Lennon Bone, a former touring drummer, argues that follower counts don't measure real success. He draws on Seth Godin's idea that creators need better fans, not more of them, and says knowing who you are and who your work serves attracts the people who actually matter.
So I remember a moment. So if you don't know this, I was a drummer in a band for about 10 years. We toured all over the world and.
It was never big enough that we just were huge. It was always like mid level success. But, you know, I remember these moments where we played these shows to nobody, to literally like the bartender and somebody else. And I remember these moments where we played to like 15 people and it felt freaking amazing. And I remember these moments where we played to like 200 people and it felt freaking amazing. And I remember these moments where, you know, we played at Lollapalooza, our Austin City Limits, and, or did like a, you know, like got to hang out with Anthony Bourdain. Like, these things were amazing, right? But we often thought back once we got to a certain place, we often thought back or went back and did these shows that were still, that went smaller again. And those felt so good. They felt so good. And.
I can't speak for everybody, but I'll speak for myself here in regards to the guys that were in the band and say that some of those earlier days when things were starting to catch and we felt the shift were my favorite. Once it hit a certain threshold, it was still amazing, but it didn't have the same magic. There's a magic to starting to get some momentum, something.
And so the reason I think that magic exists is because.
We don't necessarily, in the moment, often know what end result we want, except for those followers or fans or somebody to like, appreciate what it is that we're doing. So as creatives, as artists, we want people to appreciate and enjoy our work. And when that starts to happen, we feel it and it feels freaking amazing. But I can say that firsthand. I'm not sure that it feels more amazing as you go or.
Like you just start to feel different. It's just different. Right? Why do I bring this up? I bring this up because I think it's so important for you as you're building something and for me as I'm building this, because in many ways I'm starting over with this business. So important that as we're building something together that we are reminded.
Not to get too caught up.
Just wanting people to appreciate our work.
Especially not wanting the amount of people that the world deems as successful to appreciate our work. So I say this often, what we see on social media is dangerous because when we look at social media, we are seeing the potential. And so when you look at somebody's follower count or their subscriber number or Something like that. We're seeing a potential, and often we're served that content. That is literally the algorithm's job, whether you're on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok or whatever. Maybe TikTok's a little different. I don't know. It's the algorithm's job to give you something that they know you're going to like. And oftentimes, well, it's not every time, that content is going to come from a creator that has reached a certain threshold. And it's not always the case, but it is many times the case. So we start to feel like these numbers of having hundreds, tens or hundreds of thousands of followers or subscribers or whatever is normal. I just want to be someone to burst your bubble and say, that is not normal, and we are not entitled to have that. So what does it look like if you only have 10 or 50 people that show up and they respect the work that you do? What does that look like for you? Can that be enough?
So as somebody that built something that went from zero to a couple of bartenders to something that is actually still going on today, and in many ways has surpassed what it was when I was a part of it, to then come back to rebuilding it myself, by myself, for this mission and drive that I have to help artists change the way they see their worth, to rebuild something in this way. I got really caught up in the impatience of wanting more people to appreciate what it is that I'm trying to do. And I just want to throw out the warning and say that that is a very dangerous thing for all of us as creatives, because what starts to happen is we then sacrifice, and I'm going to say it that way, we sacrifice our work. We do work that doesn't align with who we are for the sake of getting more views, for the sake of getting more subscribers. And Seth Godin says, and I'm going to do a lot of Seth Godin quoting as we're coming into this time, so get over it. But the dude's brilliant. I don't care what you think. He says that we don't need more fans. We need better ones. If you want to make a living doing something that you love, you don't need more, but you need better ones. So how do you get better fans? I want to dig into this a little more as the days go on, but to just kind of say it for what I think it is tonight, I think you get better ones by being really clear about who you are first and what you're not going to budge on and what you want to say. And then you get real clear on who it is that that message is for. And as artists, as creatives, that's a really difficult thing for us to do because often we feel like we need to serve our. And we hope that people will just show up for us. But the truth is, is that if we want to have any sort of business, we have to learn how to serve someone else above ourself. But we can't do that from a place of dishonesty. So we still have to know who we are. So we need to get clear on who we are and what we're trying to say and who that message is for. And when those two things are really clear, then we will get better followers. And then my hope is for all of us that in the midst of getting those better followers, we would never lose sight of the process, that the process would still be the thing that we love. And that's what these videos are right now. These unedited pieces of content are opportunity for me.
To just fall back in love with the process of showing up and saying something. I hope you guys are having a great day and I will talk to you soon.
