Assume That No One Is Coming

There's a story you've been telling yourself.

You might not even realize you're telling it.

It runs so quietly, so deep in the background, that it doesn't feel like a belief.

It feels like common sense. It feels like how things work.

The story goes like this:

If you keep making good work and putting it out there, eventually, someone who matters will notice. And when they notice, things will change.

One day, someone with power is going to find you.

An editor will stumble across your blog. A booking agent will hear your set. A label will see your viral moment. A publisher will read your essay. An investor will catch your post at the right time.

The right person, in the right position, will discover what you’ve been building, and the phone will ring. And when it rings, everything is going to change.

You will get the deal, the audience, and the validation.

You will get the career you’ve been waiting for.

It’s a beautiful story.

Unfortunately for most creatives, it’s also a trap.

The reason this fantasy is so hard to kill is because it occasionally comes true.

Every once in a while, someone does get discovered.

Someone does go viral and land a deal the next week.

Someone does get plucked from obscurity by a person with the power to change their trajectory overnight.

And that person always gets interviewed about it.

They tell the story on podcasts, they write the thread, give the keynote. etc.

So you hear things like:

“I was just doing my thing, putting work out there, and then one day I got this DM...”

The story gets shared and reshared and screenshotted and bookmarked by thousands of people who hear it and think:

“See?! It does happen.”

Here’s what nobody talks about.

For every person who got the call, there are tens of thousands who didn’t.

Those people are still waiting, still posting, still hoping that the next piece of content will be the one that catches the right eye.

They’re not failing because their work is necessarily bad.

They’re failing because their entire strategy is based on being found by someone else.

That’s not a solid strategy.

That’s more similar to a lottery ticket with better branding.

The fantasy isn’t just unlikely or a risky strategy, but actually harmful.

As long as you believe that discovery is coming, you don’t build the thing that would make discovery unnecessary.

Why would you build an email list when a label might sign you next month?

Why would you try to convince someone to buy right now when an investor might fund you next quarter?

Why would you build direct relationships with a small audience when a big break might hand you a massive one overnight?

The fantasy gives you permission to skip the boring work.

The unsexy stuff that doesn’t look impressive on Instagram but is the actual foundation of every independent career that lasts.

And so you wait.

You post content and hope.

You make things and cross your fingers.

You put your work out into the void and pray that someone important is watching.

They’re not.

They are most likely buried in the ocean of many other people just like you putting themselves out there hoping for the same thing.

So what’s the alternative? Is there even one?

The short answer is that there is.

It is slower and less glamorous, but infinitely more reliable.

Build a world where you own your distribution and can stay true to your creativity.

Build a career on your own terms.

This strategy is much more reliable and it works because every piece you own is a piece that nobody can take from you.

A label can drop you. A platform can change its algorithm. A publisher can restructure. An investor can pivot. A gatekeeper can decide that the thing they were excited about last quarter doesn’t fit their strategy this quarter.

If your entire career was built on their platform, their audience, their distribution, you’re starting over. From zero. With nothing.

But if you built the ecosystem yourself, you’re in control.

The email list is yours. The audience relationship is yours. The offer is yours.

None of it depends on someone else’s quarterly call.

None of it disappears because a VP you’ve never met decided to go in a different direction.

Every structure that someone else builds for you is a structure that someone else can dismantle.

The only structure that’s permanent is the one you built yourself.

You might be thinking that this path is slow, not glamorous, or that without the big break you could never reach the success you crave.

And I’ll say that you’re right.

It is slow. It is not glamorous. And it’s true that without a big break like that you risk never getting the super success you deep down crave.

True.

But you know what’s worse than that?

Waiting for this only to find out it will never happen.

Waiting for the phone to ring is the slowest strategy in existence because there’s no guarantee it ever happens.

You can wait five years and end up exactly where you started, except now you’re five years older with no ecosystem, no list, no offer, and no owned distribution.

Just a body of work scattered across platforms you don’t control and a hope that’s gotten quieter every year.

Building your own path is slow, painful, and hard.

Waiting is worse than that.

The difference is that at the end of building, you have something for sure.

At the end of waiting, you risk having nothing except the time you spent doing it (and the skills you got as a result).

The funny thing is that the phone might ring eventually.

Someone with power might find your work and decide to amplify it.

A deal might land in your inbox.

An opportunity might appear that you didn’t create yourself.

It could happen.

But when you follow this path…

By the time it does, you won’t need it to.

You’ll have the list. The audience. The offer. The archive.

The direct lines to the people who love what you make.

The infrastructure that works with or without anyone else’s permission.

And that’s the position you want to be in.

Whether the phone rings or not.

So assume that no one is coming to discover you.

Assume that no one will set you free.

Assume that you have to build the infrastructure yourself.

People who build their own thing don’t wait for discovery.

They make discovery irrelevant.

And that’s the most powerful position to be in.

Talk soon,

Nick