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
The Last Gatekeeper
There’s no piece of paper that can prove, beyond doubt, the worth of your work.
Neither wax seal Nor gold star
Nor signature of this person or that
Can validate your knowledge, skill, or competence
And give you permission to move forward.
To create
Build
Disrupt
Serve.
Just you.
Alone.
Afraid.
A fraud.
In your own mind at least…
Stopped dead at an amber light,
Waiting (hoping, praying) for it to turn.
For some sign or another from the universe
To give you the go-ahead
To signal “NOW IS THE TIME!”
In flashing neon letters
Impossible to miss.
A pity.
Many a life was wasted in waiting.
A gift never given.
An idea never expressed,
That would benefit us all.
What would it change to know
That even once all the gates have been opened
And the road stands unimpeded
You must still face one last gatekeeper.
The one that has always and will always have the power
To grant or deny you passage.
Who is unmoved
By all the certificates, seals, stars, and signatures in the world.
In the end, this is the only gatekeeper that must be won over
Whether by reason, cunning, force, or persistence.
The gate is already open
Waiting for you to take the first step through.
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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More Posts
What Next?
My friend Jordin James (go read her stuff she’s awesome) recently challenged me to share a little bit about a word that has come to symbolize the pandemic for me personally as part of the #pandemicwordchallenge she started.
As it turns out, my mind had already been looking for personal themes, learnings, and takeaways over the past month and as soon as she mentioned the challenge I already knew the word I was going to share.
Alas, Jordin had chosen that same word for herself (you can read about her take on it here).
I thought about writing about the same word, offering my take on it, but the more I thought about it, the more a new word, well actually a short phrase rose to the forefront of my mind, so instead, I’m going to share that.
What Next?
As the pandemic has carried on, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the question of “what next?”
The more I think about it, the more facets emerge to the question, ranging from huge issues regarding global decision making going forward and the economic fallout all the way down to the molecular level and the future of viruses like COVID-19.
Most interesting to me, however, is the question of who each of us will choose to be once this is all over.
It feels like something of a clean slate, a chance to force restart our perspectives of the world and the people around us.
After being forced into isolation will we choose to prioritize time spent in the physical presence of others or will Zoom calls become our new norm for connecting?
After being cooped up inside will we emerge with a new appreciation for the world around us and use every chance we get to explore get out and explore it?
Will we have built up habits around hygiene and hand-washing that stick and go on to have a lasting positive impact in the world thanks to a reduction in the spread of other more common afflictions?
Even though I personally haven’t had any extra time and space during the pandemic, it’s nonetheless an incredible opportunity for reflection and mindfulness for all of us.
What do we miss most about “normal” life?
What old beliefs about ourselves or the world have been reinforced or broken down?
What do we enjoy about the current circumstances?
What are we grateful for in spite of or because of our new reality?
These are questions we can all benefit from asking ourselves, and ones that can help guide us into choosing the life we want to live and the people we want to be when we emerge on the other side of this.
So what’s next for you?
4 Questions to Ask When Your Work Isn’t Landing
You’ve poured your heart and soul into creating something you’re proud of. Something that has the potential to help other people. Something that should have an adoring fan base rapidly building around it.
But instead… Crickets.
It’s easy in these situations to cast blame on others for not seeing the value in your work, or on yourself for wasting your time creating something that failed.
But before you jump to conclusions and either give up on the work entirely or furiously proceed with even more work in the same vein, start by asking yourself a series of questions.
1. Do I Have a Sufficient Sample Size?
First off, you need to cooly assess your work and ask whether you’ve really put out out a reasonable quantity of work to be able to draw any conclusions from.
When it comes to podcasting, our team at Counterweight Creative has found that with almost every one of our clients, it takes at least six to twelve months to really start building momentum around a show, in many cases longer.
Having that perspective and experience allows us to help our clients understand what to expect when they don’t have hundreds of thousands of downloads after putting out their first five episodes.
Look at others operating in your space and decipher how long it’s taken them to build up to the level of success you’re seeking. Just remember not to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others who have been in the game for longer than you have.
2. Am I Getting in Front of the Right People?
If you have a sufficient sample size and aren’t happy with the results, ask yourself if you’re actually getting yourself in front of the right people.
Most people and brands have a poor understanding of who their target audiences really are when they’re first starting out, and end up doing one of two things:
- Creating the wrong type of content to achieve their goals, ie. Attract customers/clients/leads
- Creating the right type of content but not understanding how to get it in front of their target audience, or even pitching it to the wrong audience
If you’re not 100% clear on who your audience is including their goals, challenges and worldviews, it’s time to get curious and find out what you can create to speak to them directly and where they congregate already so you can get your content in front of others like them there.
