You Must Market Your Work, Even If It's Obviously Good

No one cares about what you’re doing at much as you do.

While your project - whether it’s a software product, novel, graphic art, screenplay, piece of code - whatever - is the most important thing in your life, as soon as you send it out into the world, it becomes the 10-20th most important thing to the person you sent it to.

This is why, even if your work is obviously good, you must market it aggressively.

Art Is A Matter of Taste. It Takes Time To Find Your People.

Art is a matter of taste. Not everyone is going to love what you create, but that doesn’t mean no one is going to love it. Marketing is the process of positioning your work to find the people who will connect with it.

For example, my wife and I screenwrite comedies and romantic comedies. Part of our job is to make it very clear to prospective readers and producers what they should expect before they sit down to read our work. Because not everyone likes comedies - some people like thrillers or horrors or mysteries.

So in each pitch, we delineate our brand in three key words: Diverse, funny, and with heart. That way, the reader knows what to expect before they read.

Even if what you’ve created solves a problem (like a software product) and objectively “works,” some people aren’t going to like it. That’s okay. You don’t need everyone to like it - you only need a small percentage of people on the internet (or one gate-keeper to let you into a gated industry) to be as excited about it as you are.

And in order to find them, you need to publish your work and then use the world’s feedback to improve.

Publish Your Work To Get Feedback, Then Improve.

Publishing doesn’t just help you find fans of your work, but it also gives you feedback from readers or users that you can use to make your work better. And the faster you get that feedback, incorporate it, and publish again, the faster your pace of improvement.

Put simply, the faster you can iterate, the faster you’ll improve. As Naval Ravikant says, “It isn’t 10,000 hours that creates outliers, it’s 10,000 iterations.”

But incorporating constructive feedback is an art form in itself. Whether it’s a business or product or piece of writing, it’s not always clear what feedback to incorporate and what to ignore.

In my industry - screenwriting - feedback isn’t an exact science. There is often a “note behind the note” - meaning the reader / producer is telling us something about the script that doesn’t seem to have merit, but when we take a closer look, we find that they are identifying the symptom of an issue, and it’s up to us to find the cause. It took my wife and me a couple of years to figure this out.

Then, incorporating feedback is even harder. First, you have your ego to deal with. And then, when it comes to art (which includes business, writing, etc.), there is no one way to do something. There are multiple ways that could work, and you have to find which way works best for you.

Most people don’t really want constructive feedback. They just want to be told their work is great. Don’t be one of those people. As I posted on Twitter: honest, constructive, specific feedback from someone who has done it is the highest form of praise.

If you incorporate quality feedback intelligently and consistently without letting your ego get in the way, you will improve faster than you thought possible.

Be Patient And Keep Building. It Takes Time To Find Your fans.

Building a brand with your work takes years, not months. So be patient. My wife and I have written a short-form series, two TV pilots, a feature screenplay, and are working on our second movie script. Only now are we starting to get traction after two years of consistent writing.

The longer you stick around in the same industry, connecting with the same people, the easier it becomes to build fans.

As Naval says in The Almanack of Naval Ravikant:

“It takes a long time for markets to adopt products. It takes time for people to get comfortable working with each other. It takes time for great products to emerge as you polish away, polish away, polish away. Impatience with actions, patience with results. As Nivi said, inspiration is perishable. When you have inspiration, act on it right then and there.”

So go make something, publish it, use feedback to make it better, and keep creating. Over the long term, you’ll build a brand for yourself and your work that most people just don’t have the patience to build.

Keep going.

Disclaimer: No part of this article was written by ChatGPT.

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ARTICLE SOURCES

Jorgenson, Eric. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Magrathea Publishing. Kindle Edition.