Don’t go it alone creatively

1. Slow Growth Builds Community

My second-to-last video is two months old and blew past all of my other videos views-wise. Like, it’s good, and people say I’m “killing it” but it always makes me anxious when videos move beyond the community we’ve built. I have to give up on comments for my own sanity. The idea of virality makes me very anxious.

I don’t want to talk about YouTube, but it’s remarkable how, looking at the data, a video that does well doesn’t necessarily contribute to community growth. When you speak honestly from expertise and personal passion, that’s when things happen. Not when you chase virality and other people’s ideas of a good video.

Keep that focus, just do it more often… Jesse.

2. Don’t go it alone

I understand how to do work. The macro sense of doing the thing (even if i’m slow/intermittent!)

The micro putting-in-the-work catches me. And it’s great when someone you trust can point out a major blind spot. …like someone did for me this year. They (rightfully!) detected an bit of creative despair. They suggested community… building my own “scenius”. And because of where I choose to live, this isn’t going to happen naturally.

Kevin Kelly has a great blog post about the idea of a “Scenius”. You know the big ones: The Inklings, the Impressionists, The Lost Generation, The Factory, The New Hollywood directors. Years ago I was envious of an acquaintance’s creative social group housed in a big, open Toronto loft. Many from this group have done very well.

I homeschooled, never felt comfortable in a group setting, and while I was building a creative career was also busy with a young family. I didn’t realise that find your people starts with a verb and should have learned from another Canadian stuck in a small town – Anne of Green Gables – and her obsession with finding “kindred spirits”.

Someone had to be the first at that Parisian table. It probably wasn’t Hemmingway.

The verb of it catches me. I’ve found myself in groups I didn’t belong. Where people needed something from each other more than they supported each other. I thought I was better on my own. I wasn’t. I had to “find”. And also needed to know that community doesn’t have to conflict with my personal creative act. I don’t have to (gag) “collab” if I don’t want to.

3. My own Scenius

That advice pushed me to search out and meet with a group of people:

1. We meet monthly. (Virtually)

2. It’s a group of creatives with a diverse skill set. (We over index on filmmaking experience).

3. We’re in similar places of growth, using YouTube as a rough benchmark. There is no-one with outsized influence/fame and no beginners. We’re a group walking forward… possibly stumbling forward together.

4. Everyone comes with a “Rose/Thorn/Bud”. I should make the speaker hold a rose while speaking.

5. We verbally share the what we want to achieve by the next meeting.

With the exception of one international member we met up in person at a camera trade show this week. If you know me, you know I have a love-hate relationship with The Gear™. It made me think about how we unfortunately needed a corporate catalyst to get together physically. BOO. I kinda felt like a lonely suburban housewife using an MLM to gather friends and neighbors. Next time it’ll be at a pub.

Whatever the catalyst, especially in a post-covid, fragmented, world... Converse with people. Peers, not people you look way up to. Meet in real life. Encourage each other to grow and be accountable. Do it on a schedule. Quietly audition by cherry picking someone interesting for a virtual, as they call it in business school, “coffee chat”… Fight every natural urge to go it alone and create your scenius.

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