3. Is My Work Good Enough?
Alright, so you’re getting your work in front of the right people and they’re still not biting.
It’s time to take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself the tough question.
Is your work really good enough?
It’s important to remember that you don’t get to decide if your work is good enough. Your audience does.
You might be extraordinarily proud of the work you’ve created, but unless you’re doing it as a hobby, it’s your audience and their reaction to it which issues the final verdict.
Remember, no one creates amazing work the first time. Creating something that resonates deeply with your audience absolutely will take trial and error, revisions, conversations, and surveys of your audience. Most of all, it requires a deep curiosity to get to the bottom of how you can create a remarkable experience for them through the work that you do.
4. What Are Others Doing That I’m Not?
When you’re looking to change things up and experiment, a good place to start is by looking at what others are already doing already, both inside and out of your own niche.
There are only so many models and frameworks for running a business, creating content, and building an audience. Chances are, someone somewhere is doing just the thing that would work for you. You just need to find it and understand how to apply it to your work.
Researching what others are doing has another important purpose as well.
Especially within your niche, it can be helpful (if not essential) to find the gaps in what your competition is providing and figuring out a way for you to fill it.
These gaps could be related to the content itself, audience targeting, tone, method of delivery, or any combination of these factors and others.
Do your research to find out what the success stories in your space are doing well as well as what they’re leaving on the table, and experiment with adjusting your strategy to fill those gaps.
Roadblocks Are Inevitable
No matter how well things have gone for you so far, if you haven’t already, you’re going to hit roadblocks at some point.
When they show up, you can choose to bang your head against them, hoping that you’ll eventually break through, or approach them with an inquisitive mindset and search for a quicker (and less painful) way around.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/hunting-blind-spots-2ccbd619887ahttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/hunting-blind-spots-2ccbd619887a
Develop Your Perspective
For the past year and a half, I put in place a self-imposed content diet.
I restricted my intake of non-fiction, business-related content in an attempt to slow down my exponentially growing to-do do list and shut down the comparison syndrome I was experiencing. I wanted to make time and space to simply get down to work on the things I knew were important at the time for the continued growth of my business.
Over the past few months, I’ve loosened my diet and started consuming more podcasts, blogs, and newsletters on a regular basis. Maybe it’s in relation to the lack of content I had been consuming, or maybe it’s just the creators I’ve gravitated to recently, but I’ve noticed that a lot of what I’ve been consuming lately is split into two distinct camps.
On the one side, there’s the standard marketing content from countless creators. The email newsletters, in particular, follow a rigidly defined and homogenous framework, that does a little educating, provides a bit of personality and probably works pretty well gets people to sign up for their products and services.
On the other side is a class of content that certainly educates, but more than anything it makes you think.
Some of the creators whose work has fallen into this category for me recently are Seth Godin, James Clear, David Cain, Jay Claus, and Austin Kleon.
I find that every time I engage with their work, while I may have learned something immediately actionable, I’m always left with something that needs to be thought about, pored over, and meditated on. There is work to be done on my part in order to unlock the real lesson behind the content.
These creators have developed the rare but essential skill of connecting unlikely dots, drawing parallels and relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas, topics, and subjects.
They have perspective.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that none of us will create our best work without first doing the work of developing our own unique perspective, and then sharing it.
Developing a unique perspective takes time, it also takes experiencing life and consuming a wide range of information. But on top of all that it takes thought, space and quiet to process that experience and that information and connect the dots where none existed before.
Unique perspectives have the power to create a monopoly for us in our space. There is no other Seth Godin, James Clear, David Cain, Jay Klaus or Austin Kleon.
Each of them has a take on their overall subject matter that is entirely unique.
So along with developing your craft, creating more and better work, and building an audience around it, start intentionally developing your perspective. My guess is the rest of your work is going to benefit if you do.
Literal Leadership
There are a lot of ways to view and define leadership, but at the most basic level, it’s about going first.
Sometimes that might mean developing a new product or service or taking the initiative to start a company. But while leaders who do this successfully are often celebrated most widely for the impact they create, they’re rare.
There’s another way of leading, however, that is open to each of us, and I’d argue has the potential for even greater impact on the lives of those around us.
This type of leadership is about stepping into discomfort with empathy and humility. It’s about starting a difficult conversation, addressing the elephant in the room, asking a friend or colleague if everything’s okay and if there’s anything you can do to help.
As much as new technologies, products, and services make our lives better, their impact pales in comparison to greater empathy, curiosity and genuine connection between us and the people around us.
