482 - The Key Ingredient for Maximizing Discoverability

0:02On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off, sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

0:41I like creative people. And this world we live in is not really set up for them to win. I know that from personal experience. I just, you know, I like to share the things that have helped me because I love creativity and I love creative people.

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3:20How do you get new people to discover your work and find out that you even exist? list? Is it just, you know, podcast the internet to death? Is it just, if you're not making thousands of reels and reels and reels and reels every single day, what are you even doing? You're leaving it on the table. You're leaving so much on the table. They say, you know, is it short form video? Is it LinkedIn? Like what's, where's the hack? How do we get in there? It just feels so noisy and full. I actually don't feel like that's how creative work really spreads or finds its audience. I think it starts mostly with knowing what you're cooking as a creative person.

4:12Now, I don't know a ton about cooking. I've cooked a few recipes in my day. We try to cook as much as possible in our home. We kind of have some staples on rotation. We try to keep it fresh, but I wouldn't claim to be some great cook. I think that growing up, I grew up in the Midwest and we weren't like a foodie household. But my stepdad, who I saw from time to time when I was staying with my mom, he was a cook and a chef in the Navy. And the rumors around our family were that he cooked on Air Force One or something. I don't know if that's true. That's the kind of stuff that gets thrown around.

4:55And when it's not like your primary household, you don't really fact check it. I don't know. But he was in the Navy. They moved around a lot. They lived in Florida. They lived in West Virginia. And I remember one summer we went and stayed with them for a few weeks in West Virginia. And it was like in an apartment complex that was near the ocean. And we would go hang out with the kids where they would hang out, which was like on the dock. And we were the new kids on the dock because there was a dock and the kids, that's where the kids would hang out. But we weren't listening to that. We were actually listening to All for One.

5:36I swear that was kind of the era. Kids were talking about that. Just to give you context of when this was in the nineties. And so we would go like being a Midwesterner, this was like another planet, going out and sitting on the dock with these kids from the apartment complex. I've never seen anything like it. This is how they spent their days. They had like this, these fishing nets that they would like swing above their heads like a lasso and then fling it into the ocean, like really far out there and then just reel it in and reel it in. They would cast it and reel it in and they would reel in like hundreds of times and they would get like a shrimp and a weird tiny fish and maybe the odd little spider crab, something like that.

6:26But it wasn't a lot, but it felt like magic to this Indiana boy. And it was pretty incredible. Now, as we're there, my stepdad drops into conversation here and there like, one day, we're going to do a big seafood gumbo with fresh seafood. And it's going to be amazing. If you've never had it, it's just going to be incredible. And I was like, sure, man. Like, yeah, yeah, go for it. Like you're going to be out there for days. I've seen people try to catch stuff from the ocean. It isn't very easy. I don't like, you know, it's going to be mostly soup with a few shrimp added in there. And he talked a big game the whole summer.

7:11And then as it was winding down, he was like, okay, hey, this Sunday, we're doing it. It's gonna be gumbo night. And I was like, okay, man, go get out there. We're not gonna have anything to eat. And then Friday comes around, Saturday comes around, Saturday comes around and he's like inviting the neighbors. Hey, tomorrow is the big gumbo. And I'm like, oh my gosh, We're not, we're not even have any for ourselves to eat. Why are you inviting them? I haven't even seen you out there one day. And Sunday comes around and I think he's going to be out there like at the crack of dawn, hustling, casting and casting and reeling and reeling.

7:49He ain't doing nothing. He's just sitting around chilling. It gets to be about three o 'clock in the afternoon. I'm like, Hey, are you like, where's the fish? Like, what, what are we going to eat? He's like, I don't worry about it. he's like, let's go get them. And we walk out there to the dock. He doesn't even have a net and he bends over on the dock where one of the big posts is. And he reaches down and I see this chain and he pulls up this massive crab basket full of crabs. I didn't even know when he ever put it out there. He must've been, he must've put it out the night before. He puts them in a bucket, it goes and makes this massive seafood gumbo.

8:32Honestly, I can't even remember if I tried it. I wish I could go back in time now. I'm a lot more adventurous with my flavors. I wish I could go. It sounds amazing. I wish I could go test it now, but I don't remember if I had it, but the neighbors ate. We had a huge feast and yeah, I was completely proven wrong and taken by surprise. The reason I tell you this is because this is what it feels like being a creator in the era that we live in. There are folks out there that are stood out there, casting the internet to death, reeling and reeling and reeling and not coming up with much. And then you have those other folks that know what they're cooking and they know how to set up the trap and they can pick this stuff up overnight because the lion's share of what's essential to people discovering your work is them sharing it.

