Why Your Best Work Is Invisible: The Hidden Genius Dilemma
GROWTH IN REVERSE PODCAST - Why Your Best Work Is Invisible: The Hidden Genius Dilemma
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Chenell Basilio: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. Today's episode is a little personal and probably the most important thing I've ever talked about on the show. There's a quote from Les Brown that I keep coming back to. It says, the graveyard is the richest place on earth because it's here that you'll find the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step.
That wrecks me every time. You see, I've spent thousands of hours studying how creators grow. And the single biggest pattern I see holding people back is talented, people creating genuinely great work and then never putting it in front of anyone. I like to call this the hidden genius, and today I wanna walk you through what that means, why it happens, and what to do if you're stuck in it.
Okay, so here's a framework. After studying hundreds of creators, I realized that every success story comes down to just two variables. The first one is momentum. Momentum is the level of awareness that you might have as a creator. When you have it, [00:01:00] growth gets easier. Opportunities start showing up. People share your work for you.
Things start moving without you pushing so hard every single time. But when you don't have momentum, every piece of content, it feels like you're shouting into a void. You put in the work, you hit publish and crickets. The second variable is what I call insanely valuable content. You might have heard me talk about this before, but essentially it's the kind of work that makes people reply to your emails saying, I cannot believe this is free.
They'll share it without you asking. Now insanely valuable content usually helps someone make money, save money, save time, learn something, or be entertained or speed to market. Now it's the difference between meh, that was okay and wow, I need to send this to a friend right now. And so you've got these two variables, right?
Momentum, insanely valuable content. When you think about it, creators fall on those two scales.
So we've got these two variables. First, momentum, second, insanely valuable content. And when you think about where any creator [00:02:00] falls on those two scales, you'll end up with four different types of creators. The first creator is someone who has weak content. It's definitely not insanely valuable, but they don't have momentum either.
And I call this the don't stay here section. Honestly, this is where most people start, right? You're figuring out what's working. Your content isn't super great yet, and nobody knows who you are, and that's okay. But if you've been at this for a while and you're still in this spot, something needs to change.
The second type of creator is one that has tons of momentum, so they are showing up on social everywhere. They're gaining that momentum, but their content isn't matching the effort. I call this hard mode because you might be great at social media, at driving attention to your work. Maybe you have a big network or something like that, but when people actually start to consume your work, they're actually let down.
This one's painful because you're so close, right? If you just put more effort into the work instead of the momentum side of things, everything would click. The third type is what I call a rising creator. Now, this is the sweet spot. These are the [00:03:00] people you see online that you're like, man, I just don't understand how they're growing so fast.
Their content's always so good. Your content's genuinely great, and you're consistently getting in front of people. The work compounds, people share it. Growth starts feeling easier. This is where you want to be, right? Then there's the fourth type, and this is the one I wanna spend the rest of this episode on because it's the most important to get out of if you're stuck here because it's just so painful for me to see.
Uh, I call it the hidden genius, like I mentioned before. Now, this is the creator who pours their heart and soul into creating something genuinely good, insanely valuable. They spend days, weeks, sometimes months on one piece of content. But then they don't promote it. They're too afraid, they're too uncomfortable, or they've convinced themselves that self-promotion is beneath them.
They might hit publish. They don't tell anyone though. They don't share it on social. They don't send it to friends. Their work just sits there. Undiscovered, and I see this all the time. So many creators are deeply talented, [00:04:00] deeply committed to their craft, but they're so focused on making the great work that they completely neglect the other half, which is getting it in front of people so that they can see it.
So why do creators end up here? Well, I think there are three layers to this, maybe more, but 90% of them boil up to this first one. Fear. Fear of looking dumb, fear of getting feedback. You don't want to hear fear of saying something stupid in front of people. You respect fear that this thing you're so tied to, so excited about not getting the reaction you hoped for.
You've poured yourself into this, what if nobody cares? Or worse, what if people actively tear it apart? You always hear about those negative comments online and think, can I handle that? Can I sustain having people throw garbage at me after I've poured my heart into something? And the fear of what people close to you think is its own beast.
Friends, family, old coworkers, oh, she's doing that newsletter thing now. There's a vulnerability to putting creative work out there that touches something deeper than just business [00:05:00] strategy. Now, I'm not gonna pretend this isn't scary, and I think anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or has forgotten what it felt like at the beginning.
