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Make Things Then Tell People
Read Time: 5 Minutes | Read Online
Whatâs the inverse of craftsmanship?
Telling people before you make. Flexing, calling your shot, and never backing it up with execution. Weâve become a generation of announcers.
Weâve all have seen hustle-bro type posts bragging about their revenue, their milestone, their morning routine, only to realize that isnât real. Creators crave validation before completion, but validation thatâs manufactured will never compare to the kind thatâs earned.
Thereâs something compelling about having quiet authority, grounded in experience. Itâs not peacocking, itâs humble in itâs approach.
Most people are broadcasting before theyâre building. But every career breakthrough Iâve had started with making something that worked, and then telling people about it.
These five words - make something then tell people - provide a framework worth unpacking so that we can use it to get the leverage we seek with our creative work.
MAKE
To build something real. The antidote to performative creation that mistakes attention for traction. Using our God-given talents to assemble, craft, shape, forge, carve, or combine. Bringing something into existence that wasnât there before.
People crave real things. The race to the bottom of digital âcreationâ has already been won - AI isnât really creating anything, just rapidly combining scraped content and spitting out the artifacts.
A film, while often digital, is still something tangible. It has a cost. Hundreds or even thousands of humans contributed their craft to the creation of it. Making is proof of conviction.
You experience it over time, trading those hours of attention for anything else you could be doing. It has weight, and the power to change you, if you let it.
A song. A painting. A book or an essay. Some things you can hold, some you hear, some you feel. However you engage with it, you are now a different person for having done so.
Ideas crave attention, but rarely deserve it from an audience of consumers. Itâs too early. Only finished things can command the price.
While the idea often comes first, without execution, the worth evaporates into the ether. Implementation precedes expansion. You have to make it for it to matter. Making is proof to the universe that weâre serious.
Thereâs a noticeable gap between those who announce, and those who ship. Be the latter. Awareness built on ideas collapses. Visibility built on proof compounds.
THINGS
Things are the tangible artifacts of your craft, anything that didnât exist until you made it. Not tweets or concepts or viral ideas, but objects of value. They take up space, have mass, gravity, momentum, tension, and energy.
A thing is anything that changes someone elseâs reality. A film, a book, a retreat, an investment vehicle - some physical, some not, all things.
Things are the evidence that your ideas were gifted your time, attention, and labor to bring them into existence. People can feel that investment. Others can sense the weight of the thing you made.
Thereâs a difference between a post and a product. The former requires no investment, no faith, no execution. Itâs easy to post, and easy to forget. You can generate hundreds of posts a day. None of them have the power to change anything.
When the idea crosses the threshold and earns your capital - your time, attention, money, and energy - itâs infused with that power. Your power.
Chasing ideas will make your head spin. Choosing to build assets, to make things, will lead you toward a future of impact and legacy.
THEN
Thereâs an integrity of order. Sequence and timing matter. Yet most creators invert this - they want the impact before the investment in the idea to make the thing.
Thereâs a sexiness to an idea that dissipates when you approach it up close. In reality, itâs crude, unformed, a pile of potential that will require work to shape it into a thing.
Itâs supposed to be hard. Itâs what sets apart the craftsperson from the idea-generating âcreatorâ.
The sequence and the timing show you the path. Then you have to make a decision.
Make the thing? Or share another idea, chasing vanity metrics and surface-level engagement that fails to change anyone.
Then encompasses the unseen phases before the thing emerges. Patience is proof of belief. The Then represents delayed gratification, respect for gestation, reverence for the craft.
The Then is what separates builders from marketers. The Then is the moment you earn the right to speak. Then creates integrity and alignment.
Even God built before pronouncing it âgoodâ.
TELL
Transmission, not promotion. Telling is the act of revealing whatâs already inevitable. The opposite of spam, because the thing already has been made. This isnât about impressions, but about impact. Telling is the gift you give those that will be changed by your thing that you made.
Youâre not selling. Youâre inviting others into something thatâs proven. It exists, itâs real, it works. Youâre not adding to the noise of the algorithmic feeds, youâre pure signal. Those with ears to hear will hear.
Telling is stewardship. Itâs how you give your work away without giving your power away. No one can take it from you because youâre on the other side of Then.
They may copy the idea. But they canât copy your craft, your execution, or the way youâre able to Tell the people you made the thing for. They rarely are even willing to go through the Then to make the thing.
You can tell people while youâre making the thing. You donât have to wait until itâs finished. Telling can create the tension that creates enrollment in the people you made the thing for.
Donât skip the Tell phase. Youâre withholding your gift, your impact, the transformation they can experience if they were only told.
But donât skip to the Tell phase either. Storytelling is leverage, but the power is reserved for those who are making, not just telling. When I first started raising money - before weâd ever produced anything - the pitch didnât land. It was all promise, no proof. Now, with four features under my belt and a growing fund, each next investment becomes easier because they can see and feel the thing.
PEOPLE
The ecosystem and the market form around whatâs real. Investors, filmmakers, audiences, readers, listeners, patrons - âpeopleâ are not the goal, theyâre the beneficiaries of the thing that you made.
When you make something real, people organize around it. The thing has gravity for the people itâs for.
People crave real things. They resonate with craft. They appreciate honesty and transparency. They want to be told in this world that is becoming increasingly hard to hear the signal in the noise. They want to be changed, transformed. They want to become.
Every movement, every business, every film starts with one thing made well. It grows because someone was brave enough to tell the people they made it for. The right people appear after the right thing exists.
Make things. Then tell people. Thatâs it, thatâs the strategy. Itâs not advice, itâs physics. The whole system in five simple words. Creation without communication dies unseen. Communication without creation erodes trust. Will you be a performer, or a producer?
The world doesnât need more announcements. It needs more things.
I took a different approach on this week's essay, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you like this structure, or should I go back to a more standard essay structure for this one? Would love to know before I post it on the blog. Thanks!
Feeling stuck? Got questions? Then the Craftsman Films Live Call is what you need.
Every month we gather over Zoom for a live call with about a dozen filmmakers. The calls start with a principle from the MOVIE framework (that I wrote about in my last book, Blockbuster), that you can apply to your business and projects today. Then we take some questions, do a networking breakout session, then another round of live Q&A, then a second breakout session.
In 2 hours or less you'll come away with new connections, new insights, and new motivation to move your projects forward.
Join the next Craftsman Films Live Call (Wednesday 10/15 at 10am Mountain Time!)
I'll be hosting some events at the Newport Beach, AFI, and Austin Film Festivals.
If you'd like to be notified/invited, click here to signal your interest and I'll send you the details once I've got them, likely by the end of September.
This will be the best way to meet up in these locations, as there are many who want to grab a coffee or pick my brain. I'll try and make myself available for those, but these events will be the best way to connect while I'm traveling.
This Week On Truly Independent:
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Daren Smith
Blockbuster Book | Consulting | Speaking
