What if everybody leaves?
It could go to zero.
At the beginning of June I decided to write an email newsletter every single day. Not for a short little test or a thirty day challenge. Just every day. As long as it exists.
Why I’m doing that is a whole separate story that maybe I’ll tell you another day. Because today I want to talk about a fear every creative person has…
Imagine you have some kind established audience. Maybe you are a YouTuber who makes videos about Final Fantasy games and all the little details therein. And you’ve got 25,000 subscribers or something after making videos for the last five years.
Got that in your mind? Great.
Now imagine that you want to do something else. Change up your content. You want to make videos about… indie BOOMER SHOOTERS (doom/hexen/duke nukem/quake1 era first person shooters). And you aren’t going to do so much Final Fantasy JRPG content anymore.
Some of your audience will like it, but a lot of them will be upset and unsubscribe. They don’t want old skool shooter videos. They want Final Fantasy stuff!
Which leads to this fear…
WHAT IF EVERYBODY LEAVES?!
It’s a legit fear. And not a new one either. Musicians have dealt with this kind of thing every time they change up their style a bit.
And people will leave. For sure they will.
But if a creative person gets stuck in the same spot forever, the audience will leave anyway for something new. It’s a catch twenty two. Change is inevitable. You can’t escape it.
Even if you understand this, the fear is still there. It takes courage to forge a new direction anyway.
Which leads back to the intro of this newsletter.
Since I started emailing every day, I’m losing newsletter subscribers. I knew this would happen.
Not everyone wants to read my nonsense on a daily basis. That’s cool. No problem. Go ahead and unsubscribe.
If I want to write this newsletter every day, there is a different and much smaller audience for it. Instead of 1,700ish people subscribed, it might only be 100 or 10 or 1 person who wants to read it.
Maybe everybody WILL leave…
I decided to make this a daily newsletter and there might not be an audience for that at all.
I’m okay with that. I’ll send the emails anyway. It wouldn’t be a daily newsletter if I didn’t.
I refuse to let the fear of an outcome that is out of my control dictate the work I’ve chosen to do. Not because I’m special or courageous or have a super power you don’t.
It’s simply because it’s the work I chose to do.
-Brian