9:30It's word of mouth. It's making something so remarkable that people will remark on it, as Seth Godin would say. that when it comes to how people discover your work, that the primary element of that isn't about hustling and putting it in front of people and spamming everybody like mad. The primary element is knowing what you're cooking, knowing who it's for, and setting up the right bait and trap for those people to discover it. Now, every time I mention this phrase, I bore myself with it. I see everybody turn off when this happens, but I have to mention it. Just please, just pry open your eyes like the freaking cartoons and just, it's going to be brief.

10:28I'm going to say it. The diffusion of innovation. Okay. Sounds fancy. I don't fully understand it, honestly. The diffusion of innovation. Okay. But you've heard about it. the early adopters, the early innovators, the early majority, all that kind of thing. It's about how ideas spread. And I think art spreads in a similar way. We're not going to go through each piece of it. The only thing I want to talk about is that the way that ideas spread is that they don't cast out super wide. They don't cast and cast and cast and reel and reel and reel. Like they go deep. They know who it's for. The easiest way to make something remarkable that people will remark on and will spread by word of mouth is to know who it's for and make it for those people and tap into what Immanuel Kant called common sense.

11:28he was really into this idea that taste, our taste, what we find to be tasty in terms of not just food, but art and beauty was a thing that we shared in common with other people. It was a sensitivity that we had in common with other people, a common sense. And if you know who you're making for, if you know what you're trying to catch, You can tailor make that trap with that bait and that invitation to bring in the exact right people. And when you do that, you don't have to hustle like a maniac. It might not be as easy as catching crabs overnight, but it is much simpler than hustling and casting and reeling on the internet day after day after day.

12:25And so in this episode, we're going to talk about how do you figure out the kind of bait that you need to create for your creative practice to get the kind of results that you're after.

12:55Okay. So if you don't know, this is part of our journey of the true fan series we've been doing. This is episode four of four of the last episode, and it's all about the second creative journey. The first creative journey is making the work, discovering what it is, developing it into something and like crafting a final statement, a final product. Whether you're a musician making an album or a filmmaker making a film or a writer making a book, you make this thing. But that's only half the journey. The second journey is getting it out into the world. and if you believe in the thing that you made, you owe it to yourself and to that thing that you made to do everything that you can to get it out there and give it a chance.

13:42Don't just kick the baby out the nest and expect it to fly. You gotta give it some flying lessons. You gotta put some rollerblades on that thing. You know what I'm saying? And so that's what this whole series is about. Now, this practice is a strategic practice. It means starting with the end in mind. So we did the weird thing of going backwards. The first episode, we talked about the three pieces. And then the second episode, we talked about the third piece. Then we went to the second piece. This is the first piece. And the reason is because you need to know what you're after before you know what bait to choose.

14:21We're going to talk about that in a second. But this is the last episode. The three pieces are you need people to discover your work, develop a relationship, like learn to trust it, and then third, make the sale. So we did the sale. Then we did the trust. Now we're doing the last piece, which is the first piece. This is the challenge of learning to think strategically. It's backwards thinking, but it's really powerful if you can master it and you can wrap your head around it. It's worth the while. Uh, so we're talking about discovery. How do you get people to discover your work? This whole series was lucky enough to be sponsored by Squarespace.

15:05They made it possible. And, um, when we came up with this series, we approached Squarespace cause we thought, um, they would be really essential. They are an essential piece of my second journey of my creative practice. whenever I launch anything, whenever I relaunch a portfolio or I have a new direction in my creative practice that I'm trying to go to, one of the really essential parts is making a website that is tailor-made to achieve that thing. We talked about this a ton in the previous episode because building trust with your audience is essential. And in this day and age, I think there's no better place to build trust, to show people that you are who you say you are and you do what you say you can do than with a website.

15:52And I loved what Squarespace made possible with their new fluid engine. I could make a site that felt like me, felt like my creative work without knowing any code. And so if you want to go check that out, go check it out, AnnieJPizza.com and see what I made with it. If you want to go start tankering, you can do that for free at squarespace.com slash pep talk. And when you're ready to go live, you can get 10 % off your first purchase by using the promo code pep talk. Now we're talking about, uh, we're pep talking about this process. We're in the last piece, the discovery phase. How do you get new people to find your work?

