You Don't Need a Big Audience, You Need One Person

How to Build an Audience When Self-Promotion Makes You Want to Die a Little

There’s something you’ve been meaning to announce.

The show. The shop. The self published book. The newsletter. The thing you made that requires, at some point, telling people it exists. And every morning it’s sitting there waiting for you, right behind the reasonable fears (the money, the “what’s for dinner,” the friend who hasn’t texted back and what did you do wrong), and it produces a very specific dread: the cold sweat of empty seats. The mental math of failure. If I announce it, people will watch me try. And if they watch me try, they can watch me fail. 👀

So you’ve been thinking about it for two more days. For about a year now.

I know this dread personally, because I wake into it most mornings. I’m a performer who produces her own work, which means every project starts with me announcing a concert and then lying awake doing logistics-flavored catastrophizing. Did I forget insurance? Can I sell wine? Can I get a wine license? This is what making things actually looks like. It’s pretty unsexy.

Over the years of producing for myself, I’ve learned a lot about the fear, and it changes what to do about it: the fear is not measuring your project. It’s measuring an imaginary audience.

When you picture announcing your thing, your brain doesn’t picture the actual people who might come. It pictures Everyone. A vast, judging Everyone, watching you promote yourself, noticing your empty seats, discussing your failure. And Everyone is a crowd no nervous system can face. Of course you freeze. You’re not procrastinating on sending an email. You’re declining to walk into the arena (as Brene Brown says).

Except the stadium isn’t real. There is no Everyone. There is only ever Someone. One person at a time, each deciding on their own whether your thing is for them. And a nervous system that panics at a stadium can handle a Someone just fine.

Let me show you what it looks like in practice, because I sold out my last concert this way.

I got to work chipping away like a prisoner with a plastic spoon. One customer. One ticket. One song. One conversation. Throughout the month, I talked to people I thought might be interested in what I make. Not “interested in me,” that feels too naked. Interested in what I make. Each time, I’d pull out a postcard, (printed on good paper so people can feel how committed you are), and wait for their response. That moment is a little scary, but it’s Someone-sized scary. Manageable.

And one of two things happens. Sometimes you get the polite dead smile. 🫤 That’s not fun, but that’s usually not rejection.

That’s more like information: not your audience, and that’s okay. You can’t win ‘em all. Actually, you can’t win most of them, but keep going because…

Sometimes their face changes and they say “Oh, I’d love to come,” and it’s like finding your people! One person brings another for a night out. Two becomes four. You’re slowly building your army of true fans, sleuthing your way through ordinary days, sharing your passion without feeling like you’re selling insurance door-to-door in your own life.

Now, the honest costs. Some people will be annoyed. I’ve lost friends who think I promote myself too much, and that stings in a lasting way. 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. It’s hard not to take this personally. In general I tend to have a chip on my shoulder about friends who don’t support my work. It’s happened a lot. But there is some real childhood wounds when it comes to what I do. When you sing and dance for a living, some people just simply don’t like you shining. I get it. But not enough to stop it. I’ve learned at this point to seek out friends who are really grounded in their own mastery of work. I find they’re way less competitive with me. This is obviously a post I need to write. I think about it a lot, and I haven’t found the answer.

But let’s move on…oh wait, one more thought on this.

The hardest audience is the one that’s known you forever. The people who don’t quite see what you’re capable of, or worse, make you feel small for trying. “I don’t get it. How’s play practice going?” Mike Birbiglia, now one of the most prolific solo performers alive, once told his father he wanted to be a stand-up comedian. His dad said, “So you want to be a stripper?” Oof.

What do you do? You learn to keep your eyes on the open ones instead. The people who seem to need exactly what your particular spirit has to offer.

So here’s the practice, in two parts, both small.

Part one: pull the trigger in the morning. Whatever the scary send is (the announcement, the postcard order, the “would you come?” text), do it early, before the day wears you down. Courage runs on a battery, and mornings are when mine is charged and the dread hasn’t fully staffed up yet. The worry will arrive right after you hit send. Let it. The worry is just part of the creative act. It’s going to be there like a dog that followed you home. In my experience, the growth happens when you keep walking anyway.

Part two: when you catch yourself frozen, run the check: am I picturing Everyone, or Someone? If it’s Everyone (the vague judging crowd, the imagined pile-on, the empty-seat horror film), that’s the fear talking, and it’s showing you a stadium that does not exist. Shrink it back to one face. One real person who might light up. Then do the one thing that reaches that one person. That’s the entire day’s assignment.

Do that enough mornings in a row and here’s what happens. 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 made. Not online. In the flesh. Waiting for you to sing.

People get all worked up about having “only” 72 followers. But if 72 people show up? That’s different. That’s magic happening in real time. Everyone was never real. But those 72 Someones are as real as it gets.

That’s worth the fear, isn’t it?

Substack runs on hearts. It literally helps more people find this. So if you got something out of this, press the little ♥️, or share it with a human you like, EVEN BETTER, subscribe and never miss a post. I’ll be here either way.