“Show your work” is a really big idea; It’s important, empowering, clarifying and totally not mine.
It’s come up a couple times here in the Podcaster Community, and with this Spotlight I want to challenge each of us to explore this idea more fully. Discover this idea. Understand it. Believe it. Embrace it. Integrate it. Then…
Show your work.
What exactly is “show your work”?
The phrase bundles up several ideas from Austin Kleon’s, Show Your Work! . Kleon urges—I’m vastly over-simplifying here!—creatives to share their processes, not just their final products, in order to build meaningful connections. He emphasizes the importance of daily sharing, teaching what you know, and telling compelling stories about your work to engage and inspire.
The Podcaster Community itself is me teaching what I know… in a space where you can also teach what you know. Yes, in the Podcaster Community I’m showing you my work.
I believe this book is mandatory reading for indie podcasters. I wish someone had shoved it into my hands (cf bibliofervor, as I’m doing to you now) the day before I started thinking about podcasting.
If you aren’t already embracing “show your work”, you will be mentally pushing back against what I’m saying here. I understand that, and I very much want to ALSO hear your points during this Spotlight.
Show your work quickly became an Internet movement. Go anywhere and search for it. You’ll find #showyourwork or show-your-work has search results and dedicated tags and categories on every internet platform. Also 
it’s a huge rabbit hole, time sink. Please don’t judge the idea by what other people consider to be their work. This is a rabbit hole; Go around it if the idea is new, or already feels overwhelming.
Ready?
Sorry, you have to read the book. It’s small format and short, so you can power through it in one sitting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here’s a taste…
Yes, bonus points if you use my Show Your Work! affiliate book link. But however you get a copy, you need one. (I personally use https://abebooks.com a ton.)
People like us read things like this.
Set…
I have one question I want to use to drive our discussion…
What would people see, if you actually showed your work?
Yes, we’re podcasters, but what—be extremely specific—is the actual work that you do?
And we all know—indie podcasters, amiright?!—we do many things. Which are necessary? Which are nice-to-have? Which (oh my!) should I actually stop doing?
Rats, this is going to be a list, isn’t it?
Yeup, figuring this out is a critical part of Kleon’s entire idea.
This is not the same question as where and how are you to show your work. That comes after you figure out…
GO!
What would people see, if I actually showed my work?
~ You, just now!
