make art for someone you love (not your audience)

Artists, writers, and musicians, your audience might be ruining your art. Most creators are wasting their time creating for people who wouldn't even notice if they stopped tomorrow. The reason your work feels invisible isn't because you're bad at your craft, but because the algorithm hates you. It's because you've been tricked into making art for a ghost called an audience. But, if you look closely at history's most timeless masterpieces, almost none of the creators ever made any of those pieces for a crowd. Instead, they used a cheat code. Some of the greatest art ever made reached millions of people all because it was never made for millions of people. It was made for one person. Stevie Wonder wrote Isn't She Lovely for his newborn daughter. Paul McCartney wrote Hey Jude for his friend's son. Even Van Gogh painted Almond Blossom for his newborn nephew. I spent the last few years studying creativity and I saw this pattern everywhere. The work we call timeless often begins with one human being just trying to reach another human being. If you want to unlock your creativity and make work that moves people, you need to understand the key of generosity. All right, let's get into it. Most artists are making art for someone who doesn't even exist. We call that person our audience, but you've never met an audience in your life. And I think realizing who your artist actually for can completely change the kind of work that you make. You see, you can't shake hands with an audience. It doesn't have a face. It doesn't have a bad day or a laugh that you'll recognize in a crowd. It's because an audience is lifeless. Most of us aren't making life for people. We're making art for a ghost. Because an audience is just an average of a group of people. And here's the thing about averages. Anything average doesn't have depth. You can't touch anyone by making something average. Because there isn't an average person walking around anywhere. Every single one of us, every single person, all of us, has lived a full life, just like you. And so everyone is extraordinary. And so instead of creating for an abstract audience, we must first create for a clear individual. Okay, so let's talk a bit more about creating for an individual. Because artist can give people something that billionaires can literally not buy. Because if the most valuable part of your art isn't the thing you make, it's the piece of your life you had to spend making it. And once you understand what you're actually giving someone when you make art for them, a normal gift, you know, it just starts feeling cheap. Think about anything that anyone has ever made you. It could be a song or a letter. It could even just be like a drawing that your kid did. I bet that you're just getting warm at just the thought of it. You see, often times when someone buys a gift for you, it proves that they thought about you. But a handmade gift, it proves that they were paying attention to you. And that to me is the core idea. Attention is the rarest resource that any of us have left. And so when you make something for someone, you're handing them evidence, physical, undeniable evidence that you spent hours of your finite life thinking about who they are. And you just can't fake that, you know? You have the luxury of giving people something that no amount of money can produce and no other human being on the planet could have made. Think about what is actually inside of a piece that you make for somebody. It's your hours, which you can never get back. Your skill, which took years. Your attention, which is your scarcest resource. And your interpretation of things, like how you see them, which is the one thing every person is starving for. We're all starving to receive that. That is the most valuable object you can put into somebody's hands. When we are all walking around with the ability to manufacture it, we just keep pointing that ability at the algorithm and that a generalized audience instead of the people we love. Nobody just keeps a random Starbucks gift card for 20 years. But people people will hang paintings on the wall and listen to songs and repeat and put books dedicated to them proudly on their shelves. So gift more art. Oh yeah, by the way, if you want everything I collected on creativity, all my notes, all my research, all my deep dives, just tap the link in the description and tell me where to send them. Okay, let's move on. So, some of the most famous art in human history was never supposed to reach you. It wasn't made for millions of people. It was made for one person the artist cared about. And it's kind of odd to think about because making something for one specific person might be one of the best ways to make something millions of people care about. Bach, he filled a notebooks of piano pieces for his wife. Just just music for the house, right? Music for her hands. And those pages are literally one of the ways that today's pianists learn to play the piano today. Also, Lewis Carroll hand wrote an illustrated story for one little girl he knew and gave it to her as a present. And that present became Alice in Wonderland. Then there's Shah Jahan. He spent over 20 years and a kingdom's worth of resources building a tomb for his wife, the Taj Mahal. And it's not even like he was trying to build a wonder of the world. Like he didn't know that. He was just crafting something out of love so that his love could rest in peace. You know that seven people Did you know that 7 million people a year go to that tomb to witness something that he created for her? Do you see that pattern? The work made is a private gift. Like the private gift continues escaping that cage of privacy. It becomes something that everyone admires. All these people, they were trying to reach somebody and by reaching for one, they ended up touching the world. Okay, next step I want to talk about something for you. Artists are addicted to one of the worst feedback systems ever invented. We let views, likes, and comments tell us whether our art is impeccable, even though none of those numbers can even tell you if they actually moved somebody. There's a whole other type of feedback that artists never get anymore and I think it's infinitely more useful. When you make something for a stranger, you know, you get back a number. You have views and likes and saves. You get this dashboard that tells you how many. But it never once tells you what happened and how it impacted. But when you make something for someone you love, you get to watch their face. You get to see the exact second that it lands with them. You get to see the pause. You get to see the reread and the hand over their mouth. You get the data that no analytics platform on Earth can give you. Proof that the thing you made moved a real person in real time. You know, I never told this story, but I think it relates. Um as you all know, almost a year ago I kickstarted a global group of creators with all different domains who are serious about bringing their best ideas to life. And inside of the world of creators community, the first group of creators who ever joined, it was about like 120 people from all around the world. And they all went through a 30-day experience together. Where they get to bond and create in a very profound way. And at the end of the 30 days, I wanted to thank them for participating in the vision. And you know, the most efficient way of doing that would have been just making like a thank you video, right? And just one post and just say it once to over 100 people. But I didn't do that. I really wanted to show that I see them. So, instead what I did was I took the time to hand draw every single one of their profile pictures. 