediocre content is as good as a gap in content as a whole.
The bonus for you is that your competition has already laid out your content plan and provided market validation.
All you need to do is find mediocrity, put your head down, and make something better.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/what-hasnt-been-done-before-340b93e57a80https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/what-hasnt-been-done-before-340b93e57a80
Your Audience Needs a Translator
One of the most valuable roles you can play for your audience is as a translator.
There’s more than enough content scattered around the internet for them to piece things together for themselves. But even if they have the information, they won’t necessarily know what it means.
Being a translator goes beyond connecting the dots when it comes to your subject matter, however.
Events happen and situations arise in the world and our communities that–even if they have nothing to do with your subject matter–affect members of your audience deeply and personally.
How does a stock market crash affect your audience of bird enthusiasts? What relevance does a worldwide pandemic have on your audience graphic designers? What opportunity and responsibility does your audience of podcasters have to speak up when yet another unarmed black man is killed by police.
Your audience doesn’t live in a bubble and neither should your content. One of the most valuable gifts you can give your audience is to take these disparate events and translate them into a cohesive narrative around how they impact your audience and why it matters.
If you can do this well, you’ll soon find that you’ve moved beyond the commodities market of information sharing and become the go-to source for actual insight and wisdom within your niche.
What Hasn’t Been Done Before?
Maybe the best way to grow an audience is to create work that hasn’t been done before.
No, it might not be completely original, in fact, it will probably be composed entirely of borrowed parts and ideas. But at least some part of your creative and marketing processes should feel new and fresh.
The offering itself might be entirely new, or it could be the format, the medium, a set of features, a perspective, opinion, nuance.
Or it could be that your offering is nothing new but the audience it’s being pitched to is.
Maybe it’s a new use for an old idea.
It doesn’t really matter which element hasn’t been done before so much as it matters that some element meets the criteria.
Otherwise, you’re creating a commodity. And it’s hard to build a loyal audience around a commodity.
Get good at articulating what makes you, your approach, your offering, or your audience different, new, fresh.
Then broadcast it.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/real-foundation-creative-work-cb1360180d2dhttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/real-foundation-creative-work-cb1360180d2d
Everyone Starts From Zero
Zero listeners, zero fans, zero reputation.
Every podcaster starts in the same place.
It’s easy to begrudge the big brands and media empires entering the space and instantly racking up millions of downloads, but don’t forget, they started from zero too.
Not in the podcast world of course, but they’ve spent years, decades, or in the case of General Electric–who’ve put out a couple of fantastic podcasts–well over a century building their brand, following and clout.
Audiences are earned, no matter who’s building them.
No doubt most of the brands and media businesses bringing their massive followings and name recognition to podcasting were once small, scrappy, one-person operations, struggling to garner attention, customers, or funding.
Their hustling paid off, and now they’re simply bringing the audience they earned and grew via other mediums to podcasting.
We all have to go through that process.
As indie podcasters, it’s not productive to rail against these behemoths changing podcasting from what we think it should be.
If the shows they produce are good? Great! We all benefit from more great content in the world.
If the shows aren’t good? Well, few people are going to listen anyway and they’ll move onto something else. I’ve turned off podcasts, Netflix series, movies, and put down bad books and I’m sure you have too.
Rather than begrudge them, your opportunity is to learn from these producers and apply those lessons to your own show.
You can’t beat them at their own game.
But by choosing to aim smaller, more intimate, more personal with your audience, you can choose to play a very different game.
And you can win.
Why Should Anyone Listen to You?
It’s a worthwhile question to ask for anyone looking to grow a podcast.
Of course, there are the million (and counting) other podcasts against whom you’re competing for listener’s time. But it doesn’t end there.
Most people who listen to podcasts probably also spend at least some of their time watching Netflix. They probably spend some of their time listening to music. They may spend time reading or listening to books.
As a podcaster, you’re not competing against other podcasts. You’re competing against all the media in the world.
Standing out in a Content Bubble
We’re in the midst of an ever-growing content bubble, with more and more free or cheap content of incredible quality showing up every day. With all this choice, you need an answer to the question.
Why should someone listen to you?
It might seem like it’s a lost cause, that there’s no point in competing against the Netflixes, HBOs, Disneys, and Apples of the world, and depending on the type of show you want to create, that might be true. You’re not going to beat any of these media machines at their own game.
