I was scrolling Twitter at my desk last week. That’s when I saw their profile. 16 years old. 91,400 followers. They joined in April 2021. Their art was incredible. The thought hit me. I’ll never catch up like that.

I’m 22 with 6,000 followers after a year of building. They’re 16 with 91,400 after about four years of posting. Six years younger, started only three years earlier, but they’re 15 times ahead. If I’d started posting when I was 19 instead of 21, even just those two extra years would have made a massive difference.

But here’s what really gets me. They didn’t even start at day one of learning art. They just started posting earlier than me. They were around 12 or 13 when they made that account. Even if they’d been drawing for a few years before that, they still chose to start building their track record while they were young and still learning. That’s the advantage. Not starting from absolute zero, but starting to build proof while you’re still in the struggle.

Most pros would pay to have what you have right now

Most pro artists I follow have the same problem. Their followers only see them after they got good. No record of the struggle. No proof they ever sucked at drawing hands or spent hours on a piece that came out terrible.

When they say “just practice fundamentals,” it doesn’t hit the same because you never saw them grinding through those fundamentals. You only see them winning.

Artists who kept their early work visible have something different. When you can scroll back six years and see them working on the same basics you’re working on now, then see them making incredible work today, you get that the gap is just time and work.

I had the chance to build that trust. To show people every step from terrible to decent to maybe one day good. But I waited. I thought posting bad work would hurt me. That was the mistake.

The lie that keeps you waiting

I thought I needed to reach some skill level before I deserved an audience. Why would anyone follow me when my anatomy was bad and my lines were shaky? I figured I’d practice alone, get good enough, then start building once I had something worth showing.

Every artist I looked up to seemed to have it figured out. Their feeds showed polished work. I didn’t see their early struggles, so I thought they must have gotten good before they started posting.

But most of them didn’t get good first. They just started before social media existed, or they deleted their early posts. Either way, they lost the record of their growth. Now they can’t get it back. No matter how good they get, they can’t go back and document their beginner phase.

You still have that door open. Right now. But the longer you wait, the more of your growth happens in private, and the less proof you’ll have later.

I threw away five years of proof

I spent five years making art before I started building an audience. Five years of studies, commissions for friends, failed pieces, all hidden in Discord servers and Reddit threads where maybe 700 people total saw my work.

Around two years ago I saw that without an audience, nothing I wanted would work. I couldn’t raise my prices without demand. I couldn’t teach if no one was listening.

So I made the accounts. Started posting every day. For the first nine months, almost nothing happened. Then on October 1st I posted a leg anatomy study that got 33,000 likes. I went from 500 followers to 6,000 in two months.

That’s when it hit me. If I’d started posting when I was 17, I’d have proof of five years of growth. New followers could see exactly how I learned my skills. They could watch me struggle with the same things they’re struggling with now.

Instead, I look like I showed up a year ago already knowing what I was doing. I can tell people I struggled, but I can’t show them. The proof is sitting in folders on my computer where no one will ever see it.

Building your track record is like building credit history

It’s not just about follower count. It’s about time. Having a long history of showing up and sharing your process.

When someone discovers you and sees you’ve been posting for five years, that means something. It means you’re serious. It means you didn’t give up. It means they can trust you’ll still be here next year. That’s credibility you can’t fake and you can’t buy.

I spent years getting better without building that history. When I finally started trying to charge real prices and teach people, I had no credibility because no one knew who I was. If I’d started building my track record on day one, even when my work was rough, I’d have thousands of people who watched me improve.

Being public changes everything about learning

Before I started posting my studies online, I barely did any studies at all. They felt boring because the only person who would see them was me.

Now I post every study I do. I share what I learned. I’m studying so I can teach thousands of people what I learned. That shift makes it feel worth it even on days when I don’t feel like drawing.

I’ve tried journaling about my day and my thoughts before, but it never stuck. The stakes were too low. Now I write every week and look forward to it.

When you have an audience, even a small one, you can’t just quietly give up when things get hard. People are watching. They’re learning from your process. That pressure keeps you going.

Use the advantage while you still have it

You have something right now that gets more valuable the earlier you start using it. The beginner phase. The struggle. The chance to show people the whole journey from the start.

Every day you wait, you lose a little more of that advantage. Every piece you finish in private is one less piece in your public track record.

Pick one platform where you already spend time. Make an account if you don’t have one. Write a bio that says what you’re working on.

Then post something from your process this week. A sketch, a study, a work in progress. It doesn’t need to be good.

That’s the first piece of your track record. The first proof that you’re building something over time.

If you don’t start this week, you’ll look back in five years and wish you had. I know because that’s exactly where I am now.