Often, all it takes is for someone to be willing to go first.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/leadership-times-of-crisis-de0248ee4bbhttps://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/leadership-times-of-crisis-de0248ee4bb
Hunting for Blind Spots
There’s something wrong in your work. No, not with your work, in your work.
You can’t see it, you don’t know it’s there, but deep inside that thing you put so much care, effort, and heart into creating, there’s a false assumption, a misconclusion, a blind spot that you’ve blown past without realizing.
And if you don’t find it, it could ruin everything.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only one with these oversights, we all have them. But just because we all have them too, doesn’t mean yours still won’t sabotage the work you care so much about.
There’s a solution, of course, but it’s not easy.
That solution and the prerequisite for creating work worth talking about is to become ruthless in hunting out your oversights, blind spots, false assumptions and areas in which you are just plain wrong.
Constant education is essential, but reading books, blogs, or listening to podcasts is the easy part.
The hard part is exposing yourself to opinions with which you disagree and then asking why.
Why is that position wrong and yours right?
Who shares the dissenting opinion and why?
Can they back it up and make a compelling argument?
Why do you hold your opinion? Is it simply a default or have you actually put thought into its formation?
The most successful people not only make a point of exposing themself regularly to opinions, beliefs, and worldviews that differ from their own but actively seek to learn and take what they can from those perspectives.
Establishing this practice builds empathy and understanding for those around you, including the audience you’re seeking to engage with, and empathy is the foundation for creating work that resonates.
Whether or not you realize it yet, your blind spots exist. Better to go find them now, while you can still address them then wait until your work falls flat and you find them in the autopsy report.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/say-i-dont-know-more-7cbb0b30c805https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/say-i-dont-know-more-7cbb0b30c805
Consistency is Key
I’m a big believer that creating work that’s meaningful and building an audience around it requires showing up with consistency and generosity.
For you, this could take the form of putting out a new podcast or blog post every week or engaging with your followers every day in some small way.
Showing up with consistency isn’t easy, and it’s the required level of consistency, perhaps more than anything else, that stymies people looking to build an audience around their work.
The secret is that you need to keep showing up, even when you don’t have an audience yet, sometimes for weeks or even months.
If you know your work has the ability to resonate with a specific group of people, you need to get it in front of them and earn their trust over time.
They may be skeptical at first, wary that you’re yet another traveling salesman looking to pass through their territory and capitalize on whatever boom might currently be happening in their industry.
Can you blame them? We’ve all seen these opportunists whose flashy offers talk a big game but fail to deliver because they don’t truly understand the problem.
As a genuine marketer looking to truly serve your audience, your goal is not to be flashier than your competition but to outlast them.
Your job is to show up more regularly and with more generosity, outlast the competition, and prove that you understand the problems your audience faces and you have a real solution tailored specifically for them.
Only then, if your work is good enough, is it going to spread. But the wait will be worth it.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/creating-inevitable-outcomes-40a469a5b1eehttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/creating-inevitable-outcomes-40a469a5b1ee
What Can You Control?
You can’t control your customer’s budgets. But you can control how they perceive your value.
You can’t control your clients’ lack of boundaries when they spend all weekend emailing you. But you can control who you work with.
You can’t control people’s existing worldviews. But you can find an audience that matches yours and tell them a (true) story about how your work can make their lives better.
Every day, as we aim to create work that changes the people who engage with it, we’re faced with dozens of situations, circumstances, beliefs and plain old laws of nature that are completely beyond our control.
We can spend our time dwelling on these, saying “If only…”, and making excuses, or we can accept the situation for what it is and focus on all the things we can control.
By focusing on what we have power over, we can build our work around the problem or circumstance rather than waiting for it to disappear so we can take the most direct path forward.
This is where the creativity in our work comes through, and the way in which we navigate the things beyond our control is what makes our work truly ours.
No one who’s ever created anything has done so under perfectly ideal circumstances, with no obstacles or roadblocks in their way. The stars didn’t align for them, and they won’t for you either.
Find a way to own your circumstances and create something that matters anyway.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/find-your-guiding-stars-30c025467e30https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/find-your-guiding-stars-30c025467e30
Keep Your Promises
A lot gets made about building trust with your audience.
Trust is a big reason why people start podcasts, blogs, and YouTube channels to help market the work they do. These mediums allow an audience to get to know us while also building our authority in the community we seek to serve and engage with.
Trust is essential in convincing your audience to not only consume your content but taking the next step and buying your product or signing up to work with you.
Luckily, the formula for building trust is pretty straightforward.
Make promises and keep them.
These promises don’t need to be big, in fact, many of the promises you make and keep to your audience will be incredibly small.
“I publish a new podcast every Thursday” is a promise that when kept, builds trust.
