Uncategorized – Page 13 – adamtcroft.com

“Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can’t hurry the crops or make an ox [or a huge social following/audio career] in two days.” – Henry Alain [with editor’s addition]

In today’s world of instant gratification, we’re trained to eschew patience and look for instant results. Be it likes, followers, learning Python in 24 hours, or getting 6 minute abs – we’re very literally trained to expect results right now.

It’s with this frame that I find myself looking “back” (to different areas, rather) to find what non-digital work looks like. It may come as a surprise you you, but physical labor such as farming has an incredible amount in common with today’s digital knowledge work.

But before you scoff and tell me you wouldn’t be caught dead driving a tractor, let’s look into what sowing seed for crops can teach you about how to make better digital content.

Your actual audience is your future audience.

Farmers plant in the spring, harvest in the summer (or, years later). Surprisingly, so do you.

Nearly every form of digital communication is currently setup for you to expect an instant response metric. More often than not, these immediate metrics don’t matter at all. Likes, follows, open rates, subscriber counts, etc. are highly worthless for much of anything besides ego stroking unless you’re a company generating a large amount of revenue and trying to understand what your market engages with.

Even then, there’s probably a better way to figure that out.

If you’re a musician, sound designer, or programmer – what matters is that you’re doing work today to be presented at a later date to those who don’t know you yet.

In internet-land, we call this “social proof”. It’s your resume-without-being-a-resume. It’s your body of work. It’s the way that people know what you do and how you do it. It’s the way you get others excited about you.

This future audience is your most important audience, because they’re your future clients or future employer.

So I mean it quite literally when I say, like a farmer, you plant seeds and then harvest them much later. It could be months, it could be years, but at some point a very important eye will come across your body of work and give you a call to ask what your rates are or give you a job offer.

Put out and curate content.

You build a body of work over time, not in a day. That means three things:

Actually creating the content
Curating said content for ease of consumption
Creating said content consistently

If you’re not regularly putting out content today, that’s fine. The first step is not to beat yourself up over something you haven’t done. The step after that is just deciding what you’re most comfortable with today and starting to do it.

Whatever you do, it will evolve, change, and grow over time. I wasn’t writing about the same things in 2016 or in the same way that I am now.

So decide what interests you most right now, and start. I write once a week to encourage you and get my thoughts out, and I stream once a week to connect with you directly and work on programming. Anything else (social media) is all an extension of those two things.

The easiest way to figure out the “what should I make?” question is by breaking down your ideas into categories. As I’ve told you previously, the further you break things down and define them, the easier it gets.

If you’re a sound designer, you can write about sound, you can make 10-second redesigns, you can stream, the possibilities as wide as your imagination. But, it’s important to put yourself in a box. Don’t say “this week I’m going to do a 10-second redesign and next week I’m going to write a blog post”. Start by being the 10-second redesigner. You can eventually go elsewhere, but start with one thing.

After you’ve begun, make sure it’s accessible. If you look at my Instagram profile, I’ve intentionally curated posts for repetition. It’s not often that people will scope out my profile instead of a timeline, but when they do, they’ll see long vertical stacks of content that’s visually thematic. My friend Ivo Ivanov (of Glitchmachines) does a brilliant job of this with the links on his personal site.

When you look at those examples you might get overwhelmed and think “wow, that’s a lot of content – I could never make that!” But, that’s the point of consistency. Pick a schedule. Once a week, once every two weeks, once a month – whatever you can commit to keeping. The social proof will build over time and people will find it.

Build where it makes sense.

I run into a lot of folks asking “How about X social platform – should I post on that?”

What you’re really asking is where are you most likely to connect with others who will care about your work and pay you. While someone may be able to give you an educated guess – you’ll never really know until you try it out yourself.

The one guarantee I can give you is that you’re best to start out with your website and your favorite social channels. Your website is always a good repository for your work, and you should do your best to keep a calendar to refresh it every now and then.

Otherwise, if you’re comfortable with Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere else – start there. As of this writing, most folks are finding traction on Twitter and Instagram – but not long from now there will be a “new” thing. You won’t have lost your social proof when you make that change – you’ll just encourage those who engage with you now to engage with you in the new place.

“But Adaaaaam” you say, “I don’t have any time, or any ideas. Just plenty of excuses!”

You have more time than you think that you do, I promise. I cut slack to those with children, but… even then… I have a good number of very high achieving friends who embarass me with their output who are parents.

I would also bet that you have called or thought of yourself as an “ideas person” – you have great ideas, just not the time/resources/energy/knowhow to execute on them. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.

The lesson there? Learn how to become an action person. Because even a weak idea with weak execution is worth about $1,000 according to Derek Sivers (Founder of CD Baby) – and who wouldn’t want an extra $1,000?

Here’s the real point – there’s always an excuse. You’ll find the results you want when you act anyway.

So get to farming.

You don’t have to have a big plot of land to start sowing seed and harvesting the fruits of your labor. My wife and I grew tomatoes on our apartment’s balcony early in our marriage, and that was something. We also learned a lot from the experience.

Start with what’s familiar to you and start small. Do your best to not stop, because eventually, that dream gig or client is going to come knocking right after you’re ready to give up.

I promise.