Hellooooooo readers!

Last week I asked you fine folks if I should keep the personal intro, or skip and jump right into the story. Welp, keeping the intro has won 75% to 25%, but don’t you worry, my meat and potatoes people. I’m going to keep em short and sweet going forward, I heard you loud and clear.

And for my readers who love my yap (d’awww y’all are too sweet), I’ll be sure to drop you a little blurb on most issues, but today is a bit of a long one so we’re jumping right in!

-Luke

Frustrations and Realizations

I’ve been in a frustrating situation lately.

I’m learning that it’s not enough to just build something great. You also have to convince people to try it.

Like many founders and creators before me, I thought that making something useful, something that worked, something that people actually love, would be the hard part. But what I’m realizing is, the hard part is getting people to notice it exists in the first place.

That’s where I’m at with my startup as of recently. The users we do have? They’re all-in. They love the results. They want more. But getting new people in the door? That’s where the pain comes.

And this isn’t just a founder thing. It constantly has shown up in my creative work, too.

You write something vulnerable. You ideate something that you think is going to land with readers. And then it flops. Quietly. Like it never mattered in the first place.

It’s not that the work isn’t good, seriously, the amount of incredible work from others that have flopped is insane. Talent is out there, incredible products exist in the darkness. It’s not about how good something is.

It’s that attention is expensive, and people don’t just simply hand it out.

That’s what makes this part so exhausting. You’re trying to be loud in a room where everyone’s already shouting. And most of them are waving clickbait signs, showing you how much money they have, or throwing glitter in the air.

But if you believe in what you’re building, whether it’s a product or a piece of content, then your real job isn’t just to make it great. It’s to make it seen.

That might mean repeating yourself more than you want to, or trying formats you swore you’d never touch, or promoting the same thing over and over until you’re sick of your own pitch (anyone else?).

Because when it finally lands with someone, and they see the true value, it feels like magic.

They get it, they tell someone else, the thing starts to move.

So if you’re stuck in that weird spot where you know what you’ve made is great but no one’s biting yet, you’re not alone. Seriously there’s hundreds of readers here who likely feel the same way that you do right now.

It sucks. It’s hard. But… that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.

Keep going. Keep showing up. Keep giving it the best shot you can, because if it matters to you, there’s a good chance it’ll matter to someone else too.

Eventually, the silence will break, and when it does? It usually starts with someone saying,

“Wait… this is actually great.”

Hope you enjoyed this week’s post. See you next week ✌️