10,000 Medium Followers in 66 Days
A Tale of Tech Doodles
Innocent Beginnings
On May 29th, I started a project without knowing where it would lead. In fact, I didn’t even realize it was a project — I just had a dumb pun stuck in my head: the mathematician Mandlebrot as “Mandle-BRO” and it exploded out into ink form.
Over the next three days I had drawn 7 doodles, and had many more brewing. My friend Jonas, a German code-producing powerhouse, told me to make them a Medium collection and to ‘brand’ my ‘content.’
As a marketer (I co-founded Fittr)this appealed to me, but I looked at my drawings, which at the time weren’t much more than this:
and couldn’t bear to call them cartoons, or comics.
So I tried to create “Doodles” — but Medium requires two words, so I slapped “Tech” at the beginning, without a lot of thought.
And I continued producing Doodles, though after day 7, I limited myself to 1 per day.
It was around this time that Tech Doodles blew up.
Things happened, quickly, and I really, really wanted to think it would last forever, but I didn’t think it would, even then. So I screen-captured everything, just in case.
And it began to slow down.
Like I knew it would.
At 14 days I wrote a retrospective that I titled, “What Two Weeks of Doing Something I Loved Taught Me.” I thought it was funny to write about my grand two-week experiment, but I was surprised that the article did pretty well (41 recommends).
And somewhere along the way I caught the bug.
I started believing in myself.
The Forgotten Tenth Muse, Daphne of Doodles
I’m a big fan of Austin Kleon. His books made me want to be an artist in the worst way.
His book “Steal Like an Artist” made a big impression on me, but it was his second book “Show Your Work” that kept coming to mind while I was Doodling.
READ IT. FIND YOUR MUSE.
Patreon-age
“You need to monetize.” — my startup friends
“How are you going to make money from this?” — my practical Dad
“The money will come.” — Jonas
I started thinking about Patreon around Day 50. It looked interesting. I had done a few successful Kickstarters/Indigogos in the past:
And I knew that they were a TON of work fraught with their own unique problems. Patreon seemed like a good way to get support for what I was already doing, while still putting pressure on me to produce.
…because I was beginning to feel a little resistance.
And On The Sixtieth Day: She F***ed Up
Shortly after announcing my Patreon, on Day 60, I missed my Doodle.
And I missed another.
And another.
I could make excuses (I was sick, I was tired, I made a weird error on Medium) but the simple truth is that I was feeling what Steven Pressfield in the War of Art calls ‘Resistance.’
Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8
Despite feeling like I never wanted to see a pencil again…
I got back to work.
And once I did, things began to flow like usual.
And Then, This Happened
I asked my Twitter followers and my Patreons what they thought I should do to celebrate 10k.
Callan said he’d really like a ‘first/back/random/forward/last’ toggle, the way XKCD has. Since I appreciate any comparison to XKCD, and because his was the only request that I received, I set about making that happen.
So now Tech Doodles has an off-Medium presence as well, for the devoted readers who want to see each installment. It only has about 3 Doodles on it thus far, but I’ll be uploading a few each day until I catch up.
I’m not giving up on Medium, though. I love Medium, and will continue using it. So don’t worry Medium-ers, I’m not fleeing.
(Besides, I’m a really crap web designer, so http://tech-doodles.com is almost unbearably ugly.)
The Point Is…
Thank you, Medium readers.
Every little ‘recommend,’ each highlight or comment, makes my day brighter, and makes me want to pick up my pen again.
Those of you who have already signed up on Patreon should be receiving a little something in the mail soon…
Thank you.
| Patreon | Doodle for Hire | LinkedIn |