16:35Um, we've already decided what the sales are going to be, what, like what the end product is going to be. We've already decided, we've already explored how to build a site that builds trust. How do we get people to the site? How do we get people to find you for the first time? That's what we're going to talk about today. Now, look, yeah, I'm making a catching crabs metaphor and traps and bait and all that stuff. And honestly, I just have to say it doesn't strike a chord in terms of the humanity of this. You're not actually trying to trap art directors and editors and reel them in with bait. Okay.

17:14You're not doing that. It's just a metaphor. And at the end, I'm actually going to come back and say something that's a little bit more human about this crab catching. But for now, let's roll with it because I think there's some interesting things that we can take away. And the most essential piece of this, if you don't take anything else away is that the key to getting your work discovered, to getting it out there is knowing what you're cooking. That's the hardest part. And we already did that. In episode two, we talked about the sales element. We talked about what are you trying to sell? Is it a book to a publisher?

18:00Is it trying to get editorial illustration jobs? Is it trying to get cast in commercial? Whatever it is, the most difficult part of this process is knowing what you're cooking, knowing what you're catching, like what are you trying to sell? Because it tells you who you're trying to sell to. And that is the most essential thing because that saves so many resources. when it comes to this short form video thing or internet marketing and social media and all that, part of the reason why it feels so fruitless is because you are casting out wide and you're catching tons of stuff that you don't actually want.

18:47And it's wasting tons and tons of resources just throwing out a wide net. As I was researching this crab catching, crab baskets, just to see if there was anything interesting. One of the things that really surprised me was that these crab baskets, one of the things that the fishermen talk about is you need to make sure the door is the right size and you can actually do some alterations to it, change how far it opens, depending on the crab that you want to catch. So it's not just that you know you're catching crabs, you have to know, are you trying to get a snow crab or are you trying to get a king crab?

19:30Because if you catch the wrong things, it will waste resources. It will fill the basket with things you don't want. And that's most of the effort that gets put online. That's most of what comes from it is that you're getting tons of people to discover your work that can make no difference to your creative practice whatsoever. And you're wasting a bunch of time creating for those people. And so the most difficult part of the process is to know what am I selling? That tells you who you're selling to. That's most of the battle. That's the other reason we went backwards is because once you know that, then you can build the perfect trap, the perfect site, the perfect thing that builds trust.

20:13And then you can get to that last piece, which is selecting the proper bait, the thing that is tailor-made to the person that you're trying to attract. Now, that's the thing I'm going to leave you with. The CTA for this episode, the call to adventure, how to put this to action is to choose the bait. Make sure that it is custom tailored to the person that you're trying to attract. Now, if you were trying to catch crabs and you've never done that before, your first guess would probably be wrong. At least mine was. I thought, okay, what kind of bait do you put in these crab baskets? First thing I thought was worms because that's just like the cliche thing that you fish with, right?

21:00Like I didn't think it was worms, but that's just the first, that's the only thing I could think. And then I did a little research. I'm like, oh, actually they catch, it's kind of gross and weird, but they catch crabs with chicken. Crabs love chicken. Who would have known? Just the whole image is just grossing me out. But if you know what you're after, you know what to put in that basket. You know what's going to bring the things that you're after into your ecosystem. And that's super essential. Now, why is that essential? Because when you know what you're catching, you can figure out what they like to eat.

21:42If you're trying to attract an art director for the New York Times, you need to know what do they consume? What kind of media are they looking at that is how they find the people like you? If you're trying to get on the radar of event organizers, how do they discover new people? What are they consuming? What do they like to consume? Because it doesn't make any sense to make a podcast if you're trying to make something and attract people that don't listen to podcasts. I personally made a podcast and have been casting for 10 years because I wanted to do talks. And I thought this is a portfolio of talks and I wanna go get booked at conferences and events.

22:32And so it made sense. The bait matched the thing I was trying to catch. And the same goes for you. The challenge that I'm gonna give you, the action that I want you to take is to figure out the people you're trying to attract, what do they consume? It's called the crab diet. You've heard the carb diet. This is the crab diet. You need to figure out what the crab diet is. And so how do you do that? I can't tell you, and it doesn't really matter because I make this podcast not to be tactics. You know, tactic things are a little bit tacky. They're just of the moment. They're very timely. If I told you The latest thing trend on TikTok is to save it in your draft for three days and then post it and then make sure you tag these three.

