TL: DR — I'm an ex-music manager. I spent 25 years building audiences for superstar DJs and multi-platinum pop bands. This is what I discovered.What will you learn? A six step actionable philosophy and game plan. It's a blend of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive biases.1. Fear HackingThis is the most important step.Why? You will never achieve your creative potential with the iron grip of fear holding you back.Fear stops you from taking risks.Fear keeps you in your lane.Fear stops you from creating extraordinary work that matters.Why? Because creativity is personal and you’re scared of failing.We invest our hearts and souls into our creative projects. The thought of them being rejected is a terrifying prospect.So people hold back.They create bland, vanilla products, the same as everyone else’sThey get lost in the sea of mediocrity.We’ve all done it. Most of us aren’t even aware we’re doing it.In professional tennis, they call it tanking the game. Diluting effort in expectation of failure in order to protect our egos.The psychology is, we believe if we don’t try so hard; failure won’t hurt as much.So we don’t fully commit.And, somewhat ironically, our fear of failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.The truth is: creativity is more about failing. Building anything is more about failing.Don’t hide from failure. Take a deep breath and run towards it.Create. Fail. Iterate.Create. Fail. Iterate.Rinse and repeat until you:Create. Connect.People don’t buy ordinary things. They don’t share mediocre stuff.People want extraordinary.Tip # 1 —How to create extraordinary work? Run towards your fears, embrace failure as a friend, and create work that is so good that it scares the shit out of you.N.b — fear hacking is too big a topic to unpack here. There will be more posts about this in the future.2. Creative AuthenticityYeah, I know... Authenticity is a word that has been so commercialised and overused it has reached the point of ironic inauthenticity.But it is absolutely critical to your long term success.Why?There are only two things you need to achieve to build a highly engaged audience:Get noticedGet your audience to careHow do you get noticed? By building a niche of one.How do you do that?By combining your talents + your interests + your personality to create a completely unique offering.For example, let’s take Jack Butcher from Visualize Value. He spent 10 years in design in the advertising industry.He started his own agency. And hated it. So he started a consultancy.To promote it, he combined his skills (design) plus his interest in creating digital business products for creators. (Interests)People love quotes. Jack added a high design element to quotes and created a niche for one on Twitter.Jack uses business quotes and high design to provide clarity and insights on business.Skills + interests + personality = Visualize Value which now turns over $1MM per annum.It only took Jack 18 months to achieve that.Why? Because he stood out in niche of one.Tip # 2 — stand out from the crowd by being yourself. Often the thing you think is holding you back will actually help you stand out.e.g Louis Grenier of Everyone hates Marketers considered elocution lessons to dilute his French accent Louis' " Bonjour, Bonjour" is now his signature intro and partly allows him to stand out in a saturated Podcast market.3. Affinity BiasWhat is affinity bias? It’s a subconscious social bias that draws us to people who are like us.We don’t know we’re doing it. But we all do.This is why it’s important to be authentic. People who are like us will be subconsciously drawn to us — and our content.When you write authentic content around your niche of one it will naturally attract people like you. They are interested in your worldview because it dovetails with their own.They are interested in your journey because they are on the same path.This provides strong, natural, connections.These connections create a tribe of like-minded people.This how you turn your audience into a community. When you have a community it’s symbiotic and your community will become “true fans” in the Kevin Kelly sense of the term.Tip # 3 — We’re all a bit weird. Embrace it and share it to naturally attract your tribe with cognitive bias.4) The Zulu Philosophy of UbuntuWhat is Ubuntu? It’s the Zulu philosophy that inspired Nelson Mandela to change the world.It was the spirit of Ubuntu that helped Mandela forgive the jailers who beat him year after year.Mandela knew we are only human through the humanity of others. We are only pure from serving others. We are joined together through the spirit of unity and mutual experiences. Asked to define Ubuntu, Mandela posed a question “ What are you going to do in order to enable the community around you to improve?“This is the same question that every artist, rebellious entrepreneur, and curious creator should ask themselves.What are you going to create that will inspire and improve your community?Your success is directly related to your community's success, and their success is related to yours.It’s symbiotic.The more success your community has the more they will tell their friends and the bigger your community will become.The bigger the community gets the more successful your business will be.But it all starts with improving your community.Tip # 4 — Improve your community's lives and your business results will take care of themselves.5) Empathy and GenerosityBuilding a community boils down to two things:Having the empathy to understand your community's wants and needs.Having the generosity to serve them time and time again.Do these two things and you will build a successful brand and a community of super fans who will buy all your work —after all, you're providing them with what they want and need.They will share your work. And spread the word. The community will grow. It will get stronger.And best of all you will have found a sense of purpose.“In an ideal world, nobody’s work would just be about the money. People could pursue excellence in what they do, take pride in achievement, and derive meaning knowing that their work improved the lives of others.” — Barry SwartzTip # 5 — Serve your community naturally and they will serve you back6) Access and DistributionIt doesn’t matter how authentic or extraordinary your content is if you fail to reach your people.Your community is the outcome of good distribution and content.When designing your niche of one start with the distribution. If you don’t have access to the people you want to serve, you should re-think your niche of one.Tip # 6 — Distribution is king.Thanks for reading. I hope it helps.Somewhat predictably I have a newsletter. It’s about creative hacks and mental models to build audiences and overcome creative blocks. It’s surprisingly good. You can sub here if you like. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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