How to build an army of 72: pushing beyond creative fear
Every morning, the first thing I feel is fear.
Basic fear first.
Stupid stuff like: Should I spend $300 I don’t have on digital graduation portraits of my son? Or face the eternal damnation that is answering “what should we have for dinner?” again.
Why isn’t my friend talking to me?
Did I do something wrong?
But then the real fear creeps in.
Today it’s announcing a concert, knowing this one decision will avalanche into a thousand more.
Selling tickets.
The cold sweat of potentially empty seats.
The mental math of failure (too much to produce/not enough tickets sold) that keeps me up at night.
Did I forget insurance?
Can I sell wine?
Can I get a wine license?
This is all part of producing your own work. The unsexy bits nobody talks about.
I do it anyway. Or I try to do it anyway.
Or maybe I think about it for two more days, then pull the trigger.
I always pull the trigger in the morning, when I’m most brave and haven’t had the day’s exhaustion set in yet.
And of course I immediately start to worry.
The worry is just part of the creative act. It’s going to be there, like a dog that follows you home. But the creative growth happens when you keep walking anyway.
And then? I get to work.
Chipping away like a prisoner with a plastic spoon. One at a time.
One customer.
One ticket.
One course.
One song.
One painting.
One essay.
One dinner that isn’t takeout again.
Just… one at a time.
I sold my last concert this way.
Talking to people throughout the month who I thought might be interested in what I do. Not “interested in me”—that feels too naked. Interested in what I make.
Each time I pull out a postcard (nicely printed on good paper so people can feel how committed you are), I have to wait for their response. That’s a little scary, but mostly inconsequential. They might light up, or they might give you that polite-but-dead smile. If it’s the latter, that’s not your audience. And that’s okay.
But when it does work—when someone’s face changes and they say “Oh, I’d love to come”—it’s like finding your people. It feels like you’re slowly building your army of true fans.
One person usually brings another for a night out.
Two becomes four.
You sleuth your way through the day, finding creative ways to share your passion without feeling like you’re selling insurance door-to-door in your own life.
Some people will be annoyed.
And this is enough to stop most of us. But try not to let it stop you. I’m not always great at that myself.
I’ve lost friends who think I promote myself too much. What can I say except—it’s the only way to do my work: to invite people into it. You don’t have to say yes. But I have to ask.
But here’s the hardest part: Growing past your local community, or the people who have known you forever. They don’t usually see the vision of the work you’re capable of. Or worse, they actively make you feel small for trying to grow. Like: “I don’t get it. How’s play practice going?” Or as Mike Birbiglia tells it, when he told his father he was working toward becoming a stand-up comedian (now one of the most prolific solo artists of all time), his dad said, “So you want to be a stripper?”
Oof.
The whole world feels annoyed and overwhelmed right now. It’s brutally hard to reach people these days. That’s disheartening as hell, but you learn to keep your eyes on the open ones. The people who seem to need what your particular spirit has to offer.
Then you look up 25 days later and there are 72 people in the audience. Seventy-two actual humans whose lives you might touch with what you created.
Even better, they’re not online. They’re in the flesh, waiting for you to sing.
People get all worked up about having “only” 72 followers online. But if 72 people show up to hear you sing? That’s different. That’s magic happening in real time.
And that’s worth the fear, isn’t it?
I think about these questions to jumpstart my creative day:
What’s the fear that greets me first thing in the morning, and what’s one small step I might take despite it?
Is there a creative project I abandoned because of fear? If I had pushed through just one more day, what might have happened? Should I go back to that idea?
Who are the “open people” in my life who genuinely value what I create? How can I focus on serving them?
What’s the smallest creative “one at a time” step I could take today that might lead to my own version of “72 people in the audience” a month from now?