Show your work!

You know, I used to hate the idea of a “personal brand”. Then I read “Show your Work!”, by Austin Kleon, and realised not only was I doing myself a disservice by not regularly sharing my knowledge and learnings, but that I did exactly that around the start of my career to great effect. If you, like me, dread the thought of blogging, read on, and I’ll pick out some of the key lessons that resonated with me the most, and hopefully, convince you, of the value of sharing your work, and yourself.

Just over a decade ago, I was about to start a job working with my language of choice, and I was struggling with my bosses’ unorthodox approach to Ruby and Rails, worse, I wasn’t getting much support. So when my bosses sat me down and informed me I needed to improve, dramatically. Frustrated by a perceived sense of unfairness, I proceeded to learn what it means to truly do something despite someone else, and went on to have an incredibly successful 4+ years at the company.

Lesson 1 - Join and engage with a scenius community

The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn and make a commitment to learning it in front of others

Whilst it’s not quite the case that “you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”, it’s only because the reach extends further than just your immediate network. Austin advocates the idea of a “scenius” (via Brian Eno) that makes up an “ecology of talent”. Figure out, what you want to learn or get better at, and make a commitment to learning and sharing in front of others.

Back then, this looked like joining my local meetup (and this is still a good option), and regularly putting my hand up to speak. It also meant listening and sharing ideas and thoughts with attendees. I was a good citizen of the community. This gave me work opportunities, speaking engagements, and greater community involvement through Ruby Australia.

Now, for me, this looks like posting regularly on social media platforms and in Slack or Discord communities, as well as regularly engaging in discussions and cheering on other posters. I’m both sharing my knowledge in the areas of remote leadership and software engineering, whilst starting to learn and engage more with sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

Find a community that aligns with your goals and ambitions, and contribute meaningfully.

Lesson 2 - Everyone’s an amateur at some point

The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others. Share your reading list. Point to helpful reference materials. Create some tutorials and post them online. Use pictures, words, and video. Take people step-by-step through part of your process. As blogger Kathy Sierra says, “make people better at something they want to be better at”

I’ll let you in on a little secret, my public speaking career began because I hated writing blog posts. I’d write them, then immediately delete them, or hate them the next day. I ultimately was suffering from imposter syndrome. Giving talks on the other hand, was something I was able to do once and mostly forget about, I couldn’t delete the talk.

Yet - the people most looking for content, are beginners, and the very best teachers are those just a few steps ahead of you on your own journey. Don’t be afraid to share beginner level content with the world, it will reinforce your own learning, and you’ll be surprised at its own value.

Don’t worry about posting something you consider “basic”, I once said as much to a mentor in response to giving a talk on a topic and his response was “yeah it is, but not everyone knows this stuff”, and he was right.

Lesson 3 - Flow and Stock

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people you exist. Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today.

On my great quest not to get fired 10 years ago, I consumed every piece of Ruby and Rails content I could and kept notes in a series of small notebooks. After each post, I’d sit down and write some take-away thoughts. Those thoughts would later become my talks or a part of well founded arguments to influence the technical direction at work.

This is what the book describes as flow and stock. These days my flow tends to look like using social media (currently LinkedIn and Threads) as a virtual notebook, testing ideas out, getting feedback, learning, before taking some of those connected ideas, and implementing them as potential stock in the form of a talk or blog post.

Even what you’re reading now, ultimately is derived from notes and highlights from reading the book, and other disparate, connected thoughts on the topic of sharing and building your brand online.

Lesson 4 - 90% of everything is crap

We don’t always know what’s good and what sucks. That’s why it’s important to get things in front of others and see how they react

Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said that "90% of everything is crap", this is something I try to remind myself of when attempting to rewrite some content for the fifthteenth time. Much like my work in product, the name of the game is putting stuff out there for feedback and learning, not holding it back in the endless pursuit of perfection.

Eventually, through experimentation, reflection, and iteration, you'll find your voice. My earliest talks were crap, but each one taught me something new about public speaking, and began to prepare me for talking at conferences.

Lesson 5 - If your work isn't online you don't exist

It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn’t online, it doesn’t exist. We all have the opportunity to use our voices, to have our say, but so many of us are wasting it. If you want people to know about what you do and the things you care about, you have to share

Admittedly, I struggled with this one. I hate the idea that you must share online to "exist", whatever the hell that means. However, when I re-examined this through the lens of engaging with a community, it resonated with my own experiences to date.

I'm someone who is used to making a name for themselves inside an organisation, by swapping my audience from just my workplace to online, I can help to ensure I try and have a good name everywhere. With my own goals for the coming year around entrepreneurship, it is more important than ever that I work on building an audience.

At the heart of this book, is the request to be courageous enough to share. To share your work and yourself. It reminded me that the time that I "increased my surface area of luck" the most in my career, was when I was regularly in the habit of showing my work.