'Podcast' by Damola

The bar to acquiring one more soft audience is low. A pop-up form on a website that asks for email details does this. A thousand emails later, they still may not remember why you are in their space. Getting someone as part of your hard audience often takes time. They didn’t come for the pop-up, though they may fill it out. They didn’t come for the freebies, though they may enjoy it. What they came...

It’s a disservice to a creator's craft if those they choose to reach are only those who love their work. Yes, it’s great to create for a niche audience, for your true raving fans. Can you make it in ways that allow you to pursue things you care about, even if it will be for a new set of audience? It’s not for them, but if they choose, they can find value in it. Proudly exclude people, but make it...

Every few weeks, I dig up some old treasure in a book, autobiography or an old letter. One of such is this funny story Warren shared in his 1989 letter to shareholders. “Every two years I'm part of an informal group that gathers to have fun and explore a few subjects. Last September, meeting at Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe, we asked Ike (the manager of a business they recently bought), his wife Roz,...

The number one misconception people have is that the awards we get are solely for the things we did. That’s often not the case. Yes, the things and their impact got the attention of the jury, and led to getting picked. But the story goes deeper than that. Only you - and maybe a few others - know the whole story not told. The things not said. The dreams forsaken. The road not taken. And what you sa...

I had a beautiful conversation about discomfort a while ago with a friend. She grew up in China, was schooled in Singapore and the US, and has worked for a bit somewhere in Africa. That broad experience made her observations about discomfort personal. Both from her lived experience and from observing those she loves. We process things based on our tolerance for discomfort. Some cultures are more c...

Stop. It’s easier to fix the urgent thing, the loudest problem. You know what seems urgent now, even though they don’t move the needle in the long run. Those things you can’t ignore forever. A lot of problems that scream can either be solved as they pop up or become obsolete when we address the underlying cause. The hard part is piercing through the noise and finding why the noise exists in the fi...

“Did you get what you want?” When we talk about success, it is sometimes reduced to answering that question. Did you get what you want? There are better questions worth answering; Did you make the most of what you got? And did you do it in ways that made your spirit proud? Did it enlarge you? Did it make you and those around you better? Did it give you avenues to test your assumptions about yourse...