So is a Q&A post in your Facebook group when you actually show up and answer the questions submitted to you personally.
And while you may be making many small promises to your audience, you should also be making some big ones.
Big promises are what attract people to you in the first place. Big promises pique curiosity and draw interest. Big promises are about the transformational journey you’re proposing to take your audience on.
“I’ll show you how to lose 50lbs in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re limiting your lifestyle” is a big promise.
So is, “This is how to use podcasting to become the go-to authority in your niche.” (That’s ours at Counterweight Creative).
Every great brand is built on a big promise, that is ultimately lived up to. The same goes for great products.
The issue many entrepreneurs and creators face is that they lack the belief that they can deliver on their promises and end up not making any at all.
With no promises made, there are none to keep, they fail to build trust with their audience and fall into a cycle where they have fewer and fewer opportunities to make and keep their promises as their audience leaves to engage with someone who is.
If you find yourself in this camp, you’re not alone.
The curse of true experts is that they know just how much there is that they don’t know about the work they do, which keeps them from making any assertions at all. But they also know a whole hell of a lot more than their audience.
Start Small
Start with consistency. Commit to a content schedule, whether it’s a podcast, Youtube video, blog post, Facebook Live, or something else entirely and put it out consistently on the day you say you will.
Make promises with the actual content of your content. Your podcast title should make a promise about what your audience will learn or take away, and the podcast should deliver on it.
Think about a topic related to your niche that you feel like an absolute expert in. If you need to zoom in to a small subset of a subset of a topic, do it. Then schedule a webinar or Facebook Live and teach about it.
As you make and keep more and more of your promises, not only will you build trust with your audience, but you’ll also build confidence in your ability to deliver on ever greater promises.
This is where marketing gets fun, where you can tackle bigger and bigger problems for your audience and get them more and more meaningful results.
These are the promises that people will pay you to keep, the promises that you can build a remarkable brand around that earns not just trust but loyalty and even adoration.
But before you get there, you need to start with the small things.
What promise can you make to your audience today?
Find Your Guiding Stars
There’s no easy way to build an audience around work that matters. But there are more than enough difficult ways to do it.
Each marketing expert or service provider has their own tried and true method of building your brand, growing your tribe and creating more impact with the work you do. Some of these methods might not fit your situation or goals but many of them might work for you if you put in the work and apply them thoroughly.
This leaves you with a choice of how you want to go about creating, building, and marketing your work and tapping into your ideal target audience.
If you’re not careful, you’ll end up applying a little bit of ten different strategies, spreading your time and attention across too many people, platforms, and pursuits.
Worse, the sheer amount of choice induces analysis paralysis and you end up perpetually frozen in inaction.
To guide you, it’s worth identifying a small number of guiding stars to light your way, people who have already done what you’re looking to do and whose mindsets, values and beliefs you align with.
They don’t have to be marketing gurus, they don’t have to even talk about their work publically, although they can. Rather, these should simply be people and brands you follow whose actions and strategy you can dissect, even from the outside, and whom you can model your own decision making after.
In situations where you find yourself stuck on how to act, you can ask yourself, “What would x-brand do in this situation?”
I like to keep this number small, maybe 3–5 brands and people, although as you compile your list you may find that all of your guiding stars may exhibit similar values and strategies.
Some of my own guiding stars include Seth Godin, ConvertKit, Hiut Denim, Patagonia and charity: water.
These are brands whose generosity, commitment to mastery, and social conscience I admire among many other traits, brands I aim constantly to become more closely aligned with when it comes to the work I do.
We all face forks in the road where we are faced with difficult decisions. The way we make these decisions reflects who we really are and what we really care about to our customers, audience, and community, often with lasting effect.
Keeping an eye on our guiding stars can help us ensure we’re making decisions that are moving us into closer alignment with them, and creating brands, audiences and work that we can be proud of.
Who are your guiding stars and why? Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/why-do-you-exist-16fa30b6d70ahttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/why-do-you-exist-16fa30b6d70a
The Best Time to Change is Now
We’ve all heard, if not lived through stories of someone given a crushing diagnosis — cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc — then being forced to reckon with the consequences of continuing to live the way they have, or change.
Maybe it’s changing their diet and lifestyle overnight to eliminate junk food, focus on consuming only whole foods, make exercise an integral part of their life, and so on.
Faced with the alternative, death, these changes, however drastic, seem to be the only reasonable choice, one that most of us would willingly take as well.
But why do we wait so long to make these changes?
Eating well and exercising didn’t become good choices only because of the crisis we faced. We all know we should be doing them regularly, and yet for so many of us, it takes extreme circumstances to force us out of our old habits and into new ones.
