It was Archimedes who said, "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and single-handed, I can move the world." And Sir Isaac Newton famously said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants".
Used mostly in finance to express the relationship between debt and equity, the principle of leverage can be exploited in all spheres of life. Using a layman's language, I describe leverage is a tiny tweak you can exploit or a simple action you can take wherever you are in your artistic endeavour to maximize your impact and result.
For an example, let's say you're a musician, an author, or a craftsman, you can produce a one-minute video and upload to YouTube, Vimeo, or Invideo, and if properly optimized, your video could go viral. With that tiny tweak to your strategy or that simple action, you could attract thousands if not millions of viewers in one fell swoop. BAAM! You've moved from a virtual unknown to a celebrity.
So this is the question I want to ask you, When last did you promote yourself and your work? The saddest mistake experts, authors, coaches, consultants, professionals, and indies (independent producers) of all hues make is to toil in the dark or total obscurity hoping that by a dint of their hard-work they'll somehow be known. Or put it another way, that what they produce, whether songs, paintings, books, crafts, and the like, will somehow magically make people to discover or find them.
Let me put it bluntly to you, as a producer, your chances of being discovered that way in today's noisy and clutter-filled world are one in a million. Gone are the days people will beat a path to your door if you made a better mousetrap. There are hundreds if not thousands of other producers making mousetraps that could outshine yours so your product alone is not enough. In a globalized and internet enabled world that's the reality. You must tell the world your story or you'll remain in obscurity.
So as an artist, song writer, author, speaker, coach, consultant, craftsman or an indie of whatever hue, you must promote your good works for a sliver of chance to be heard or found out. Personal promotion is your simplest leverage. Big companies with deep pockets can afford adverts but it's very likely you're operating on a shoestring budget.
So to beat the odds, start to self-promote yourself. If you've written a book, let people know you're a proud published author. If your book has hit the New York Times best-seller list, jump to the roof top and let the world know. If you're in the process of writing your first book, let the world know your book is due out in six, nine months, or whatever time frame you envisage. If your team has designed an app, let people know you were part of the team that designed that cool app or software that is making waves in Apps or Play Store. Tut your horn, as the Chinese say. Blowing your horn is a powerful leverage that creative artists of all genres strapped for cash can use to be found in a world awash with noise.
The title of one of Tom Peters' books is, "You Can't Shrink to Greatness." Seth Godin's advice to independent producers is, "Don't wait to be picked up, pick yourself up." Seth Godin also advises that all producers desirous of being taken seriously must strive to be "a purple cow". By that, he means you must stand out. In a sea of sameness, only "a purple cow" stands out. You can't afford to be average because you're competing with the whole world where "the average" is consigned to the dust heap.
Get the word out; don't smile in the dark. Promote yourself as if your life depended on it because it does. Create links to the amazing things you're doing or have done, and share the links to all your contacts in all the over one hundred social media platforms out there, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, WeChat, Telegram, and many others. Let everybody know you're a proud author of your book, or the writer of that song, or the artwork displayed in a particular gallery.
One of the easiest or simplest ways to maximize your leverage as I've alluded earlier, is to write a book. Nothing else compares. Your book can get to The White House, Buckingham Palace, and The Kremlin, which ordinarily, you may not - until you become a celebrity. So don't rest on your laurels until you've written a book or two. You can even write articles and upload them to online article aggregators like Ezine Articles and later compile all your repurposed articles into a book.
If you hate writing and believe that writing a book is out of your reach, that's nothing to worry about. There are ways of getting published without lifting a finger using a ghost writer. You can even get help from world-renowned copy-writers like Katie Parrot, and/or Sonia Thompson if you know how to reach out to them. Just get your book's outline ready and you're done. As the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Promise yourself you'll not rest until your book is out - this year. According to popular authors who have written at least four best-selling books each, including Ryan Holiday, and Chandler Bolt, you can write a book worth reading in 90 days. I've tried it and it works, once you know how to use tools like mind-maps.
If you want to promote yourself with video (it's the most popular way to self-promote), do not try to go overboard by gunning to create high-definition videos. It's not necessary, at least in the beginning. You can use your smart phone to produce a simple video.
If that is too hard, you can get a graphic designer to design stunning covers for your book, or eBook, or song cover, and upload them to free video making sites like Animoto, Issuu or Invideo, and before you know it, you have a video people can link to. You can even upload your video to your one-page website. You can get a web designer on Fiverr to design a great-looking site for you for pennies. Or you can design your website by yourself on Weebly if you're the tech-type. In summary, exploit the principle of leverage, particularly self-promotion, to catapult yourself to the next level until you reach the proverbial tipping point and the world will beat a path to you.