The Slow Creator Manifesto

I have been producing content of various sorts for almost 10 years now.

It started with Amazon kindle books in 2016. I produced three of them, as well as various no/low content books in the years that followed.

Then YouTube in 2017. I started producing Logic Pro tutorials in the hope of getting a following of people who want to learn from me.

I started creating courses in 2018. It started with The Trailer Music Course on Udemy, and over the next 8 years I have produced over 30 courses.

Then in 2020 I started taking articles more seriously. Over the years these articles gained me a lot of traffic and started making sales.

Then after ‘The year it all fell apart’ I tried short form videos. I did 110 days straight of daily videos.

I also produced photos, podcasts, newsletters...the list goes on.

At each and every step I was constantly reminded, by all the content I consume, that “consistency is key”; 1 YouTube video a week, 1 podcast a week, 10 shorts every day, ten long form articles every week, tweet 5 times a minute, 700 pieces of content distributed to 100 platforms every hour etc.

It felt like such an enormous weight on my shoulders to keep up this content schedule.

Sometimes I managed it for quite a while with one platform but that usually meant that I had to stop being “consistent” on another platform.

When I decided to focus on one platform I got massive FOMO because the content on that platform was telling me that there were bigger wins on another platform.

It felt less like consistently trying to produce good content and more like juggling a huge list of things to do and constantly failing at it.

I spent so much time trying to find shortcuts to produce loads of content that I wasn no longer making the content I wanted.

My content was not intentional and was more just me trying to talk into my phone/camera and hope it would get followers just with my “charm” (aka terrible sense of humour which often back fires).

Needless to say, on the whole, I did not see good results.

Sometimes, this approach worked; My Trailer Music Composer’s Podcast actually garnered quite a loyal following through those “solo banter shows”.

But most of the time it didn’t.

Most importantly, the thought of content creation has just stressed me out, made me feel like I was constantly failing, and it has meant that I get burned out/frustrated and end up stopping for a few weeks or months just to recover.

This platform is actually a good example of me trying to find a “cheat code”.

I started the Diary of a Music Maker podcast, which was my answer to trying to do everything all at once; a YouTube video that doubled as a podcast, article, and Substack newsletter.

I actually managed to keep it going for almost a whole year. Although saying that, half way through I rebranded it to the Composer Breakthrough podcast (classic me worrying that I was doing something wrong)

But I ultimately stopped because I wasn’t seeing much obvious return for my time.

I think I am very good at creating content that is for my existing super fans. I feel like I know them. But I am not good at getting new fans.

Which ends up meaning that I do not make many sales but keep a small yet loyal audience. Not quite Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans, more like Rich Pryn’s 15 true fans.

Needless to say I was doing it all wrong.

Years ago I heard the term ‘slow blogging’. Which basically meant that you were incredibly intentional with your content.

You would spend a lot of time crafting something that was shareable (so would get new eyeballs on your work) but was also useful enough to be of great use to your existing fans.

When I first heard it I loved the idea.

Did I do it?

Hell no.

I was too scared that if I ddi that I would craft a beautiful piece of writing that no one gave a shit about (if anyone even saw it).

So what did I do?

Shat out a ton of mediocre content and got super stressed. I guess you could call it “content diarrhoea” .

That Einstein quote comes to mind (I had to double check who said it):

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

So I realised that I needed to do something different.

No more producing content just to meet a content calendar, no more trying to hit all the platforms at once, not more “spray and pray”.

I want to take care making the content for my blog and newsletter (that’s my Substack now just to be clear) with the occasional YouTube video and podcast put in there too.

Substack for my more personal dispatches. My blog for my more intentional content pieces (like this one). YouTube/podcast just for the fun.

I know I run the risk of not pleasing the algorithms or whatever but there are plenty of examples where sporadic quality wins out on Youtube.

My favourite examples of channels that break the “consistency rule” with sporadic content are Brew Cabin and Beau Miles (Although Beau is more prolific than he used to be).

I have spent too much of my time as a content creator in worry-mode and that is changing.

In short - Fuck content calendars, algorithms and consistency, hello sporadic, human, and intentional.