3 Reasons Your Audience Would Ignore Your Ideas
Consider the mighty hamster.
There he sits upon his sturdy wheel, running and running and running, pausing only to nibble at his water bottle before recommitting himself to his noble work.
Lately, this image has been popping to mind somewhere between five and 500 times a day. That's because for two years my work has explored ideas like resonance, storytelling, and the phrase I share most often as a rally cry: "Don't be the best. Be their favorite." But while I've made plenty of headway in developing my ideas (here's my system, visualized) the entire time, I've lacked one overarching enemy to the story.
Sure, I've found plenty of areas of tension, plenty of issues raised to me by others trying to do the hard work of evolving from smart expert to influential voice, but I never identified THE thing I want to attack.
(Pause for effect... pause for effect... pause for effect...)
Until now.
(Dramatic music plays.)
The content hamster wheel.
THAT is the enemy. If I'm a success, you won't feel trapped on that hamster wheel, stuck producing commodity content, as you become "yet another" instead of The Only. I want to help you compete on the impact of your work, not the volume.
So we begin once more where we began before:
Consider the mighty expert.
There she sits upon her sturdy keyboard, creating and creating and creating, pausing only to nibble at some advice content before recommitting herself to her noble work.
You and I aren't creators in the Mr. Beast sense. We're educators. Teachers. Leaders. We are executives, marketers, entrepreneurs, freelancers, coaches -- professionals of many kinds. The good news is, we offer substance to our audience in a world of increasing hype. What we know is worthy. But way too often, what we say doesn't make that clear. Because what we say (and how we say it) sounds eerily similar to everyone else in our space.
That's commodity content, and that's a product of this endless cycle of producing generalized expertise. We sit there upon our trusty wheels, spinning and spinning and spinning ... ultimately going nowhere. That type of work doesn't really work.
It's easy to feel stuck.
Stuck in the commodity cage.
Now consider this:
You and I are both in the business of change. We use our words to inspire action in others -- action which we need to see results. When they take an action, they experience the before and the after. The movement between those two things represents some kind of transformation. "Don't be the best, be their favorite" is my tightest articulation of that before/after moment. Stop running around trying to be some kind of objective "right" pick and learn to resonate emotionally, becoming something others pick and stick with -- so passionately, that you're among the few things that feel irreplaceable to them. We call those things our favorites.
Before and after. That's the work you and I have chosen. We identify the problems and we solve them. We look at the status quo, decide it's not good enough, and we move them somewhere better. We are in the change business.
But in my case, while I might have identified a problem my audience wants solved (the content hamster wheel and the resulting, commodified work), whatever solution I propose needs to walk a fine line for others to adopt it.
If you say me, "I'm with you, Jay, but how do I escape the commodity cage exactly?", I face a choice. I can sell you a fantasy, or I can give you something you can actually apply to your current reality.
This is tricky, because it's your current reality which contains or even causes the problems I want to solve. It's so tempting to say, "Change it all! Make the leap! Rip the bandaid!"
But it turns, if you want others to adopt your ideas and actually take an action, there are just some things you can't ask of them.
I've identified three.
* * *
What We Can't Ask of Others
If you want others to adopt your ideas (and all the benefits that come after, like sales, referrals, fans, and influence), then whatever change you're asking of others can't also require them to do any of these three things:
Find extra resources
Change underlying goals
Convince influential stakeholders
As we've established, I want you to get off the content hamster wheel. I want you to produce higher-impact content instead -- things that are more valuable (because they're more insightful) and more original (because they're more personal to you). But if my prescribed change to achieve all that sounds like "craft narrative content," then my message seems destined to fail.
Why?
Because whether in truth or merely in perception, that proposed change immediately makes others think they need to navigate those three scary things:
Find extra resources. ("To craft narratives, I need to find ways to source, develop, draft, and produce an entirely new type of highly intricate, complex content compared to my usual how-tos, lists, and advice-based posts. That's just for one piece, too. Now I need the skills and systems required to become narrative-style communicators, not just advice-givers.")
Change underlying goals. ("To craft narratives, I guess I need to stop interviewing the biggest industry names on my podcast and become This American Life? Do I stop thinking about SEO-focused content? Stop answering customer questions in how-to posts?")
Convince influential stakeholders. ("To craft narratives, I need to get approval from my boss to change the fundamental type of content we create as a brand, or at least get my boss to see value in narratives over that other, usual stuff.")
The premise for my platform, i.e. the assertion I make to the world to change things for the better, can NOT be, "To get off the hamster wheel and stop creating commodity content, craft narratives instead." Even if I want you to arrive there eventually, I can't start there. (Disclaimer: That is NOT where I want you to go, unless that's the work you aspire to do.)
No, instead, I need to consider the mighty hamster once more. There's just enough time, energy, or clarity for the hamster to nibble at that water bottle to replenish itself before returning to its work. That's my window. That's where my proposed change or action needs to fit if I want my ideas to get traction.
