Audience First: What It Means to Be a Professional Creator

I’m a creator. Not a marketer.

My priority is creating stuff that inspires people:

Blogposts, videos, podcasts, newsletters, books, photography.

My people come first.

For marketers, most startup founders and makers, products and monetization come first. Audience second.

There were times where I was a little confused when it came to my identity, but eventually it became very clear:

I’m in this to create and genuinely connect with people.

Ever since I started on the route of online entrepreneurship, I have been called to share my ideas, my learnings, my experience. I was driven to help people through my writing and visual content.

All of that for free.

But I don’t even think about it that way. I don’t feel like I am giving away anything for free. I love putting my ideas out into the world.

Monetization comes second.

I am motivated by my humble desire – my hunger – to write, to make and to create content and things that provide value and inspiration.

I am driven by the desire to share my message openly and freely in public.

Putting my creations and ideas behind a paywall would limit my intention.

This doesn’t mean I have been a starving creator. Not at all. I have created paid offerings, products and services.

I have consistently managed to make a good income while always putting my audience first. For all of my eight of doing this.

As a creator, my most valuable currency is community, connection and trust.

I never created a paid offering before having an audience that I knew would appreciate it and be willing to engage in a financial exchange.

In this way, I can truly get to know my audience and find out what they really need. Then, I create an offering that they are willing to pay me for, because they trust that it will be valuable. This is trust that I have built up in the form of high-quality content, by engaging with them and by showing them I care.

Also, an audience-first creator approach means I can share my process of creating an offering. I can get people interested in what I will offer way before I launch.

My advice is for any human being is:

Start a blog, a YouTube channel, a podcast and/or a newsletter.

Share what you are passionate about.

If you are not passionate about something yet, share what you are curious about.

It doesn’t matter if you start broad and with lots of different things. Just start sharing.

Start connecting with people who are curious or passionate about similar things on Twitter or Instagram. Start conversations. Engage with other creators.

In the process, the clarity will come. You will forge a path that you couldn’t envision before you started sharing. The answers will appear as you put yourself out there.

And as you share more – first just to yourself, then to three people, then to 20, then to 100, then to more – you start building a community. You assemble people who are curious about similar things as you. As you consistently share your ideas with them and provide value, you build trust. You build expertise. You really get to know the people that follow what you share. You ask them questions. You collect the answers and eventually, you are ready to make them an offer, for which they will happily pay you.

You take the guess-work out of monetization. You don’t have to throw twenty pancakes at a wall to see which pancake sticks. You don’t have to deal with debilitating fears of failure and not knowing if the work you put into a product, a course, a book, a program is even worth it. You will know.

You don’t have to quit your job or anything else to start building an audience around your ideas. You can start today.

Audience first – or actually I want to call it “community first” – is the most fulfilling way to build a sustainable business.

The old-school way of starting a business is to create a product and then find people to buy it. This is really backward and involves a lot of risks.

Just look at the startup world: so much money is thrown out the window because founders build products that, in the end, people don’t really need or want. So many makers don’t properly validate their ideas with enough people before putting in a ton of time and/or money to build the thing.

The best way to validate an idea for a product or offering is to share you ideas, passions and learnings with the world and build a community around them. 

Or alternately, if you think you already have an epic idea for a product:

Plan you product and start building a community at the same time.

I know the audience-first approach to build a business has many critics. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it’s not guaranteed to be successful. Yes, it keeps some people from actually asking for money at some point.

But the “audience-first creator” approach is about way more than simple measures of outward success and extrinsic values.

It’s not just about the outcome. And it never should be.

It’s just as much about your learnings as a creator, as well as about who you become in the process.

And: Putting your ideas in writing or into videos will clarify your thinking. That in itself is HUGE.

And: It will help you connect with other awesome people and you will make some great friends (like I have). 

And: You will open yourself up for unknown opportunities to come your way. In my case: book deals, speaking gigs and other collaborations.

If your only valued goal and outcome is number of sales and revenue generated, then no, the audience-first approach is not your path. 

But I like to argue that there is more to business and entrepreneurship than that anyway.

I call for a more holistic approach, one that is more meaningful and fulfilling in the long run.

Being a creator and putting audience-building around my ideas first has been the most fulfilling journey for me. One that has been lucrative, profitable and yes, very successful.

But it’s the process that I am in love with, not the outcome or goal.

The outcome is a byproduct, the icing on the cake.

The real measure of success for me is how much joy I have in creating, how passionately people engage with my ideas and how deeply I connect with others through my work.

Hi, I’m Conni and I’m a creator.