Lennon Bone pushes back on Gary Vaynerchuk's 'document over create' and 'produce as much as possible' advice for creators. Bone argues that without a specific audience and real value in your work, volume alone won't build a following. He breaks down what actually works: targeted documentation, balanced creation, and knowing who you're making for.
Ultimately, I am a Gary Vee fan, but I think a lot of what he says just doesn't work. Just document over create. You just got to put out as much artwork as you possibly can. Like those things just don't fly with the way us as makers and creatives work. You know, when you're trying to grow a following, which is what you're trying to do so that you can start to make money, it just doesn't work that way. I just don't believe it. I just think it needs to be reframed a little bit for the artist mind. And I want to talk about why, if you approach these things with the right mindset, they can actually help you grow a following, but you just need to use them in the right way. So if you don't know me, my name is Lennon and my mission is to help creative people change the way they see their worth. So first and foremost, without Gary, I would not even be doing this right now. I met Gary a few years ago at VidSummit and I actually paid more money to be able to go have dinner with him. It was like a over glorified, like meet and greet situation. But I wanted to just meet him and shake his hand because, you know, I started making content online because of him. He was the first guy that actually inspired me enough to move forward.
So you've heard Gary talk about these things where he gets on these like riled up deals where, hey, if you're making music, you just need to be releasing a song like every week. Or if you're doing art, you just need to be like pumping it out there. You need to just be documenting yourself and throwing it into the world. And it's like, how many times have you complained about seeing somebody's food on Instagram? What is that? Is that creation or is that documenting? That is just documenting. I can hold my phone up to this lamp over here that you can't see and that is documenting. I don't think that documenting over creating makes any sense at all when it comes to, to growing a following because it doesn't give context to the viewer enough to allow them to be excited about what you do and enough to feel like they can relate to you as a person. You gotta bring them into the conversation. You have to give them context as to what you do and why you do it. Gary never did that, like with Wine library and all that early stuff. He built that off of creating something. He made something. He had a very specific person in mind when he started documenting himself for Entrepreneurial people. Did it blow out further than that? Absolutely. But it started with a very specific person in mind, with a very specific idea in mind. It wasn't just arbitrary documentation. As creatives, we need to find creativity in all the things we do. We can't just do it because we feel like we have to do it. When we do that, we feel obligated. You hear me say this all the time. That obligation is a breeding ground for resentment. And when I feel like I have to show up and post this thing, this documentation of something just because I have to do it, it does not excite me. There needs to be creativity brought into it. There needs to be life, like, breathed into this thing that we're doing that's going to make it more exciting for us. Then you add the context, like, who it's for, and you talk to a person, you make it for one kind of person, and then it's going to get exciting for the right kind of people. Then when you document and you bring all those things together and you start a conversation with somebody, it becomes engaging, it becomes exciting for somebody to watch. That's when we start to grow something. That's when we start to make some magic happen. I want to touch on this idea of just putting out as much as you can. You know, I've heard him say, go out there and just make as much art as you possibly can. Just if you're a songwriter, you need to be, like, posting a song every week. You just need to be pumping it out. We do this to ourselves as artists and creatives. We immediately go to Patreon, we immediately go to Etsy, we immediately go to Spot and expect that these places are going to be the places where we make a lot of money. And how much do you make off of each of those things, from fractions of a cent to, like, low dollar amounts, you are worth more than a couple of dollars per piece. Like, you are worth more than that. Your value is higher than, like, $3 a unit. I'd much rather you be able to make, you know, one thing that costs $500 or $1,000 than try to make, you know, I don't know, 50 things that cost 10 bucks. And I know that's not correct math, but you get what I'm saying, right? Do we need to be consistent in showing up? Yeah, we do. Right. But that's where this idea of contextual documentation, I'll call it, when we have that contextual documentation that shows who we are and we talk to a specific kind of person Then, you know, we can pair that with the stuff we make, and we don't have to, like, make all these songs or photographs or whatever all the time.
So here's what I think we need to do. I think we need to find a balance of, you know, showing ourselves, documenting ourselves, and then showing our creativity, showing our creation, so being creative, right? And then when it comes to our art, especially if it's a thing we're trying to sell and not just get to, like, the biggest masses ever. And I want to tell you, like, you can have a smaller audience and totally make a living as a creative person. And when you think about that and you start to put that sort of hat on of, I don't need the biggest, I don't need the most. I just need the right. I just need the right art. I just need the right consumers. I just need the right clients. That changes your mindset. You don't need the most anymore. And that's what's going to help you be able to show up and deliver something that is more valuable, that makes you more money, that keeps you from feeling burnt out, that allows you to make the art that you want to make, that allows you to have products that you love, that allows you to travel and do, like, have more time. That's what I want for you guys. And there are specific, like, very specific ways that you can go about making your art more valuable, making your creative work, or, you know, your service that you do more valuable. And I have $197 masterclass that you can get for free. So you'll learn how to define your audience so you're talking to the right person when you're on social media, your website, all that kind of stuff. And then you learn what makes something valuable so you can make you and your art worth more just by understanding this principle. So again, check it out@makeyourartvaluable.com and I will see you guys in the next video.
