Who Do We Do It For?

When I was in high school and college, I loved writing music, recording, and playing live shows.

The thought of becoming a successful musician was intoxicating. I devoured interviews and articles with my favorite artists, and daydreamed about making it big constantly. As a positive result of this, I was able to create some things I’m really proud of (check out a peach fuzzed Reese in this video, and listen to a sad Reese sing about a girl who didn’t love him back here).

A negative result of this was that I placed a lot of self-worth in whether or not I was “making it”. The number of people in the crowd, streams on Spotify, and emails back from network connections were everything to me.

Since I was doing it to be famous, my motivation was external instead of internal.

Since graduating college, I’ve started chasing a career in creative marketing. Recently, this has pushed me to create content in order to connect with people in my tribe and expand my network. So now, the purpose of this content is to bring value to other people.

And it has changed everything.

Now, when I post a video on my IGTV channel and it gets 40 views, I’m stoked! When I write one of these blogs, and 5 people read it, I’m honored to have a valuable digital interaction with those 5 people. I played music for my ego, so I needed recognition to be happy. Now, I make content for others’ benefit, so I only need to bring value to one person to be satisfied. Two people is twice the satisfaction. Ten? Wow.

The exciting part of this idea is this: valuable content made for the benefit of other people is the kind that really catches on. And that could be what gives me the recognition I was originally searching for!

And in case any of you were wondering, I play guitar more now than I ever did. I’m able to really focus on my technique and musicality without imaginary crowds clouding my brain.

So my question is this: who are you doing it for? Why do you create?

Because I’ve found that creating for others relieves pressure and brings real satisfaction.

I hope this was helpful for you, please share it with a friend who you think will find it valuable.