I received an email from Aaron yesterday.
It’s been a while since I heard from him so were were catching up about what he was currently doing.
In it he made a remark to the email I wrote yesterday about having to keep your audience in mind. Here’s (part of) what he said:
===
[…]
Recently, it's been more about finding an audience, what do they want, hooks, positioning, market research SEO with a mixture of focus on basic marketing, game dev, and Etsy (helping my mom 🙂).
It bugs me that I feel like I am making things I want, but not what everyone else wants. One of my motivations is to find out why. My current theory (like you mentioned) is that I am not making things with my audience in mind.
[…]
===
Now I want to clarify something.
By no means did I say, mean, or even hint that you should ‘find an audience’, aka ‘you should let the market dictate what you build’. No. Quite the opposite in fact.
You create what you want. How you want. And when you want it.
You learn about whatever you think might be slightly interesting. You do whatever you think is fun to do. And you create whatever you think looks/sounds/feels cool. That’s pretty much it.
I’m currently reading the biography of George Lucas by Brian Jay Jones. It’s an amazing read and I’d highly recommend you check it out.
But there’s one line in particular that I want to share with you.
When George Lucas’ American Graffiti was just released it was an immediate success. It was his first big hit and made him a very wealthy man. Critics from around the world were calling the film “a work of art”.
And here’s what George Lucas had to say about it:
===
My thing about art is that I don’t like the word ‘art’ because it means pretension and bullshit, and I equate those two directly.
I don’t think of myself as an artist, and I don’t think I ever will… I’m a craftsman. I don’t make a work of art; I make a movie. If it does what I want it to do then somebody else can come along and figure it out.
===
Why am I sharing this?
Because business works the same way. You focus on making stuff you want. Stuff you’re happy with. And stuff you think is cool.
But here’s the thing. You can’t just create stuff you want without paying attention to your audience. Then you’ll get disasters like we talked about yesterday.
So how do combine “create what you think is cool” with “Keep your audience in mind”?
Simple.
Don’t create stuff you think your audience wants. Create stuff you want and package it in such a way that your audience becomes interested in it as well.
Here’s an example:
I love everything email. I enjoy every single second I spend writing emails like this. So naturally I’ll keep writing these emails because I think they’re cool. But I also enjoy reading these types of emails from other people—which sadly, not enough people are doing as of now. Furthermore, I also like sharing and helping other people.
So I made an email course teaching you how to write emails just like this.
But here’s the problem. Just writing emails along might not be interesting enough for my audience. So what does my audience like? What do you like?
Here’s what I know about you:
You like making money. A lot of money. You also enjoy building stuff—you’re a creator after all. And not just any type of creator. A creator whose goal is to build a life of freedom. Where you only have to work a few hours a day and utilize your free time to enjoy your life however you want.
The solution?
A digital course showing you how to get paid (a lot) by writing daily emails like this—which takes less than 20 minutes to do—so you can enjoy the life of freedom you so desire.
And if such a course interests you, then check out my Simple Money Emails course here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME