Brutal Truth About Audience Building

Today I want to talk to you about something that you may not like
to hear. Many people prefer not to tell you this.


Many people prefer to pretend this is not the case. But I need to
tell you this anyway. So you are able to look at things
realistically. So you avoid being disappointed because you had
unrealistic expectations.


Here is the truth  


Building an engaged and loyal audience takes time and loads of
content creation.


Of course all those who advertise the attractive “have quick
results” model pretend that it’s not the case. You get “write a
book in a day”, create an online course in a week, grow your
brand in a month type of messages all the time. And of course
that’s much more exciting than what I said. It sounds so much
better than my “it takes time and work and you have to be
persistent and patient” story.


I get that. I totally understand. But nevertheless, I prefer to
tell you the bitter truth than the sugar coated lie.


I was walking in the city the other day and went to Covent
Garden. Usually there are many different street performances out
there - from music to magic tricks and stuff. And since I love
watching people I took some time and stuck around for a while. So
I ended up seeing how one of the performers, who had the largest
crowd gathered around him finished for the day. He said good bye,
gathered his last portion of applauses, bowed, packed his
stuff and left. Obviously the crowd too, melted out and after few
minutes there was no one around.


Few minutes later, a slim guy with long hair came and started
setting up his mic and took out his guitar. Now it was his turn
to start performing.


So there was this guy all alone with his guitar and mic standing
there. I realized that probably that’s exactly how we look when
we are just starting. We have no audience, we have the tools, we
have not created anything yet and we get those uncomfortable fear
of failure, self doubt and vulnerability of being judged.


And the people - in our case the audience, pass by going to watch
someone else performing because he already has a big crowd
gathered around him therefore he must be good, right?


So what happens next. Yup… the guy starts playing his guitar and
singing his song. Did everyone run and gathered around him
immediately? Nope… It took quite a while. For at least 2 full
songs the guy was standing there, singing to no one. All by
himself, creating his magic. He was not noticed yet, he did not
have anyone to perform for yet… but he kept playing.


That’s what happens to us too… we write blog posts, record
podcast episodes, do videos, lifestream… and for weeks nothing
happens. We feel like we are talking to ourselves. We feel
invisible, unknown, unappreciated. At some point we are like “why
the hell am I doing this, no one cares anyway”, right?


So what happened to the guy? Well after a while few people came
and stood to listen, then some more… after the songs they started
clapping, few others paid attention and joined. After a while he
got traction and gathered a pretty decent audience.


Do you see the parallel?


The guy showed up, took the courage to put himself out there,
created his music, persisted even though no one paid attention
for a while, kept going on and only after all that things started
moving. What would have happened if he gave up after song 1. Yup,
nothing…


It’s the same with us. We have to realize that there are others
who do similar things out there already, that no one is going to
notice us from day 1, that we need to create awesome content
consistently until people start gathering around us and that we
need to stick around and do our best not to give up even when we
think no one care…


Because honestly... [No one will care in the beginning. But
that’s ok. That’s how things are. Even the person who eventually
fell in love with you did not care about you at your first
encounter.


Building...