I can't say, "drink the whole bottle at once" (that requires more time) or "just leave your cage entirely" (that requires convincing an influential stakeholder).
(Side note: I've been working hard to scrub the word "just" from my vocabulary, because "just" is the death of any good idea. Saying "just do X" means you've ignored bias, privilege, and existing inertia.)
If I want others to adopt my ideas and put them into action, I need to somehow fit into their existing reality -- a sort of Trojan horse that contains the potential for larger change to occur over time. In my metaphor, that's like putting a different kind of liquid into the water bottle or giving that poor hamster some gloves for his wittle paws. (D'aww...)
Effective ideas can fit inside their existing norms to help them work towards a new normal. It can't ask them to change their current norms all at once.
As a result, instead of proposing you craft narratives to escape the commodity cage, I preach to the world the power of something else:
Small stories with big meaning.
In any of the pieces you already create, consider a moment (maybe the intro) where you pull from your own personal, lived experiences, then use that to arrive at a valuable insight to empower your audience. Here's the structure of a small story with big meaning:
"This happened..." (a personal moment or memory)
"Which made me realize..." (an idea sparked by that)
"That's the thing about..." (the topic they want to know about + the insight they need to hear from you)
For example, imagine you want to teach your audience to try new things and take more risks. To do that, you COULD continue producing commodified advice content. In doing so, you'd sound like the Nike slogan: "Just do it."
Maybe you open your next article like this:
"Studies show that more often than not, we aren't really afraid of the new thing but rather we're afraid of the unknown. So stop researching, stop following all those experts, stop outsourcing or avoiding the thing ... and just do it."
That's not useless stuff, but that's also not high-impact enough to stand out or resonate all that easily. Anyone speaking about that same topic could have written that (it's pretty generalized advice and not personal to you), and it's pretty low-value (it hands out some facts, but it lacks any real insight). In other words, commodity content informs people, but our job is to empower them. That requires an insight, not yet-more "information."
So, in waltzes me, asking you to change. Stop your wheel-spinning ways and tell more effective stories! But wait, know this: I'm not asking you to craft narratives. Kudos if you do, but here's what I really want you to do:
Share small stories with big meaning.
With that change in mind, you can rewrite the same advice-based article to help others try new things, and your work wouldn't feel quite so commodified and gray, because instead, you said it like this:
[This happened...] "For years, I was afraid to make espresso in my own home. I'm Italian! It was embarrassing. I'd ask my wife to make me one, or I'd research all the techniques -- often before deciding to avoid doing it entirely. Today, however, I make espresso every day. So what changed? I made it once."
[Which made me realize...] "That made me realize, I wasted a ton of time agonizing over this. It's pretty easy to make espresso! Even when I messed up, it was easy to fix it, or it made my research a lot more productive, since I could quickly find an answer online, then get back to it."
[That's the thing about... the topic + the insight] "That's the thing about trying new things. What we fear isn't usually the task but rather the unknown. So if that's true, we shouldn't do all this research or avoid the thing entirely. We should move quicker to make the unknown, known. Try it first, then proceed.")
Thus, we can share small stories with big meaning to write and speak with greater impact and NOT need to (1) add resources, (2) change goals, (3) convince stakeholders.
* * *
THAT idea (share small stories with big meaning) is more likely to spark action in others because it doesn't require any of those three difficult changes. I'm more likely to resonate -- and my work is more likely to work -- because it doesn't ask of you anything that feels out of reach to do.
In your work, I know you've done a hard thing. You're an expert. A practitioner. A person with substance. But this world is drowning in so much hype-filled nonsense and so many competing ideas (even when considering just the good ones), your audience doesn't know who to trust. I think they should trust YOU and adopt YOUR ideas, but for that to happen, you have to make the change you prescribe feel attainable.
Don't overpromise something that isn't real or possible. ("10x your results in 10 days by making this 1 change." Don't do that, of course.) But by acknowledging their status quo, meeting them in their reality, you can give them something that fits INTO that norm to help them build their way to something better.
Ask yourself: Am I proposing a solution they can implement, or does my solution only create new problems?
It's a delicate dance, but that's the work of a leader.
MY goal is to change YOUR work for the better. I want you to get off the hamster wheel, escape the commodity cage, and produce higher-impact work. YOUR goal is to change THEIR world somehow, too.
But for either of us to succeed, we have to recognize what we're really asking of others.
Personally, I want you to create content which is more valuable and more original, but to do that, I know I can't require you to magically find more resources or shift your goals entirely or convince everyone around you to get on board before anything better can happen. I need to give you something small, something you can incorporate into your ongoing work right now.
Because that's how change happens. Not at all once. Drip by tiny drip.
So now you know my mission. I want you to make things that matter.
You know my approach, too. Help experts become storytellers.
As for my mantra? Well, that sounds a little bit different, but it only makes sense now that you've read this far. In the end, there's only one change I want to inspire in this world of creative work.
Free the hamsters.