Too often we wait for the breaking point before admitting to ourselves that we need to change things. This is true as much for our businesses and work as it is for our health.
It might be sweeping our cash flow issues under the rug, failing to address poor communication with our team members, or neglecting to establish boundaries with our clients who end up making life harder for us on a daily basis.
Sooner or later, each of these issues will reach a breaking point that will force us to make a painful, monumental shift in the way we approach our work.
So why wait until then?
It will be far less painful to start chipping away at the granite block of issues today and piece by piece, starting to sculpt our work into the shape we really want it to take.
We sell the potential of both ourselves and our work short by waiting to make changes until we’re left with no other choice.
Creating work that matters and living a life that matters requires us to regularly be assessing, honing, re-shaping our actions and habits to better suit who we want to become and what we want to create.
Remember, sculptures take time, you won’t carve it all in one sitting. But you can start today by chipping off the tiniest most manageable piece.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/dont-let-me-off-easy-56387f881abfhttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/dont-let-me-off-easy-56387f881abf
Creative Wayfinding For Ambitious Optimists.
Amateurs vs Professionals
Amateurs wing it, professionals prepare.
Amateurs think of themselves, professionals think of their audience.
Amateurs wait for their audience to find them, professionals find their audience and work to get in front of them.
Amateurs believe content alone is king, professionals understand that the packaging matters.
Amateurs stick with what’s working, professionals experiment with what will work better.
Amateurs seek to be good enough, professionals seek to raise the bar for everyone.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/literal-leadership-e926b573cac2https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/literal-leadership-e926b573cac2
What Next?
My friend Jordin James (go read her stuff she’s awesome) recently challenged me to share a little bit about a word that has come to symbolize the pandemic for me personally as part of the #pandemicwordchallenge she started.
As it turns out, my mind had already been looking for personal themes, learnings, and takeaways over the past month and as soon as she mentioned the challenge I already knew the word I was going to share.
Alas, Jordin had chosen that same word for herself (you can read about her take on it here).
I thought about writing about the same word, offering my take on it, but the more I thought about it, the more a new word, well actually a short phrase rose to the forefront of my mind, so instead, I’m going to share that.
What Next?
As the pandemic has carried on, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the question of “what next?”
The more I think about it, the more facets emerge to the question, ranging from huge issues regarding global decision making going forward and the economic fallout all the way down to the molecular level and the future of viruses like COVID-19.
Most interesting to me, however, is the question of who each of us will choose to be once this is all over.
It feels like something of a clean slate, a chance to force restart our perspectives of the world and the people around us.
After being forced into isolation will we choose to prioritize time spent in the physical presence of others or will Zoom calls become our new norm for connecting?
After being cooped up inside will we emerge with a new appreciation for the world around us and use every chance we get to explore get out and explore it?
Will we have built up habits around hygiene and hand-washing that stick and go on to have a lasting positive impact in the world thanks to a reduction in the spread of other more common afflictions?
Even though I personally haven’t had any extra time and space during the pandemic, it’s nonetheless an incredible opportunity for reflection and mindfulness for all of us.
What do we miss most about “normal” life?
What old beliefs about ourselves or the world have been reinforced or broken down?
What do we enjoy about the current circumstances?
What are we grateful for in spite of or because of our new reality?
These are questions we can all benefit from asking ourselves, and ones that can help guide us into choosing the life we want to live and the people we want to be when we emerge on the other side of this.
So what’s next for you?
4 Questions to Ask When Your Work Isn’t Landing
You’ve poured your heart and soul into creating something you’re proud of. Something that has the potential to help other people. Something that should have an adoring fan base rapidly building around it.
But instead… Crickets.
It’s easy in these situations to cast blame on others for not seeing the value in your work, or on yourself for wasting your time creating something that failed.
But before you jump to conclusions and either give up on the work entirely or furiously proceed with even more work in the same vein, start by asking yourself a series of questions.
1. Do I Have a Sufficient Sample Size?
First off, you need to cooly assess your work and ask whether you’ve really put out out a reasonable quantity of work to be able to draw any conclusions from.
When it comes to podcasting, our team at Counterweight Creative has found that with almost every one of our clients, it takes at least six to twelve months to really start building momentum around a show, in many cases longer.
Having that perspective and experience allows us to help our clients understand what to expect when they don’t have hundreds of thousands of downloads after putting out their first five episodes.
Look at others operating in your space and decipher how long it’s taken them to build up to the level of success you’re seeking. Just remember not to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others who have been in the game for longer than you have.
2. Am I Getting in Front of the Right People?
If you have a sufficient sample size and aren’t happy with the results, ask yourself if you’re actually getting yourself in front of the right people.
