Ever get that feeling where you feel so enthused about a billion prospective projects but end up flaking on every single one because they’d never be good enough anyway?
Me, too.
Every so often I get this drive to make something weird/potentially fantastic, but so many of those incubating ideas have been prematurely archived because I’ve always been scared to disappoint myself, more than anyone, with the output.
So I never start.
In the age of multi-hyphenates, it is definitely a struggle to produce anything, let alone stand out. The predominating narrative has always been, “Is the world not filled with enough noise? Why add to that?”
But because it has always been my mantra to be defined by what I produce more than what I consume, I have made a personal commitment to constantly create. And on good days, I get strong enough to overcome the insecurity of making anything — this is one of those days.
So here’s a concept for you, oh frustrated artist/creator/writer — 1,000 TRUE FANS.
A Thousand Is All You Need.
“To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.”
This is a piece written by Kevin Kelly on how you don’t need to be a superstar in order to make a living doing what you love. You only need — yep, you guessed it — 1,000 true fans.
True fans are those who would pay for anything you make, write, sing, produce. 1,000 of those superfans would be enough for anyone to make a living out of doing what they love. You don’t need a million, only a thousand true fans; and that’s it.
How inspiring is that?
(In the article, he then goes on to explain how to relate to the 1,000 fans, how this is feasible in the long run, etc. It gets very technical and road map-y as it was really meant to be a marketing article. I’ll reference it below if you want to read more on it.)
Now, I’m not telling you to quit your job and risk becoming a starving artist. I just want to put things into perspective.
Just begin.
Scaling the concept for personal (and non-profit!) creation would mean to just begin.
Taking that first step towards starting your dream project doesn’t have to be a big deal. Nobody even has to know about it. The main point here is that you put your idea to life, and the mere act of putting it out there is a good reason in itself to make anything. It just has to come from you, that’s the bare minimum. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t need to have the approval of your imagined fanbase to create.
Finally setting it up makes it that much more improvable, buildable,and most importantly, real.
It takes a village.
Now that it’s out there, growing it all starts with community. It really does take a village to build or raise anything. Not only does this apply to children but to ideas, as well.
Your initial network would be your family and your close circle of friends, and then it ripples out from there. You’d be surprised at how many people would support and encourage you, even those you aren’t close to — but of course you wouldn’t ever know that if you didn’t start at all.
I have personally experienced this phenomenon. I usually post work out of the natural impulse to share. It doesn’t matter if anyone finds it or not, what matters to me is that it’s out there — that in itself is fulfillment enough. But once in a while, I would get a message about how a friend or even random people I didn’t know found my work nice or inspiring! This is obviously a huge win for me, that someone actually took the time to look at the thing I made (and liked it!); but that’s just extra sweet icing on the cake!
Applying the idea of 1,000 true fans in this scenario — I didn’t need any fan to start, the act of producing something is enough for me to make a “living”. In this case, that’s making my soul happy that an idea made it out of my mindpit alive. 😊
Scale Up!
With this fundamental idea, you can now scale up to whatever your goal is for your work — be it simply mustering enough courage to share your work or actually make a full-blown living out of it, start and just do it.
“The takeaway: 1,000 true fans is an alternative path to success other than stardom. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans. On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you’ll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It’s a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.”
It was really nice to come across this concept because Kelly brought the seemingly daunting idea of making a living out of your creative passion down to earth. He really put things into perspective by helping the reader see that, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to earn a living as an artist, you only needed 1,000 (vs. say, a million) true fans.
So stop seeing that project you’ve been putting off as an intimidating mammoth, they say it’s possible to eat a whole elephant by cutting it into chunks, after all.
Reference, as promised:
