Overcoming Obscurity and Finding Your Audience
Whether you’re a freelancer seeking more corporate clients, or an entrepreneur on a path to build a following, audience and passive income - one of the most important battles you’ll need to overcome is the battle out of obscurity - letting people know you and your products exist. Obscurity will kill your progress faster than anything else. If you’re not getting a healthy influx of new sales, it becomes meaningless to improve your efficiency, or quality of products. Even the best chef in the world will lose her restaurant without customers to buy and eat her cuisine.
How can we improve the way the right customers find us? How do we cut through all the noise and let the world know that we exist? These are questions I’ve struggled with since my very first businesses. The story might look something like this: One day you decide to learn a new skill, you become good enough at it that you begin to charge people for it. You make a couple sales, and then everything stops. You think maybe it was the wrong skill… so you learn a new skill. You find a couple customers, and then sales slow to a trickle again. What’s wrong with this story? The problem isn’t the skill, it’s that not enough people know who you are, and why you’re important to them.
But the good news is that you have the power to change that. You have the ability to increase your visibility and start generating more sales today. Here are six ways you can start changing the way your story goes and get the gas in the tank again.
1. Create opportunities through your own content.
Don’t wait for someone to give you an opportunity, Create it with your own drive and passion. Create it with your own content. An iPhone and an afternoon pouring your heart out can get you a video to share. A consistent push to produce this content can help you build an audience and get the attention you’ve been craving. Don’t just let your website say it, let your prospective clients see you in action. Put together a library of videos, blogs or audio recordings showing you in action.
How did Justin Bieber do it? He put his videos on YouTube. We’re more privileged that we let ourselves believe - YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Vine - All of these resources are waiting for you to put your story there.
Prove it with a video. Prove it with vulnerability. Prove it until no one can deny it. Burn your fire so bright that obscurity is no longer on the table.
2. Infiltrate existing organizations
Growing an audience and credibility is a lot like planting trees. It takes time.
However, if you’re impatient, the fastest way to increase the rate of your credibility and audience size is through collaborating with existing audiences and organizations. They have already done the legwork and built up a following. You can save a lot of time and energy by teaming up with them and providing some value. Find out what they need / want and figure out how you can put yourself in a position to give it to them.
3. Start small, think big
Just like in the video games, you’ve got to put in the work with the small-fry for a few levels until you gain enough XP to start taking down the big bosses. Seek out events and brands who are on your level, looking to start something, and get in there to help them out.
Don’t let yourself get discouraged because you’re not working with Fortune 500 companies at the beginning. Wear your passion on your sleeve and let everyone you meet and interact with know that you are there to help them get to the next level. You are the driving force they need to grow, and together, you’ll do incredible things.
4. Be a host.
having a hard time infiltrating other people’s networks? Don’t let that slow you down. Do it yourself.
Be a Host. Be a connector. Put together an event and make it incredible. It takes a lot of initiative to be a host, and most people are too timid to take that first step. The leverage and credibility an event will give you is well worth the extra stress. Even if you have nothing else to offer a potential client or connection, inviting them to an event you organize is an incredible way to build rapport and cultivate respect.
5. Build systems and track your progress.
There’s nothing worse than reinventing the wheel every time you do something. Take the time to figure out a system for your activity every time you do it so that you can replicate the process and save time. You also want to start tracking the effectiveness of your ideas. If something isn’t working, stop doing it that way and try a different approach.
6. Take Punches. Get up. Take More Punches.
It’s going to get hard. Creating a bold statement and pioneering out of your comfort zone is going to hurt. You’ll get knocked down. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll get inspired, let down, inspired, burnt out, reinvigorated, maybe even pissed off. But you can’t surrender. You gotta get back up, try something new. Keep your head high and take some risks. You might get rejected, you might get defeated, but you will never stay defeated if you get back up and continue to try.
The only caveat here is that you should eventually take smart risks. At first, it’s okay to shoot in the dark and throw spaghetti at the wall, but eventually, it’s important to start thinking ahead and making a strategy. Otherwise, you’re never really growing, you’re just spinning wheels aimlessly. Other people will begin to take notice of your determination as you keep pushing forward, as you continue to grow. The more you rise up and shine your torch, the more you attract others and the easier it is to cut through obscurity.