Show Your Work: A New Way of Operating

In today’s world you need to findable.

Put your work out there while your focused on becoming really good at what you do.

Gain an audience by sharing your work and ideas. You can leverage the audience later.

1. You Don’t Have to Be a Genius

Find a “scenius” – a group of talented people working together

Great ideas are often created by a group of individuals who were supporting each other and stealing ideas from each other.

You become part of a scenius by contributing your work and ideas for them to use.

Always stay an amateur – don’t be afraid to make mistakes, keep learning

“The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others. Find a scenius, pay attention to what others are sharing, and then start taking note of what they’re not sharing. Be on the lookout for voids that you can fill with your own efforts, no matter how bad they are at first. Don’t worry, for now, about how you’ll make money or a career off it.” (p. 16)

“You Can’t Find Your Voice If You Don’t Use It” – Just start sharing.

“…in this day and age, if your work isn’t online, it doesn’t exist”

2. Think Process, Not Product

“Audiences not only want to stumble across great work, but they, too, long to be creative and part of the creative process. By letting go of our egos and sharing our process, we allow for the possibility of people having an ongoing connection with us and our work, which helps us move more of our product.”

“Become a documentarian of what you do. Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook, or speak them into an audio recorder. Keep a scrapbook. Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you.”

Turn your process into something visible that people can see.

3. Share Something Small Everyday

Great bodies of work take a long time to build. Keep contributing to it.

Make a Daily Dispatch to share what your working on today (blog post, tweet, email, instagram, LinkedIn, etc.)

Examples:

• “If you’re in the very early stages, share your influences and what’s inspiring you. If you’re in the middle of executing a project, write about your methods or share works in progress. If you’ve just completed a project, show the final product, share scraps from the cutting-room floor, or write about what you learned. If you have lots of projects out into the world, you can report on how they’re doing—you can tell stories about how people are interacting with your work.”

Caveat: Remember that what you share will be public forever so don’t post anything. However it doesn’t need to be perfect before you post it.

The “SO WHAT?” Test

• Before sharing your work ask if it’s useful or if others will enjoy it. Also make sure you’re comfortable with coworkers and family seeing it

Once you make sharing part of your daily routine, you’ll notice themes and trends emerging in what you share. You’ll find patterns in your flow. When you detect these patterns, you can start gathering these bits and pieces and turn them into something bigger and more substantial.

Build a Website

• Overtime all your blog posts will compile into a great body of work
• Get your own space on the internet where you can share your work

4. Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities

Before sharing your work you can start by sharing things your interesting in – who inspires you, what you’re reading, what social media accounts do you follow, what music do you like, what are your favorite movies, etc.

Make sure you always give credit to people that you’re taking ideas from and being influenced by. Give shout-outs and include hyperlinks.

5. Tell Good Stories

“Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work affects how they value it.”

Become a better story teller

Learn to write

The most important part of a story is its structure

• Emma Coats, a former storyboard artist at Pixar, outlined the basic structure of a fairy tale as a kind of Mad Lib that you can fill in with your own elements: “Once upon a time, there was _____. Every day, _____. One day, _____. Because of that, _____. Because of that, _____. Until finally, _____.”
• “Author John Gardner said the basic plot of nearly all stories is this: “A character wants something, goes after it despite opposition (perhaps including his own doubts), and so arrives at a win, lose, or draw.” I like Gardner’s plot formula because it’s also the shape of most creative work: You get a great idea, you go through the hard work of executing the idea, and then you release the idea out into the world, coming to a win, lose, or draw.”
• Simple formula: There is a problem → work is done to solve the problem → a solution is reached

Pitches: A story with the end chopped off (like if you’re in the middle of a work)

• “A good pitch is set up in three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future. The first act is where you’ve been—what you want, how you came to want it, and what you’ve done so far to get it. The second act is where you are now in your work and how you’ve worked hard and used up most of your resources. The third act is where you’re going, and how exactly the person you’re pitching can help you get there.”

Always keep your audience in mind when publishing your work.

6. Teach What You Know

Teaching someone what you know doesn’t mean they are instantly going to become your competition. It will take them a while to master it and do it themselves. So stop worrying about that.

“The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others. Share your reading list. Point to helpful reference materials. Create some tutorials and post them online. Use pictures, words, and video. Take people step-by-step through part of your process.”

“Teaching people doesn’t subtract value from what you do, it actually adds to it. When you teach someone how to do your work, you are, in effect, generating more interest in your work. People feel closer to your work because you’re letting them in on what you know.”

7. Don’t Turn Into Human Spam

“If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to first be a good citizen of that community. If you’re only pointing to your own stuff online, you’re doing it wrong. You have to be a connector.”

Worry about the quality of people that follow you, not the quantity of people.

Get quality people by posting good content. Not by reading articles about how to get more followers. Don’t waste time trying to get followers instead of getting good at what you do. You will attract people who are interested in the same things as you.

Keep in close contact with “your fellow knuckleballers”. These are the people who have similar interests and missions as you. Meet with them, collaborate with them, and praise them. There won’t be many of them.

8. Learn to Take a Punch

By putting your work out into the world you will be exposed to criticism. The more work you put out and the more popular it becomes, the more criticism it will receive. Don’t let it deter you from continuing to share your work.

Size up who your feedback is coming from

• You want feedback from good people that want you to improve
• You don’t want feedback from trolls (people that are only interested in provoking you and not in improving your work)

9. Sell Out

It’s okay to accept some money for the work you do so that you can continue doing it.

“The easiest way to do this is to simply ask for donations: Put a little virtual tip jar or a donate now button on your website. These links do well with a little bit of human copy, such as “Like this? Buy me a coffee.””

You can use your existing followers to do a fund-raising campaign for you to do some new work.

“Whether you ask for donations, crowdfund, or sell your products or services, asking for money in return for your work is a leap you want to take only when you feel confident that you’re putting work out into the world that you think is truly worth something.”

Keep a mailing list. Always be collecting emails even if you don’t have anything to sell right now.

“I know people who run multimillion-dollar businesses off of their mailing lists. The model is very simple: They give away great stuff on their sites, they collect emails, and then when they have something remarkable to share or sell, they send an email… The people who sign up for your list will be some of your biggest supporters, just by the simple fact they they signed up for the potential to be spammed by you.”

If you achieve success you should help out the people that helped you get there.

10. Stick Around

“The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough. It’s very important not to quit prematurely.”

Just keep showing your work. Once you’ve completed a topic then just move on to the next one.

Don’t be afraid to learn something new and be a beginner again.