If you wonder why there is so much sameness in marketing and business online, it’s probably because of this:
“Emphasis is placed on doing safer projects that mimic proven money-makers just to keep something – anything! – moving through the pipeline.”
That’s Ed Catmull, my best friend 😉and one of the founders of Pixar animation. He’s talking about feeding the beast. It’s what can happen when you reach success: your responsibilities, expenses, deliverables grow, which puts you in an endless cycle of doing and creating more to keep the cycle going.
With success comes greater risk-aversion. You don’t want to screw up what you already have, plus there are more people watching and depending on you now. It seems much harder to do something new and unproven when you have a reputation at risk (it’s actually NOT harder, but it seems harder).
So you (consciously or not) start playing safe, playing small. You repeat what’s proven to work – by your own experience or others’ – whether that be Facebook Ads, emails emails emails, webinars, an online course, launching a podcast, holding the same event every year, and more. Hence all the mimicry online.
It gets boring, and it stops working after a while, but at least it’s not scary!
Because if you DIDN’T do safe and proven to make money… people might hate it. People might hate you! You might lose money. Your reputation might go down the toilet. It might be a “waste of time” (whatever that means). It might not “work” (what does that mean?). You might be publicly embarrassed.
(Man, we are afraid of everything!)
This phenomenon is one of the (many) reasons I’m doing this 100 Blog Posts in 100 Days experiment. Because you know what’s proven? Doing market and SEO research. Designing a content plan around long-tail keywords. Writing long articles using those and related keywords with headings, diverse formatting, optimized images, and an email optin. This is proven to bring traffic to your website and build your email list, and everybody does it.
So guess what I’m not doing? Market and SEO research, designing a content plan around long-tail keywords, and writing long articles using those and related keywords with well-organized headings, diverse formatting, optimized images, and an email optin. #SorryNotSorry
Would I have the courage to try this if I had more followers? (Current count is 63, which hasn’t changed since 2018.) Will I have the courage to keep doing what I’m excited about, what challenges and scares me, what’s DIFFERENT and unproven, when I have more followers??
