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Creator Science with Jay Clouse
#222: An alternative to the content treadmill [Voice Memo]
00:06:51
What if you didn't need to create more short-form content?
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In my last voice memo, I talked about the difference between perishable and non perishable content. Things that have long term value versus value that dissipates after a short period of time. I want to double up on this a little bit because as creators, we assume that we need to be creating new content on all these different platforms constantly as a way to build an audience. But something that is really under spoken about as a strategy is leveraging other people's audiences as a means of building your audience. So there's a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing here, because why would somebody else give you their stage, their platform to get in front of their audience if you don't have something to bring to the table? And that is both in terms of to the host, the creator of that space, and also the audience themselves. You can't just walk onto diary of CEO or, you know, name your large podcast or YouTube channel here. You can't just walk on there without having a good reason to be there. But if you do have a good reason to be there and you find a way to get on that stage, that will be as effective or more effective more quickly than simply trying to create your own content and attract your own audience from scratch. Because anyone who has their own platform and stage that they've built for themselves, they have created a lot of trust in that audience and they will confer that trust to you if you are given that stage. Now, you're probably listening to this and thinking, yeah, Jay, that'd be great if I could just get on these large podcasts and channels and whatever. But how do I do that? And that's a great question. You need to do something of note, you can do something noteworthy, you need to have a unique perspective and you need to have some social proof, ideally even a relationship there. And yeah, those things sound hard. But you know what else is hard? Building an audience from scratch through content. If you took all the time that you would put into creating net new content to develop a new audience from scratch, imagine putting that same time and effort towards some large scale project, more time and effort into a single project than most people would do, and then bringing that to existing stages and platforms and saying, hey, I have this perspective, no one else is talking about this this way. Can I bring this to your audience? I think it's relevant in this way. Xyz. Okay, good examples of this, things like books, things like films or large scale events, you know, the amount of effort required to do the thing is a. It's kind of like proof of work that you are someone to be considered or taken seriously. Now this is why things like traditional publishers have more sway than self publishing. That is a higher bar to reach. It's harder to get a deal with a major top five publisher. And so the idea is if a top five publisher is taking you seriously, then I, as the creator or the holder of the space, could take you seriously as well. Well, I think books are still a great way to do this. Again, it's harder if you self publish, but it's still possible. And you know, the shortcut, the real shortcut is relationships. If you are able to form relationships with people who have these spaces, who have these stages that they built for themselves and can put you on them, then that will get you a lot very quickly. So I just want to share this because I think a lot of people get really stressed out by the thought of I have to create short form content and do this into perpetuity when another very, very viable path is investing a ton of time into creating something really special, really difficult, really high effort. Something that you should be proud of creating and sharing on its own, not just for the purposes of getting on other people's channels or podcasts or whatever. But most people are unwilling to do hard, deep investments of time and energy into single projects because they feel like a higher cost. When I think about publishing a book, the reason I haven't started down that path yet is because I see that as a huge opportunity cost. Because it's a huge project that will take years to do, a lot of concerted effort. And the things that I could do with that same amount of effort, I know could yield fruit right away. Not to say I'm not going to do a book, but to say to do that I need to have really high conviction that that's a project I want to invest that amount of time into. Most people just don't do it. It takes a lot of discipline, a lot of conviction and just a lot of resources to create a large project. But think about somebody like Bo Burnham who will create a special every few years, doesn't exist on social media, but every time he comes back to the world, we're all excited to see what he's made. We, we talk about it. It creates a huge conversation. And because he's so choosy about when and where he shows up, he can basically command the stage whenever he does show up. I emailed a well known author recently that I actually have a personal relationship with and asked if they wanted to come back on the podcast and their response was I'm not doing interviews right now, but if you fill out this form, I'll let you know when I'm available to do interviews again. They are very rare to give up their time and it creates this pent up demand for it so that when they do have something they want to socialize, something to talk about, now they have this whole database of people who are ready and willing to say please come talk on my platform. And that creates kind of a Thunderclap. I don't know if you remember the the old platform called Thunderclap where you would literally get people to sign in with their like Twitter or Facebook and share the same news at once. That was like a technological way of doing this. But anytime someone pops up who we know, they're well known, but they talk infrequently, their words carry more weight. So just giving you a different way that you can think about spreading the word, building an audience that doesn't require you showing up day in and day out. You could spend the same amount of time creating something really deep, really epic and then also spending a lot of time building relationships behind the scenes. Digging the well before you're thirsty. Would love to hear what you think about this. If you're on Spotify. You can leave a comment here on Spotify. I also have a link at the top of the show notes for this episode for you to submit questions to me. I'm going to be doing a new Q and A episode of the podcast soon, so if you have a question you'd like to ask me about my business or your business, just submit the question there so I can keep track of it. And I would love to include it in an upcoming episode of the podcast, both in video and in audio. Have a great weekend. I'll talk to you on Tuesday.