Use This Iron Clad Rule Before You Post Each Piece of Content
Don't let faulty assumptions ruin your career
“Post and assume nobody will see it.” - Alex Hormozi
That’s the rule.
Stop letting your expectations and need to achieve a certain outcome keep you from doing the work it takes to get those outcomes.
As a general rule of thumb, neediness repels success.
When you’re needy, it means you’re allowing the results to dictate how you feel about yourself, so your self-perception is no longer under control.
When you need your content to do well, you will either avoid posting it often enough because you’re afraid of flopping or you will try too hard to make your content go viral and it’ll be laced with over the top gimmicks and hooks.
The answer for how to succeed as a content creator is somewhere in the middle.
Of course, you’re going to do your best to create good content with elements baked in that will help it spread.
Yes, you want to get views and a lack of views can be a sign that your content isn’t good enough.
But you’ll only be able to know that if you’ve created enough content to know what’s good and what isn’t.
The “Post and assume nobody will see it,” mantra will help you get rid of a lot of the obstacles that get in the way of building a successful creative career.
It’ll also lead to several pleasant surprises.
You’re Not a Fortune Teller
If you’ve been creating content for a while, you’ll run into each of these scenarios.
You’ll spend tons of time, energy, and effort into making damn sure your content will go viral.
Your post has the perfect headline
The introduction hook is flawless
You used 97 different persuasion techniques throughout
And it either gets a lukewarm response or just flops altogether.
Then, you’ll have a piece of content you’re not thrilled about at all. You consider scrapping it and not publishing it, but you decide to do it anyway because…what’s the worst that could happen?
It goes viral.
You have no idea why anyone likes that shitty piece of content you just created, but they love it.
This teaches you an important lesson about creating content.
Nobody can predict whether or not something will go viral. If they could predict it, then nothing would go viral because everything would go viral.
You can increase the odds of going viral, but you can’t guarantee it, so you’re putting too much pressure on yourself by trying to create the perfect piece of content.
This is why “post and assume nobody will see it” works so well. Some of your best stuff will come from just being your natural self without trying too hard to impress people.
You’ll miss the mark if you’re trying to force a result. This is what happens to creators who go viral early on. They get a huge dopamine spike and chase that high forever.
They don’t know why they went viral to begin with so their efforts to replicate it are in vein and now they’re disappointed when their content gets average results because they’re mentally anchored to that viral hit.
There’s a phrase for people who try too hard to impress others. They’re called “try hards, the type of person who isn’t cool because they are clearly trying to be cool.
Less trying, more doing.
It’s Safe to Make This Assumption When You’re New
When you’re new to creating content, you don’t have to guess whether or not your content will get a bunch of views. It literally just won’t.
As a newb, you have to spend time posting into the void. It’s a part of the process that no creator can avoid.
It’s strange to me to see just how entitled some people are.
I remember once seeing a Medium writer complaining that she wasn’t getting any traction after she had posted…three times.
You should probably keep your expectations at bay for an entire year before you make any sort of sweeping assumptions about your performance.
You should “post and assume nobody will see it” 100 times before you even think to complain:
100 blog posts
100 YouTube videos
100 days of posting on twitter
100 podcast episodes
100 TikToks
Your primary objective if you’re a new content creator is to create content. You should have no other goals at the forefront of your mind than to get the job done.
Yes, you will achieve milestones along the way. You will have spikes in your views.
When you do get them, you’ll enjoy them, because they’ll be pleasant surprises instead of expectations.
Don’t Let the Hype Train Throw You Off Tracl
Speaking of expectations, you have to keep the content creation/make money online space from warping your expectations.
You see all the numbers other people are putting up and you decide to judge yourself against those numbers even though that makes zero sense.
If someone is getting way more views than you, chances are:
They’ve been doing it for a really long-time
They spent time building a network on that platform
They’ve iterated a bunch along the way
If you haven’t done any of the above, it makes no sense to stack yourself up against this person.
It makes no sense to stack yourself up against anyone other than past versions of yourself.
Don’t let the hype train fool you.
There are a lot of people making the process of successfully creating content seem a lot easier than it really is.
Which is why you have people jumping onto platforms with unrealistic expectations and making bold proclamations they have no business making, like that guy who had a few hundred Twitter followers posting a thread about how to get 100k followers.
It’s getting out of hand.
You’re made to think that all you have to do is hop on a platform and start posting, especially if the platform is trending and getting a bunch of organic traffic.
For a while, people assumed you could post videos of yourself doing anything in TikTok and go viral. Those warped assumptions caused lots of people to quit when they got 57 views on their video instead of 5.7 million.
LinkedIn is the new hot trending platform for writers to get organic reach, yet several successful LinkedIn creators will tell you they posted for months without getting traction.
In general, social media is a place of overhyped claims and unrealistic assumptions.
Creators who win big have a tendency to sanitize and romanticize their stories looking backward.
Hell, half the time I wonder if I make the process of building a writing career sound easier than is was.
You can build a huge audience over time.
There’s nothing wrong with having that as a goal, I do, but you have to simmer down a bit in the beginning and do the actual work.
Your expectations can fuel your success, but if you’re not careful, they’ll keep you from doing what it takes to win.
Links to Cool Stuff You Might Enjoy
Watch this webinar replay I co-hosted with Self-Publishing School to learn how to write a best-selling book
Take my free 5-day course that teaches you how to make a living writing on Medium
Buy my best-selling book - Real Help: An Honest Guide to Self-Improvement
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It's so true, Ayo. Plus a hundred other factors. Like, never fails that we launch some piece we have high hopes for when the news cycle goes crazy with some big story. It's a crapshoot every single time. The biggest mistake people make is feeling rejected when a piece doesn't fly. It happens all the time. To all of us. Well said. :)