Most people and brands have a poor understanding of who their target audiences really are when they’re first starting out, and end up doing one of two things:
- Creating the wrong type of content to achieve their goals, ie. Attract customers/clients/leads
- Creating the right type of content but not understanding how to get it in front of their target audience, or even pitching it to the wrong audience
If you’re not 100% clear on who your audience is including their goals, challenges and worldviews, it’s time to get curious and find out what you can create to speak to them directly and where they congregate already so you can get your content in front of others like them there.
3. Is My Work Good Enough?
Alright, so you’re getting your work in front of the right people and they’re still not biting.
It’s time to take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself the tough question.
Is your work really good enough?
It’s important to remember that you don’t get to decide if your work is good enough. Your audience does.
You might be extraordinarily proud of the work you’ve created, but unless you’re doing it as a hobby, it’s your audience and their reaction to it which issues the final verdict.
Remember, no one creates amazing work the first time. Creating something that resonates deeply with your audience absolutely will take trial and error, revisions, conversations, and surveys of your audience. Most of all, it requires a deep curiosity to get to the bottom of how you can create a remarkable experience for them through the work that you do.
4. What Are Others Doing That I’m Not?
When you’re looking to change things up and experiment, a good place to start is by looking at what others are already doing already, both inside and out of your own niche.
There are only so many models and frameworks for running a business, creating content, and building an audience. Chances are, someone somewhere is doing just the thing that would work for you. You just need to find it and understand how to apply it to your work.
Researching what others are doing has another important purpose as well.
Especially within your niche, it can be helpful (if not essential) to find the gaps in what your competition is providing and figuring out a way for you to fill it.
These gaps could be related to the content itself, audience targeting, tone, method of delivery, or any combination of these factors and others.
Do your research to find out what the success stories in your space are doing well as well as what they’re leaving on the table, and experiment with adjusting your strategy to fill those gaps.
Roadblocks Are Inevitable
No matter how well things have gone for you so far, if you haven’t already, you’re going to hit roadblocks at some point.
When they show up, you can choose to bang your head against them, hoping that you’ll eventually break through, or approach them with an inquisitive mindset and search for a quicker (and less painful) way around.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/hunting-blind-spots-2ccbd619887ahttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/hunting-blind-spots-2ccbd619887a
Develop Your Perspective
For the past year and a half, I put in place a self-imposed content diet.
I restricted my intake of non-fiction, business-related content in an attempt to slow down my exponentially growing to-do do list and shut down the comparison syndrome I was experiencing. I wanted to make time and space to simply get down to work on the things I knew were important at the time for the continued growth of my business.
Over the past few months, I’ve loosened my diet and started consuming more podcasts, blogs, and newsletters on a regular basis. Maybe it’s in relation to the lack of content I had been consuming, or maybe it’s just the creators I’ve gravitated to recently, but I’ve noticed that a lot of what I’ve been consuming lately is split into two distinct camps.
On the one side, there’s the standard marketing content from countless creators. The email newsletters, in particular, follow a rigidly defined and homogenous framework, that does a little educating, provides a bit of personality and probably works pretty well gets people to sign up for their products and services.
On the other side is a class of content that certainly educates, but more than anything it makes you think.
Some of the creators whose work has fallen into this category for me recently are Seth Godin, James Clear, David Cain, Jay Claus, and Austin Kleon.
I find that every time I engage with their work, while I may have learned something immediately actionable, I’m always left with something that needs to be thought about, pored over, and meditated on. There is work to be done on my part in order to unlock the real lesson behind the content.
These creators have developed the rare but essential skill of connecting unlikely dots, drawing parallels and relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas, topics, and subjects.
They have perspective.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that none of us will create our best work without first doing the work of developing our own unique perspective, and then sharing it.
Developing a unique perspective takes time, it also takes experiencing life and consuming a wide range of information. But on top of all that it takes thought, space and quiet to process that experience and that information and connect the dots where none existed before.
Unique perspectives have the power to create a monopoly for us in our space. There is no other Seth Godin, James Clear, David Cain, Jay Klaus or Austin Kleon.
Each of them has a take on their overall subject matter that is entirely unique.
So along with developing your craft, creating more and better work, and building an audience around it, start intentionally developing your perspective. My guess is the rest of your work is going to benefit if you do.
Literal Leadership
There are a lot of ways to view and define leadership, but at the most basic level, it’s about going first.
Sometimes that might mean developing a new product or service or taking the initiative to start a company. But while leaders who do this successfully are often celebrated most widely for the impact they create, they’re rare.
