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Show Your Work!

✒️ Note-Making

🔗Connect

⬆️Topic:: Self promotion and Entrepreneurship (MOC)

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

  1. Consistency, consistency, consistency - Keep on writing and publishing every day, this will create a chain reaction where you constantly refine your material, while making more and more opportunities to connect and know your audience.
  2. Show the way, not the result - Share the process you used to get where you are, and focus on how others can imitate that. Only discuss what you know based on your knowledge and experience
  3. Connect and understand - To be understood, you first have to understand. Be a good member of the community you are trying to lead. Knowing your audience makes all the difference between success and anonymity. Connect through good story telling and always deliver quality product of value.

🗒️Relate

by following this method, what will happen? What is the goal of this book? A person who is more confident in publishing creative work, and more successful at doing so

🔍Critique

relevant research, metaphors or examples that helps to convey the argument

the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are...

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... It's a short book, more inspirational than helpful.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

You Don't Have to Be a Genius

You don't just need to do good work, you also have to be hears. Self promotion is less fake than we realize, it is to put yourself out there, the entirety of you.

It is to learn with others, not showing that you're an expert peer support. Genius is not a lone person, it is created through shared learning.

Once you find your voice, keep on expressing it, until people who are looking for you find you.

Think Process, not Product

The process you use to create the product can be more interesting and useful than the product itself. For example, a painter can either show his paintings, or how he paints.

Sharing the process can be scary, but this Vulnerability is what leads to a connection with your audience.

documenting your work process will help you find the hidden insights of your work.

Share Something Small Every Day

It is helpful to be conssitent, to share your work everyday. But remember that the goal of your posts is to provide value. Showing something half baked is relevant if you're looking for feedback, but don't share everything. Your posts are another tool at your disposal, use wisely.

Social media is nice, but have your own domain online, a place where you can design and express freelyly.

Open up Your Cabinet of Curiosities

Consume interesting content such that it will feed your creativity, follow your Curiosity. There's no such thing as guilty pleasure, don't judge what you consume and why. If you like it, go after it with your whole heart.

Tell Good Stories

There's value in Storytelling, it provides the framework that will help the audience value and enjoy your work. It can't come on it's own, you have to wrap your work in a story. A good story is one that easily connects to the audience, that knows their language, their preferences, their style. A good story has a structure, something to follow from start to end.

While stories should be captivating, don't invent fiction. Stick to the truth, be honest and open, don't exaggerate, and describe yourself in a non flattering way.

Teach what You Know

Sharing what you know helps other people connect to you, and essentially this is what they're after, to be better at something they want to improve at. This won't create competition because it is your speciality that has created these instructions, and this is hard to imitate.

Don't Turn into Human Spam

If you want to be interesting, first you should be interested. Be a member of the community before trying to lead it, participate in debates, respond to others, show interest, do your research instead of just writing your opinions.

Learn how to Take a Punch

Eventually you will receive Feedback, whether you like it or not. Remember that what you do is not who you are, it doesn't define you, but use it to make you better. And don't listen to the trolls, learn to filter who's opinions really matter.

Sell out

Once you're confident in the value you're providing, and have a large audience, don't be afraid converting it to paying patrons. It's not a shame to ask for money to support what you do, we all need to live.

Have an emailing list, this is the best way of converting people who are interested in what you do to paying customers.

Be as generous as you can, if you found success, pay tribute to those who helped you get there, and those who wish to be there, yet don't let it interrupt your work.

Stick around

Creativity is all a matter of Grit, you have to persist even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. Good creative work doesn't come easy, you have to dig deep, replace or cover up what you've done so far, so that you could be free to create something better.

Highlights
  • By generously sharing their ideas and their knowledge, they often gain an audience that they can then leverage when they need it—for fellowship, feedback, or patronage. (Location 30)
  • creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds. (Location 57)
  • The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others. (Location 97)
  • Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you. (Location 101)
  • the only way to find your voice is to use it. It’s hardwired, built into you. Talk about the things you love. Your voice will follow. (Location 106)
  • “By putting things out there, consistently, you can form a relationship with your customers. It allows them to see the person behind the products.” (Location 173)
  • Be open, share imperfect and unfinished work that you want feedback on, but don’t share absolutely everything. There’s a big, big difference between sharing and over-sharing. (Location 254)
  • Be concerned with doing good work . . . and if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.” (Location 300)
  • Being open and honest about what you like is the best way to connect with people who like those things, too. (Location 354)
  • Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work affects how they value it. (Location 399)
  • If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller. (Location 407)
  • When you teach someone how to do your work, you are, in effect, generating more interest in your work. People feel closer to your work because you’re letting them in on what you know. (Location 500)
  • If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. (Location 532)
  • If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested. (Location 545)
  • You just have to be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done. (Location 725)

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