The Value of Teaching People What They Need

as opposed to simply giving them what they want.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of appeasing crowds.

You look up the latest trends, plug into online gossip, focus on what’s going viral. You build upon the public’s incessant need for entertainment and diversion.

You substitute content with controversy, understanding with knee-jerk reactions, honest words with provocative language. . .

And why not? It’s simpler, relatively inexpensive, generates fast income and requires much less emotional investment on your part. And with so many social media tools on hand, marketing such content has never been easier. Use the right words, frame the right tone. . . and the shares, likes and tweets come rolling right in. The revenue usually isn’t too far behind.

Or you can go the opposite way.

You can choose to dig your heels in. You can choose to put in the time and the effort to create something useful, something important. You can do your homework and find out what people really need, as opposed to what they claim they want.

Creating meaningful content is always hard. Heck, anything worth doing in this world is always hard. But in a way, that’s what makes it so great. If creating good stuff, life-altering stuff was easy, everybody would be doing it.

It’ll be slow work, hard work. . . and there will be times when you’ll be so frustrated that you’ll just want to throw up your hands and say “To hell with it all!”

In such times, always remember this: it’s easy to start a fire. But it’s difficult to put out one. It’s even more difficult to create something that will soothe tempers and prevent people from starting infernos in the first place.

So strap on your seat-belts and prepare for a long and bumpy ride. Fight on with everything you have and move steadily on the path to creating meaningful work. Don’t fret too much about details like the current market trend: it’s more fickle than you can imagine. Instead, focus on educating people and making them realize why they should want what you’re offering. Help them understand what it is that they are truly missing in their lives, and how you can help them fill that void.

Who knows, you might end up changing the world along the way.

“The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs

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