Alas, not super helpful. More setting the foundation for signing up for her course — arguing that we’re thinking about things the wrong way, and we need to flip our perspective to focus on building connection — but nothing about how to build connection. Or, as the title advertised, get people really into your work.
Key takeaways:
- puttering away on your own work in your quiet little space out of the way feels like the nice thing to do
- when people aren’t coming, it’s not that the work isn’t good, it’s that you aren’t allowing people in
- your work is powerful to your audience because you want to change the cultural conversation and build connection
I think I’m done with these free workshops / course sales pitches for a while. They feel too much like those timeshare deals where you get a free / discounted stay but have to go to the sales pitch. I understand that folks can’t give away everything but it’s frustrating when it feels like you got nothing tangible out of your time, that the answer to how to get people into your work (or fill in the blank) is to join their course. All the success stories were not about how people built an audience, but how they made more work.
Sometimes cynical me gets this feeling, from seeing many creatives offering workshops and classes, that succeeding financially in the creative field is a MLM scheme where you tell other creatives how to sell their work but where you’re making your money is in selling things to creatives. And I say this as someone who’s potentially interested in turning the free planning guide I created for creative types into a published planner. I want to help people, and think I have some useful things to say, but also see it as a market that people are willing to spend in. I read a lot in the “self help” sphere, so I do see value there. But it makes me question how financially successful creative work can realistically be alone, when it seems like a lot of times where the money comes from is eager self-funded creatives lower in the experience ladder.
Brad