Last year around this time I was finishing up 31 Days to Finding Your Blogging Mojo when I had an epiphany sparked by two specific things.
I had spent the day at the ECHO Conference in Dallas seeing old friends and making new ones, and I was slightly bummed because no one had said anything to me about my latest ventures: The BlogRocket Booster Course and The BlogRocket Blogger Community. A few people had come up to me to say they read the blog and appreciated the humor, but it was like no one knew about the things I had been pouring myself into of late.
While I was having this ridiculous little pity party for myself I sat through Jon Acuff’s keynote talk at ECHO, which killed. There might not be a more suited audience for Jon, and he absolutely slayed them. I sat there in my seat feeling a little jealous because I wished it was me making everyone laugh, and that’s when the epiphany came.
I had gone from being upset because people thought I was funny but didn’t know I was trying to help bloggers with my new company to all of a sudden wishing more people thought I was funny. What the heck? As my friend Chris and I went back to the hotel I was so confused. Am I a schizophrenic or was I just tired from catching a 6am flight?
That’s when it hit me. For me, humor is not something I can turn on and off. Trying to be funny is at the core of everything I do, so no matter what it is, even if it’s writing a blogging book, I have to try and make it funny. I have to pour as much of myself into it as possible.
The funny thing is, as soon as I realized that I instantly became 300% more excited about finishing the book. I made the unorthodox decision to include jokes between every chapter, I put as much humor into each page as I could, and I even included this ridiculous note right before the book’s intro:
Does everyone appreciate the humor? Of course not. I get at least 5 people a month on Amazon who get refunded because the book falls flat for them.
But I love the way the book came out, and as I tweeted yesterday, seeing the book as the first result when you search “blogging” on Amazon will never NOT be crazy to me.
I am so amazed and grateful for everyone who encouraged me, promoted it, and read it.
My whole point in sharing all this is to encourage you to put as much of yourself into the projects you are working on. (and if you’re having a real hard time doing that, maybe you have to ask yourself if it’s a project you should be working on in the first place?)
People are smart. They can sniff out a fake a hundred miles away. The more of you that you can put in, the more authentic your (fill in the blank) will be. So keep striving to find that authentic voice (it can be a lot of work) and keep putting yourself out there even if it’s a little frightening. That fear just might mean you’re doing something important.
The truth of the matter is, in the end we don’t just want something that’s FROM YOU, we want something that’s FULL OF YOU.