“Does your story resonate?”
It’s easy for me to teach. It’s a lot harder to practice.
Writing can be an entrepreneurial endeavor. Create something from nothing AND try to earn a living from it. If doing the first part only, that’s awesome! It doesn’t have to be a business.
For example, I’m learning to play the guitar. In that endeavor, I create something from nothing (on a really good practice day). It’s a hobby. I have no (current) intentions of selling my music.
My writing, however. This is an entrepreneurial endeavor.
So my stories, just like a business pitch deck, need to resonate.
The best way to find out if a story (pitch) resonates, is to tell it over and over again, to as many stakeholders as you can, and see what lands. The problem is, most of us entrepreneurs, we mistake a strong signal for resonance.
I teach this. I call it “Resonance Marketing.”
But this isn’t a “how to” essay. It’s a “this ain’t easy” personal story.
And in my case, I was doing something even worse than missing resonance. I was putting a barrier between you and my story.
Okay. Enough of that. Here’s the story of how I’m struggling with one of the very principles I teach.
It all started yesterday, when my sister texted me:
“Tried to read the real food article and got stopped by a paywall. 🤷♀️”
That set off a cascade of events leading to me abruptly taking down all the paywalls from stories in DiMeo Unfiltered (this publication). And then I followed that up with an, also abrupt, tweet:
“Fuck the paywall. #DiMeo_Unfiltered is free. Always.”
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit how much of my life I’ve spent fretting over this damn paywall decision.
To paywall or not to paywall? That’s the question. It’s a Whole Mind Game and I’m failing. (If you don’t know the game, I’ll link it at the end).
My original plan on both Medium and Substack was to make everything free, all the time. I’m not really interested in making money from this writing. Sort of.
I did say that writing was an entrepreneurial endeavor for me. So money has to come from somewhere. I just never expected money to come from a paywall. There are other sources.
This is what I refer to as my Grateful Dead philosophy. Jerry Garcia and company let anyone record their music and they ended up being one of the most (if not the most) listened to bands in the world. Financially, they did fine. The money follows.
What I wasn’t considering when I started this whole thing was the business models of Medium and Substack. Both of these platforms (where I’ve chosen to write) make their money when writers convert readers into paying members.
If everything is free all the time, those companies don’t make any money. If they don’t make any money, the whole platform collapses.
I justified that putting my writing behind a paywall was in an effort to support human writers. The better the platforms do, the more money gets flowing, and the more writers producing quality work can get paid.
It’s also a win-win for the algorithm. If readers convert to paying members, the algorithm will share my work to get more conversions.
This way, the incentives align.
Or do they?
Aligned incentives is a strategy, not a signal. And, even if I get a strong signal, I’m not sure it’s the one I want.
I want resonance.
Here’s where I think many of us entrepreneurs can go off the rails.
In my commercialization mentorship, that term I mentioned earlier – Resonance Marketing – I thought I made it up. As it turns out, the metaphor is already in practice. The problem is, I’m not entirely sure the message is landing.
One such example I found was from Erik Sherman at Inc. Magazine who writes, “good marketing needs to sit on valid principles. One at the heart of good marketing is resonance.”
I love the imagery Erik uses to describe the resonance that happens when blowing over a bottle at the right angle to produce a musical tone. And another one where he describes a luthier tapping wood to find the right resonance for a violin.
They are beautiful images and there’s a lot to like about this article (I’ll link it at the bottom). But the frame is still primarily about hitting the right note for the audience.
“…for the audience” is table stakes. No audience. No business. The part we forget. Does it resonate with me? Does it resonate with my business?
If I’m making instruments and producing music that huge audiences flock to, that doesn’t always mean it moves me.
The physics example I like to draw from is tuning forks. If I ring my fork, without touching, your fork will start vibrating. But the same holds true in reverse. If your fork is vibrating and mine is silent, with resonance, I’ll start to ring.
This can be harmonious. It can also be destructive, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. In 1940, wind hit the bridge’s natural frequency and shook it apart.
This is why soldiers break stride when marching over bridges. If the frequency of their march matches the natural frequency of the bridge, the structure could collapse.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs mistake a strong signal with resonance, or they overreact and it becomes destructive resonance.
If I’m getting tons and tons of readers, but I don’t like myself, that’s not resonance. That’s really no resonance at all. The audience are tuning forks. If they start vibrating after I send my signal, but then when I listen, my fork remains silent, that’s not resonance marketing.
That’s soulless marketing.
Or maybe I’m getting a ton of readers and they dig what I say, and I’m digging it, too! But I take it too far. I amplify to win, and forget the “why.” The signal is real, the resonance is real, but it becomes destructive.
That’s the kind of marketing that builds a bubble destined to blow.
What I’m looking for is a strong signal, and one that harmonizes with my authentic self.
Most mainstream definitions of resonance marketing assume the brand has a signal and ask whether the audience picks it up. I’m asking whether the signal coming back makes me vibrate when it returns.
That’s true resonance.
Tons of customers that drive you nuts. Significant revenue that makes you feel empty inside. The image of success but the feeling of failure.
That’s not resonance.
The Grateful Dead had a true signal first. The audience resonance followed. They didn’t engineer the connection. They cleared the channel and let it happen. The money followed.
For me, this whole paywall decision wasn’t just a distribution decision. It was dampening my own tuning fork.
Right now, if I’m honest, I’m still getting in tune.
Author’s notes:
Read my reference from Erik Sherman at Inc. Magazine here.
Early in this essay I reference The Whole Mind Game. Check that out here.
Thank you for reading.
Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.
— Andrew
😂 Honestly, paywalls for content is just annoying. The model works for people giving financial trading advice or niche tactical advice on a given topic… it doesn’t apply outside of that value-exchange context
Andrew, I learned a lot from this one, thank you.