This week I saw a post from an artist with 2.3k followers, he was saying that he needs to radically change his life and work because his growth rate isn’t what it used to be.
I get it, and I’ve been in a similar situation. A few months ago I could get 2k new followers a month, but now I barely post anything. If I judged my success only by the rate at which people click the follow button on my profile, I’d be stagnating.
The number was never the point
I’ve been reading The One Thing recently, and it made a point that you will never have enough money if you don’t have a purpose behind it. Money only makes you happy when it’s a resource to support something you’re actually passionate about doing. Without that place to invest it, the number itself will never be enough, because there’s nothing to measure “enough” against.
This rule applies to all metrics, including follower counts. Just like money, an audience is a resource that you can direct to support your projects.
My main goal is to help people become better artists, that’s my actual life’s work that I picked. To keep doing that long-term I need stability, and part of that is buying my own apartment off book sales in the next 2-3 years. For that I need a certain number of waitlist subscribers, for that I need engagement on my posts, for that I need followers. Every number is just a stepping stone to fulfill a bigger purpose.
Purpose evolves too
You’ll probably get obsessed with different metrics at different points, and that’s normal. Right now you might just want more followers for yourself, and that’s a valid phase! Don’t rush past it looking for some artificial noble purpose behind it, if it’s enough to motivate you then live it fully.
Eventually increasing the number stops feeling like enough. That is the signal to dig one level deeper and ask what it was actually for. I used to be obsessed about followers too but now I want people to subscribe to my waitlist, later I’ll probably be obsessed with optimizing my cash flow when I will have it, and so on. I don’t know what will happen past that point, but you don’t need to see the whole staircase to take the next step.
