Now that we are engaged in some work, we need to give it our best shot and start sharing it with people. Hiding our work is not humility. Before the information age, there was no way of sharing our work until it was done. We had to make all the decisions do the work and hope for the best. Feedback, if any, came afterward.
Often, some of our work does not see the light of day because we felt it was either not good enough or no one might be interested. Some gatekeepers decide if our work is good enough – publishers, music and movie producers, art curators, etc. Those gates have been dismantled, and barriers removed.
My key learning from this chapter is to do a good job to the best of our ability and share as we go along. There are tons of benefits to sharing your work. By sharing your work, people know what you are up to. You get feedback in real-time. This feedback helps you to do a better job of producing what your audience wants. By implementing comments from the audience, the audience also participates in creating the work.
You get to discover your audience while the work is ongoing. This means you have an audience waiting for your work when it is finished, as opposed to looking for an audience for your finished work.
By sharing your work, you get to discover people who like your work and people who do similar work. This creates an opportunity for friendships and collaborations that result in greater work. It also opens up opportunities you may not have been aware of. You have no idea who may get to see your work and what may come out of it.
Your work needs an audience, and the best way to put yourself out there is to share your work. The best way to be discovered is to share what you’ve got. What most folks do on social media is to share stuff that is not related to their work. Since you are already sharing, why not focus on sharing your work? I have come across a lot of professionals sharing their work on YouTube, garnering hundreds of thousands of followers as they educate, answer questions, create merchandise, and make additional streams of income.
Your work is not for you, neither is it about you. The earlier you share your work, the earlier you get to serve.
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