There’s another way of leading, however, that is open to each of us, and I’d argue has the potential for even greater impact on the lives of those around us.
This type of leadership is about stepping into discomfort with empathy and humility. It’s about starting a difficult conversation, addressing the elephant in the room, asking a friend or colleague if everything’s okay and if there’s anything you can do to help.
As much as new technologies, products, and services make our lives better, their impact pales in comparison to greater empathy, curiosity and genuine connection between us and the people around us.
Often, all it takes is for someone to be willing to go first.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/leadership-times-of-crisis-de0248ee4bbhttps://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/leadership-times-of-crisis-de0248ee4bb
Hunting for Blind Spots
There’s something wrong in your work. No, not with your work, in your work.
You can’t see it, you don’t know it’s there, but deep inside that thing you put so much care, effort, and heart into creating, there’s a false assumption, a misconclusion, a blind spot that you’ve blown past without realizing.
And if you don’t find it, it could ruin everything.
Don’t worry, you’re not the only one with these oversights, we all have them. But just because we all have them too, doesn’t mean yours still won’t sabotage the work you care so much about.
There’s a solution, of course, but it’s not easy.
That solution and the prerequisite for creating work worth talking about is to become ruthless in hunting out your oversights, blind spots, false assumptions and areas in which you are just plain wrong.
Constant education is essential, but reading books, blogs, or listening to podcasts is the easy part.
The hard part is exposing yourself to opinions with which you disagree and then asking why.
Why is that position wrong and yours right?
Who shares the dissenting opinion and why?
Can they back it up and make a compelling argument?
Why do you hold your opinion? Is it simply a default or have you actually put thought into its formation?
The most successful people not only make a point of exposing themself regularly to opinions, beliefs, and worldviews that differ from their own but actively seek to learn and take what they can from those perspectives.
Establishing this practice builds empathy and understanding for those around you, including the audience you’re seeking to engage with, and empathy is the foundation for creating work that resonates.
Whether or not you realize it yet, your blind spots exist. Better to go find them now, while you can still address them then wait until your work falls flat and you find them in the autopsy report.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/say-i-dont-know-more-7cbb0b30c805https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/say-i-dont-know-more-7cbb0b30c805
Consistency is Key
I’m a big believer that creating work that’s meaningful and building an audience around it requires showing up with consistency and generosity.
For you, this could take the form of putting out a new podcast or blog post every week or engaging with your followers every day in some small way.
Showing up with consistency isn’t easy, and it’s the required level of consistency, perhaps more than anything else, that stymies people looking to build an audience around their work.
The secret is that you need to keep showing up, even when you don’t have an audience yet, sometimes for weeks or even months.
If you know your work has the ability to resonate with a specific group of people, you need to get it in front of them and earn their trust over time.
They may be skeptical at first, wary that you’re yet another traveling salesman looking to pass through their territory and capitalize on whatever boom might currently be happening in their industry.
Can you blame them? We’ve all seen these opportunists whose flashy offers talk a big game but fail to deliver because they don’t truly understand the problem.
As a genuine marketer looking to truly serve your audience, your goal is not to be flashier than your competition but to outlast them.
Your job is to show up more regularly and with more generosity, outlast the competition, and prove that you understand the problems your audience faces and you have a real solution tailored specifically for them.
Only then, if your work is good enough, is it going to spread. But the wait will be worth it.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/creating-inevitable-outcomes-40a469a5b1eehttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/creating-inevitable-outcomes-40a469a5b1ee
What Can You Control?
You can’t control your customer’s budgets. But you can control how they perceive your value.
You can’t control your clients’ lack of boundaries when they spend all weekend emailing you. But you can control who you work with.
You can’t control people’s existing worldviews. But you can find an audience that matches yours and tell them a (true) story about how your work can make their lives better.
Every day, as we aim to create work that changes the people who engage with it, we’re faced with dozens of situations, circumstances, beliefs and plain old laws of nature that are completely beyond our control.
We can spend our time dwelling on these, saying “If only…”, and making excuses, or we can accept the situation for what it is and focus on all the things we can control.
By focusing on what we have power over, we can build our work around the problem or circumstance rather than waiting for it to disappear so we can take the most direct path forward.
This is where the creativity in our work comes through, and the way in which we navigate the things beyond our control is what makes our work truly ours.
No one who’s ever created anything has done so under perfectly ideal circumstances, with no obstacles or roadblocks in their way. The stars didn’t align for them, and they won’t for you either.
Find a way to own your circumstances and create something that matters anyway.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/find-your-guiding-stars-30c025467e30https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/find-your-guiding-stars-30c025467e30
Keep Your Promises
A lot gets made about building trust with your audience.
Trust is a big reason why people start podcasts, blogs, and YouTube channels to help market the work they do. These mediums allow an audience to get to know us while also building our authority in the community we seek to serve and engage with.
Trust is essential in convincing your audience to not only consume your content but taking the next step and buying your product or signing up to work with you.
Luckily, the formula for building trust is pretty straightforward.
Make promises and keep them.
These promises don’t need to be big, in fact, many of the promises you make and keep to your audience will be incredibly small.
“I publish a new podcast every Thursday” is a promise that when kept, builds trust.
So is a Q&A post in your Facebook group when you actually show up and answer the questions submitted to you personally.
And while you may be making many small promises to your audience, you should also be making some big ones.
Big promises are what attract people to you in the first place. Big promises pique curiosity and draw interest. Big promises are about the transformational journey you’re proposing to take your audience on.
“I’ll show you how to lose 50lbs in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re limiting your lifestyle” is a big promise.
So is, “This is how to use podcasting to become the go-to authority in your niche.” (That’s ours at Counterweight Creative).
Every great brand is built on a big promise, that is ultimately lived up to. The same goes for great products.
The issue many entrepreneurs and creators face is that they lack the belief that they can deliver on their promises and end up not making any at all.
With no promises made, there are none to keep, they fail to build trust with their audience and fall into a cycle where they have fewer and fewer opportunities to make and keep their promises as their audience leaves to engage with someone who is.
If you find yourself in this camp, you’re not alone.
The curse of true experts is that they know just how much there is that they don’t know about the work they do, which keeps them from making any assertions at all. But they also know a whole hell of a lot more than their audience.
Start Small
Start with consistency. Commit to a content schedule, whether it’s a podcast, Youtube video, blog post, Facebook Live, or something else entirely and put it out consistently on the day you say you will.
Make promises with the actual content of your content. Your podcast title should make a promise about what your audience will learn or take away, and the podcast should deliver on it.
Think about a topic related to your niche that you feel like an absolute expert in. If you need to zoom in to a small subset of a subset of a topic, do it. Then schedule a webinar or Facebook Live and teach about it.
As you make and keep more and more of your promises, not only will you build trust with your audience, but you’ll also build confidence in your ability to deliver on ever greater promises.
This is where marketing gets fun, where you can tackle bigger and bigger problems for your audience and get them more and more meaningful results.
These are the promises that people will pay you to keep, the promises that you can build a remarkable brand around that earns not just trust but loyalty and even adoration.
But before you get there, you need to start with the small things.
What promise can you make to your audience today?
Find Your Guiding Stars
There’s no easy way to build an audience around work that matters. But there are more than enough difficult ways to do it.
Each marketing expert or service provider has their own tried and true method of building your brand, growing your tribe and creating more impact with the work you do. Some of these methods might not fit your situation or goals but many of them might work for you if you put in the work and apply them thoroughly.
This leaves you with a choice of how you want to go about creating, building, and marketing your work and tapping into your ideal target audience.
If you’re not careful, you’ll end up applying a little bit of ten different strategies, spreading your time and attention across too many people, platforms, and pursuits.
Worse, the sheer amount of choice induces analysis paralysis and you end up perpetually frozen in inaction.
To guide you, it’s worth identifying a small number of guiding stars to light your way, people who have already done what you’re looking to do and whose mindsets, values and beliefs you align with.
They don’t have to be marketing gurus, they don’t have to even talk about their work publically, although they can. Rather, these should simply be people and brands you follow whose actions and strategy you can dissect, even from the outside, and whom you can model your own decision making after.
In situations where you find yourself stuck on how to act, you can ask yourself, “What would x-brand do in this situation?”
I like to keep this number small, maybe 3–5 brands and people, although as you compile your list you may find that all of your guiding stars may exhibit similar values and strategies.
Some of my own guiding stars include Seth Godin, ConvertKit, Hiut Denim, Patagonia and charity: water.
These are brands whose generosity, commitment to mastery, and social conscience I admire among many other traits, brands I aim constantly to become more closely aligned with when it comes to the work I do.
We all face forks in the road where we are faced with difficult decisions. The way we make these decisions reflects who we really are and what we really care about to our customers, audience, and community, often with lasting effect.
Keeping an eye on our guiding stars can help us ensure we’re making decisions that are moving us into closer alignment with them, and creating brands, audiences and work that we can be proud of.
Who are your guiding stars and why? Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear.
If you’re ready to build your audience and become the go-to authority in your space using podcasting, reach out to our team at Counterweight Creative and see how we can help.
Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!
https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/why-do-you-exist-16fa30b6d70ahttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/why-do-you-exist-16fa30b6d70a
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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.