The Carpenter’s Guide To Online Branding: Sell Your SawDust.
You Need to Sell The Process
A jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Sam Rayburn
The average carpenter’s workshop is filled with tools, wood and piles of sawdust here and there.
When you step into a Carpenter’s workshop when he is about to start work on a particular furniture, there is nothing really remarkable there to see.
Of course you would see the usuals, wood, leather, and other materials used in building furniture.
But at the beginning stage, there is nothing there to really buy or admire, just a bunch of work materials.
When work starts, depending on what the Carpenter is building, it may take days or weeks to complete whatever he has set out to do.
However, despite the fact that there is nothing really there to catch your fancy, every evening, a certain individual would come to shed to pack something of value to them.
Sawdust.
To the carpenter, the sawdust may not really be of any significance, just a byproduct of his work, but the people coming to cart it away from his workshop needs it.
Some use it as fuel, some as a form on carpet in their poultry farm and so on.
To the carpenter the most important thing to him is the furniture.
And as he builds, he is confident in the fact that the world would value what he is creating.
The Carpenter in this story is You and the Sawdust is the different things that appear as a result of what you are building.
I chose to talk about this today because there are a lot of people who are hoarding their Sawdust.
They refuse to share it with the world and believe that people should only concern themselves with what they are building.
But that would always limit your opportunities.
You need to let people in on your process. As you open the door to them to pack your sawdust, they would have access to your shed to see what you are working on.
That would do more for you than waiting for when you are done building.
I talk with a lot of creatives and business people everyday and they believe that they need to show the world their work only when the perfect part is ready.
They hide their sawdust and refuse to give people access to it.
But the key to growth and Opportunities lies in your sawdust, if people can’t come and pack it, then they would have no chance to see what you are good at.
You would get more opportunities from giving people access to come into your workshop than trying to open it only when you have attained perfection.
How then would people know what you are good at?
And despite the fact that I used the word “Sell”. I am not necessarily implying a monetary exchange.
Let me share my story with you.
I started learning Product Design on April 1st 2019.
As at then, I had zero design skill, nothing I designed in those early days was worthy of being developed.
I still stumble now and then on my old designs and I smile because everything that made a design great were missing in them.
However in those early days, I didn’t care about how people saw my work.
My major desire was letting them know what I was working on. I was learning product design and everyone had to know about it.
So from my very first design that I did on April 3rd, I opened up my work to the world.
I posted it on my WhatsApp Story, got some reviews here and there and people who were good at design were quick to point out my mistakes.
However unlike most creatives, I used that criticism as fuel.
I took up the task to create one design concept a day and as I went through the process of learning, I shared every single output with my Audience.
I started and completed a 100 Day Design Challenge (yet to meet any designer who have achieved that 😌)
And by the end of the challenge, my progress was clear, people who were following my journey everyday, saw me get better and better at design.
They were impressed with my work ethic and expressed it.
Then the jobs started coming. People in my network wanted me to design their websites and applications.
By selling my Sawdust I was able to conquer a hurdle that faced many creatives.
Getting Clients.
In my mind, I knew that the output from my early days was never going to make it to development stage, but by sharing that sawdust with the public, their confidence in what I could offer grew.
They knew that I would be able to deliver whatever I was tasked with.
My sawdust which seemed worthless brought me opportunities.
Sawdust on the Internet is simply content.
Don’t just share the finished work, share the process.
This same thing applies to those in business and not just skilled people. if you sew and sell dresses online, don’t just post endless WhatsApp/Instagram stories of the 101 dresses you have made.
Show people what happened on the way to market to buy the materials.
Show them the process of measuring and cutting the sizes.
Show them what goes into making a dress.
People love stories. No one opens WhatsApp, Twitter, or Instagram in the morning to see the latest dress to buy.
They are coming to get informed, educated, and entertained.
Give them that in large doses and some of them would be more likely to buy your dress, because they watched it form.
Do this and watch more opportunities come your way.
People buy you before they buy your product.
Show the process. Sell your sawdust.
My heart was beating so fast as I read this. A J U L U🌋🌋. you shine light so much. This writing is like 'in the arena' by Chisom and they are all encouraging. Thank you sir
You spoke directly to me. I will make adjustment