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People don't follow somebody just because they've got a cool vibe.

Yeah, sure, that helps, but it's not the reason why people follow. They follow you because they actually do want this type of content to show up again.

I'm actually going to use myself as an example of who gets this wrong, because I got this wrong.

For the past 3 months, I have been regularly posting just excerpts, just aesthetic posts, nothing to do with me. It has been faceless content.

The numbers really don't lie. I created and posted 29 reels. The median views on these reels was 146. Median reel views by month: 222 in August, 145 in September, and 69 in October.

About half of all of my views came from people who don't follow me. I also had 28 carousels. Zero follows were credited to any of them.

You're being plunged into this very specific aesthetic and mood and pace and vibe, but there is nothing for the viewer or listener or reader or whatever to grab onto right away.

They don't know what this is: is it a book or a story? Did I write it, or was this not written by somebody? Was this some AI shit?

There's literally nothing of me other than my writing on there.

It becomes more of a portfolio, and that's not really how you get a following. You're becoming a broadcast, and you're not actually really giving people anything to hold on to or engage with at all.

In my first month of doing it, I was establishing a new pattern, and I thought that I was doing the right thing.

You can think that you're doing nothing wrong, which is different from doing everything right, and still be making mistakes and still fucking up.

There's a sweet spot between these four things: low effort, low cost, high yield, high engagement. I had three of the four down. That one specific thing that I didn't have figured out was the moving-the-needle part.

There's this shitty feeling where you've done all the work and it isn't doing anything.

That's not to say that you have to get rid of your work, stop sharing your work, or stop posting about what it is that your creative endeavor is at all. Instead, offer people a really, really quick way into and about who you are.

The reason why you have to consider strangers when you're doing your content is because it should work for even that audience. If it works for them, then even the people that know you very well, they're not going to hold it against you. People that don't know you at all, they can be brought along for the ride.

Do you have to know what's going on with a band like Angine de Poitrine? Not necessarily. In fact, you're probably going to go, "What the fuck is going on here?" That's the point, and the point is in the playing itself.

Because their look is dialed in, clearly this is a performance. This isn't just a couple people in a jam space somewhere.

I'm not saying that you have to add text or add captions or add anything. Just take a second to consider: if there's someone coming into this completely cold, does this tell enough? Does this do enough on its own? Does this stand up on its own?

The lesson is: you have to give somebody something, some understanding, some indicator of what this is. Seriously, what is this? Who are you? What are you doing here?

There is no final answer. There are just iterations upon iterations upon iterations.

Let's get into it.

MAKE // BREAK: John Penman on Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome and Doing It Anyway

Armada Lodge drummer John Penman on taking a deliberate pay cut to buy back brain space, whiteboard systems, letting ad data pick your song's best section, anxiety as the real friction, and the cold email that made this episode exist.

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