120 drawings, one at a time. And then I gifted it to everyone live on a virtual call. And it was such a magical experience connecting with everyone in that specific way. And I mailed it to a lot of them. I was able to express my gratitude and receive gratitude in return. You see, views and charts and numbers, they can tell you if you got attention. But seeing a face receive the gift you made, it really does tell you if you got through to them. I think that's what we're all craving from the world. We feel a very specific feeling when someone we care about holds something we made for them. A one-of-one. Now, I honestly don't even have a better word to describe it other than it feels sacred. And that feeling is way more sustainable fuel than any launch or spike in views or any milestone that an artist can reach. Okay, so I actually want to close off with this. So, artist spent thousands of years making art for people. And then we started making art for machines. Creating for algorithm. It feels normal because it's all we know. But historically, it's an incredibly weird way for artists to work. If you strip away every style, every medium, every movement, art history, there's one thing that artists kept doing that we've almost completely forgot. Almost nothing about art holds still over time. As in style changes every generation, materials change every century. The rules literally swap sometimes. Like, one era will say the goal should look lifelike, but then the next era says realism is a failure of our imagination. Even the definition of art would change. Like, half of what's hanging in a museum right now wouldn't even have counted as art to the people who built the museum. It's crazy. So, I got really curious about all of this. Like, if you strip all that away, every movement, every medium, every set of rules, what is actually left? What has art been doing in every era, in every continent, in every culture? Um and I came to a few answers, but the one that I actually wanted to share today is this. Art has always been given away. Like, anthropologists have documented cultures where uh status didn't come from what you accumulated, it came from what you gave away. And what got given? It was carved, it was sung, it was danced, it was performed. There was even examples where the gift's value came almost uh totally from the history of the hands that it passed through. So, not like usefulness or beauty, but the giving was the value. What Like what? What I'm sharing that because it's still in us. We see it all the time. It's in the front of every book you own, that dedication page. Even if you open my book, Creator Dad, you will see that I dedicated it to my wife. Even the language of art is uh uh it never let the idea go. We give a performance. We present a piece. We dedicate a work. And when someone is truly great at their craft, what do we say? We say they have a gift. So, here's what I want to leave you with. The concept of making things for an algorithm is about 15 years old. Making a marketable version of art, like anonymous buyers and mass audiences and stuff, that concept is a couple hundred years old. But look, 10,000 generations of humans gave their work to somebody they cared about. So, if making stuff for the algorithm feels a little off to you, I get it. I hate it, too. That's not us being soft or bad at business, like they say, right? That's something just deeply human in us that's sensing something we're lacking. We need that true human connection. We actually might be the first generation artists in human history that replace faces with numbers. And it really does kill me inside. And so, here's what I want you to do. Artist, I want you to stop posting your art this week. Instead, make something you have absolutely no intention of showing the internet. Pick one person. And not a whole demographic, just literally one person. And then, create like a song or poem or drawing, a photo, a letter. Just create one thing for that one person. And then, I challenge you to give it to them face-to-face and watch what happens. And just stand there. Don't try to explain it away. Don't say like, "Ah, it's not finished." You know, like like we always say. Just watch. And notice how different it feels from posting it online. Because we've all been trained to create while wondering if what we're creating will go viral. But I want us to start asking a better question. Who is this for? And would they cry? Would they smile? Would they feel seen? You know? It's exactly why I make these videos for my wife. An audience can give you views. An algorithm can give you reach. But neither of them can feel loved by something you made. Only a person can do that. And by creating something a person would love, that's actually your one chance of creating something that everyone can love. You see, maybe that's what art was for before it turned into content. Just a way of saying I saw you. I thought about you. You were worth my time. And because you are present in your life, something exists now that didn't exist before. That's truly a timeless, priceless gift. Making something somebody else would have missed. And so, that means that you should be thinking about who you're creating art around. Because making meaningful work is hard when everyone around you is just scrolling past it, right? But there are creators all over the world who are trying to live differently. People who still want to care deeply about what they make. People who want to know whether a uh uh uh want to know other artists, you know, who want to challenge each other. Who want to try to bring those ideas to life. Creators just like that from over 40 countries gather inside the world of creatives collective from all around the world. It's a global group of creatives of friends all domains who are actively shaping the world together. So, if you've been watching these videos for a while now thinking like, "I wish I knew more people like this." I'll leave a link to an application in the description below for you to apply to join. And I hope to see you inside, truly. All right, stay creative. I'll see you in the next video.