23:19All of that stuff will be by the time you hear it will be completely overdone. But if you can understand the more timeless principle underneath it, then you can apply that to no matter how the market changes. The principle underneath it is you need to be getting around the people that know what these folks like to consume, know where they're looking. You need to go where they're going and understand their behaviors. the most essential pieces of information I've ever got in my creative practice have come from being at the events where people like me are and hearing the tip of like, oh, if you really want to break out in this thing, you need to be making zines.

24:05You need to be making sliders on Instagram. You need to be making a podcast, whatever it is. You need to get around those people to figure out what they like to consume so that you can make that kind of stuff. You know, if you're a musician, if I was a musician, I wouldn't be making TikToks. I'd be making singles on Spotify and I'd be making them collaborative. I'd be making lots of songs with other people in the world that I want to connect with. And so that's your challenge. Your challenge today is to figure out who you already know who you're trying to sell to. You already know what the product is.

24:42You need to find out where do they consume stuff? What is the bait they like to eat? Now, back to this thing of this crab metaphor feeling a little bit tactless, feeling a little bit not very human. I personally think that the best way to attract the people that can be the true fans that can make or break your creative practice is to not see them as crabs, but see them as people. And hopefully they're the people that share a common sense of taste with you, that they care about the stuff that you care about. You know, one of the easiest ways to figure out what those people are consuming is be one of those people.

25:31You know, if they are people like you, they have similar consumer behaviors as you. They have similar tastes and similar appetites. And that's the easiest way to figure that out. And that kind of brings me to my last thing, which is I told you like this metaphor of catching crabs. It works. I think there's I think. But I also felt like there's an element of it that feels a little bit less human than what I feel like this process can actually look like. Because I don't think the easiest way is to just figure out what crabs eat and create the perfect trap and all that. I think it actually looks like being a crab.

26:25I think it looks like Little Mermaid. I want to be where the crabs are. Be a crab because crabs are cool. I thought they were when I was a kid. I did think they were. And I remember being on the dock and I must have pointed out one of those crabs to another kid. There was a spider crab that would like hang out on the rocks and it was far down like below the dock. And I remember I must have shown him. I was like, dude, look at that. And he's like, oh man, you should come out here early, early in the morning. And there are hundreds of those crabs. And I thought, okay, I don't know. I don't have an alarm here.

27:10It's summertime. No one's going to wake me up to go look at the crabs. I don't know. Hopefully I can just will myself into waking up early one day. And it didn't happen for a while. And then one day randomly, I woke up super early, like right when the sun was rising. And I thought, I'm going to go run out there and see it. And honestly, even thinking about it now, it was so magical. It feels like a dream. Like I, there's part of me, it's like, did this happen? I think, but I do think it did. And I, I left the house. What I don't, my parents didn't know. So, and I ran out to the dock and I looked down and it was this kind of like, you know, that kind of awe, fear inspiring feeling where it's gross and amazing.

28:06At the same time, there was just this huge pile of these black spider crabs. And it was like freaking me out, but also just like super intriguing. And that to me is maybe a better image of what it looks like to tap into this is the fear and the awe and the excitement of getting to those places where the other crabs are and becoming, tapping into, not just knowing what they like to eat because you're trying to catch them, but because you are them. The easiest way to know what they consume is to tap into what you consume. When you are in the right area for your creative work, you live and breathe and eat this thing.

29:02I think when I find myself venturing too far out, when I find myself seeing others, seeing people that could hire me seeing people that could buy my stuff as this other thing that I have to trap and bait and and reel in it usually means I've gone too far outside of myself and my own consumer habits and my own tastes and preferences but if I can be driven by the interest and the passion that will get me up out of bed early in the morning just because I'm excited about it, that's the kind of energy that leads to making the kind of work that people remark on and talk about and share. And I actually don't have to go to tremendous efforting to get myself to go to those places where those people are and get that insight and tap into that.

30:08It's not a chore. It's a gift. It's an experience. It's something I desperately want to do. And so that's the last thing that I'll leave you with is that if it doesn't feel like that, then it might not be the right direction. And you might need to go back to the start and say, what do I want this sale to be? Who are the people that I want to have a trusting mutual relationship with? And then I can start figuring out where I need to be, where those people are consuming what they consume, because that's where I want to consume stuff. That's where I want to be participating. And so the metaphor has gotten ridiculous and messy and weird, but I hope that if you take anything away at all, that you take away that leading with a common sense of taste, a common sense of passion, and connecting with people that are excited about the same stuff that you're excited about is the best strategic move that you can make in the journey of the true fan.