But you don’t need to.
The answer to the question of how to create a show that is worthy of people’s attention is to not make a show for everyone, but to make a show for a tiny sliver of people, the smallest viable audience as Seth Godin likes to say.
Something to Everyone vs Everything to Someone
The answer to the question is to speak more knowingly, more intimately, more familiarly to your group of people than anyone else could possibly do.
Media companies need to go broad, they need millions of consumers to support their massive overheads.
But you don’t.
You need a small number of people who care so much about the work that you do and the show you create to chip in a small amount of money each, and you can make a comfortable living off of your work.
This isn’t to say niching down is the only thing that matters. Your work needs to be good, there’s no escaping that. You need to be the absolute best option in the world for the people you serve when it comes to the topic of your content.
But it doesn’t need to be Netflix-good.
You can do what Netflix can’t. Go small, go intimate, go personal.
Find ten people who you can be the one and only to and treat them like your livelihood depends on them.
Because it just might.
Show up consistently with high-quality, ultra-relevant content and they’ll spread the word for you.
You won’t have to justify or pitch or sell why someone should listen to you anymore, because your audience will do it for you.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
All In
You’ll never know what you’re truly capable of creating until you go all in.
It’s not that you’ve knowingly been holding back to this point, but you probably haven’t dug deep enough within yourself to hit bedrock, the point beyond which it’s physically, emotionally, or spiritually impossible to go any further.
Once you reach that point and create at your greatest capacity, you’ll find that all your work up to that point has been a shadow of your potential.
Slow, rough, lacking depth, conviction, and energy.
Of course, creating at the very limits of what you’re capable of isn’t sustainable on a daily basis.
But 80% of your potential probably is, and it’s likely a vast improvement over your previous output.
Each time you test your limits, it becomes easier to reach them again, and perhaps go even further.
It might take some external pressure, and it will definitely take an internal drive, but if you want to create work that matters, you need to push yourself to find those limits the first time.
Once you’ve found them once and you realize what you’re capable of, you’ll have a hard time creating at a level less than that.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/healthy-compromise-b311851152bbhttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/healthy-compromise-b311851152bb
Two Simple Skills for Success in Anything
The more I think about the skills and habits that are most essential to achieving success in any field, the more it comes back to two simple skills we each already possess but often make little use of.
The first is awareness.
Rather than reading more books, listening to more podcasts, and taking more courses, all the information we need is laid out in front of us, waiting to be discovered and applied to our work.
There are likely hundreds if not thousands of people doing similar work to each of us. Many of them are successful at what they’re doing, many are not.
We can learn from both of them if we stop to look.
Once we’ve become aware of the information, examples, and data presented to us, the second skill comes into play: Simply thinking about what we’ve noticed.
We want to be told what is right and what is wrong, what will work and what won’t. We want the best practices, magic bullets, tips, tricks, and strategies to accelerate our ascent to the top.
But those at the top didn’t get there by following hacks. They studied the existing landscape, thought long and hard about it, and started experimenting based on this knowledge.
Applying the tips and strategies can help you make your way into the middle of the pack, but it won’t help you rise beyond it.
But while the rest of the pack is out chasing down and applying the next best prescriptive strategy from the guru of the day, we can choose not to learn those strategies, but seek to understand why they work.
If we can get to a place of understanding, the world will open up to us.
What resonates with us? Why or why not? Breaking down our own thought processes to understand them will give us so much more than a new strategy in our toolbox.
It will give us lasting insight that we can use again and again and again.
We already have everything we need to get started.
Become aware, become a student, then become a scientist.
Every Sunday I publish an exclusive article on my newsletter that hopefully provides a new perspective, encouragement, and maybe even some occasional wisdom.
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to deliver it to you. If you’d like me to share it with you please subscribe here.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/simple-secret-better-marketing-56cd30dfb35chttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/simple-secret-better-marketing-56cd30dfb35c
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Hi, I'm Jeremy, I'm glad you're here.
No matter what you create, I'm guessing you spend a good amount of time feeling lost, hopeless, and unsure about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.
So do I. And so does everyone doing creative work.
This is the Creative Wilderness.
Every week, I publish a new article in my Creative Wayfinding newsletter about how we as creators and marketers can navigate it with more clarity and confidence.
If you're building something that matters, but aren't quite sure how to take the next step forward, I'd be honoured to have you join us.