Everyone has a favorite meal, something special that you crave or maybe it’s the ambience of the restaurant, the memories it brings to mind, the flavors, the smells or the textures. Now no matter what that meal is you wouldn’t eat it every day and it would be quite unusual if everyone you knew had the same favorite meal. We all like variety and we all like different aromas, spices and culinary combinations.
So if that’s the case why do so many authors and thought leaders only offer one dish to their followers? Well there are a lot of reasons:
1) The fallacy of thinking “everyone’s like me”.
2) Laziness
3) Uncertainty
4) Lack of understanding of the markets you serve.
Let’s break that down a little further. What I mean by the fallacy of thinking “everyone’s like me” is that if you are an avid reader, and you wrote a great book than you’d probably assume that if people want to get exposed to your work you’ve done your job. But what about folks that might only read short articles, or others that might want a video, a tool, a workbook? You’ve put an unintended obstacle in front of them that doesn’t serve you or your followers well.
Laziness could mean a lot of things from the obvious definition but what I’m referring to is that it can be a significant effort to convert your content into different modalities and frankly it might not be something you enjoy doing or know how to do effectively. Uncertainty refers to feeling overwhelmed and avoiding taking action because it seems like such a massive undertaken that you’re in essence frozen. Twitter? A Blog? An Index,? A Workshop? There are almost infinite things you can do with your content but where do you start? And why do you choose to start on one project and postpone yet another? Do you have the criteria you need to be able to make those decisions?
A lack of understanding of your market is another reason. You may be working diligently to convert your work into something that is very high quality but simply not something that resonates with your market place.
So what’s the answer, I think a pasta machine is a good analogy. Your content (the raw pasta) can be a lot of things, plain old spaghetti, gourmet ravioli, rigatoni, fussili whatever satisfies the appetite of your clients. You may not have the right attachments to create the perfect pasta and you may not even want to operate the pasta maker. If that’s the case find someone who is that person (or persons) for you and let them be your chef. You need to have your work in the right format for the right audience in the right quantities in order to leverage it properly.
Peter Winick has over twenty years of experience and has worked with a variety of thought leaders. In addition, he has built and managed several consulting and professional development organizations.
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