🌮 Tributaries

The other day I was on a hike with my daughter along the river, and I asked her if she had any New Year resolutions. She’s only 10, so she hadn’t given it too much thought, but she told me she wanted to be a YouTuber in 2025.

She’s already making YouTube videos for her channel, but she really wants to grow her subscriber count.

“But” she said, “I’d need a hundred thousand subscribers to get my play button!”

“Well how many subscribers do you have now?” I asked.

“Thirty-nine.” she said.

“Did you get all thirty-nine at once?”

“No.”

Conversations with children can go off on some wild tangents, so I’ll spare you the 30-minute interlude about scamming pets in Roblox games (I don’t know). But anyway, I told her what I’m telling you right now: in order to attract another subscriber, you have to make another video. And another one. You have to keep showing up and be consistent. And you should do that for as long as you enjoy making the videos. The subscribers will come from that effort.

And I think that highlights a disconnect between creators and our audiences that has become prevalent in the last 10-15 years. It’s the idea that my daughter had - that you have to go “get” subscribers/fans/customers to succeed. You can see it in many of these HustleBro YouTube videos:

• Grab 10,000 subscribers fast

• Get 1,000 fans in 30 days

• 30 days to $10,000/month

Hold on let me vomit real quick.

But the reality is much different. The entire point of social media is that it’s a gathering place for a crap-ton of people to discover new work. Your work. Your subscribers and fans are already there looking for places to plant their flag, people to follow. They will naturally flow to you when you create a tributary for them to follow. Just like I’m doing right now. Just like you will do.

I know this might seem like simple semantics, but I want you to internalize the idea that you don’t need to “do” anything else to attract fans except:

1. Make a thing

2. Repeat

There’s no need to grab, get, capture, snare, or trap new fans. Just go where the people already are looking for cool shit, and yours will catch their eye.

The other benefit of this philosophy is that it becomes 1,000% easier to write more content once you have a couple subscribers. People are more similar than what we like to acknowledge, so guess what, making the same type of content will attract more and more people over time.

I’ve written before about the same-ness of popular social accounts - once they find something that attracts many followers per video, they just do that same thing over and over. It’s pretty simple when you break it down like that.

Remember the pet scamming Roblox YouTuber my daughter watches? She has almost 2 million subscribers. She found her thing and has been making the same kind of videos for a couple years now.

As you start — or continue — in 2025 just keep this in mind. You’re only writing to attract that one person, and similar people will always follow. Now hit publish and go do something.