So if we look past fear, the second layer is perfectionism, and this one's a little sneaky because it disguises itself as having those high standards. It's you thinking you're spending the time to create insanely valuable content when you might already be there and you're perfecting something that doesn't need to be perfected. As a creative person, you have good taste, and that's probably what pulled you into this in the first place. You can tell the difference between the work that's mediocre and work that's exceptional, and when you're starting out, there is this painful gap between what you can recognize as great and what you're currently able to produce.
Ira Glass, the host of this American Life, said this better than anyone. He said, all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste, but there's a gap for the first couple of years when you're making stuff. What you're making isn't so good. It's trying to be good. It has the ambition to be good, but it's not quite that good.
And your taste, the thing that got you [00:06:00] into this game is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. He goes on to say that this is where people quit. They can't stand how far away their work is from their own standard, and without realizing that it takes time to close that gap.
Everyone goes through this. Everyone starts from zero, but the only way to close that gap is to keep making things and keep improving as you hit publish, and as you build your creative library. This perfectionism keeps so many people from ever hitting publish, and even when they do hit publish, it keeps them from telling anyone about it.
Because what if someone actually sees it and it confirms your fear that it's not good enough yet? And then there's a third layer I. This moral objection to marketing, even if you muscle past the fear, even if you wrestle the perfectionism to the ground. A lot of creators, especially the really thoughtful ones, have this visceral reaction to anything that feels like marketing.
You see the sleazy tactics, the clickbait, the hype, the noise, and you want [00:07:00] no part of it. You think, I'm a creator. I make things. I'm not gonna be that person who's always pushing their stuff. And I get that. I truly do. But by avoiding all promotion, you're handicapping your own growth. And here's the thing that completely shifted my thoughts on this.
If your work is genuinely valuable, you are doing a disservice to the people who need it. By not sharing it, you have this knowledge, this creativity, this perspective that actually could change someone's day. They're week, maybe their whole trajectory, and you're keeping it to yourself because you hate marketing.
Now, promotion doesn't have to be sleazy. It can be as simple as telling a friend, posting on social or sending an email to your list saying, Hey, I just made this thing. I'm kind of proud of it. I hope you enjoy it. But if you're making no effort to get your work in front of people, you're going to have a really hard time building an audience and growing your reach, and most importantly, making enough money to keep creating.
We need your work in this world. And so this one kills me when people just won't market because they don't like marketing. [00:08:00] You're not just handicapping your growth, you're keeping your work from the people who need it most.
Here's a story I think about a lot in this context. Vincent Van Gogh, he sold one painting in his lifetime, just one. The man is now considered one of the greatest painters in history, and while he was alive, almost nobody cared. His genius was only discovered after he was gone, but that wasn't by accident.
His sister-in-law, Joanna Van Gogh Bonger became his promoter after he died. You've probably never heard of Joanna, but she organized exhibitions. She loaned his paintings to galleries. She wrote letters, made connections. She spent decades getting his work in front of the right people. Eventually it worked.
Van Gogh became a household name, but it took someone actively, relentlessly putting his work out there for that to happen. If Joanna hadn't done that, his paintings would've died with him. The starry night would be sitting in a dusty attic somewhere. Doesn't that break your heart a little bit? Even Van Gogh, one of the greatest painters who ever lived, needed someone to promote him.
His genius alone [00:09:00] was not enough. Now, I'm not saying that our newsletters and podcasts are in the same level as, as his paintings not at all. But the underlying truth holds there. If you're sitting around waiting to be discovered, you're going to be waiting for a long, long time, And the reality for creators is that you probably don't have a Joanna.
Nobody is going to come along and spend decades of their life championing your work for you. So you have to be your own Joanna.
Okay, so if you're hearing all of this and thinking, yeah, that's me, but I still can't bring myself to put stuff out there, I just wanna share something practical with you.
There's a creator named Colin Landforce who posted something recently that I loved. Colin is well known in the golf space for short form videos. He knows what hits what flops, and he actually teaches other creators how to create content like this. But when he first got started a few years ago, he didn't start with golf.
He started with basketball cards. Now he loved basketball cards, but he wasn't trying to build a career around them. But he picked that topic [00:10:00] specifically because he knew he could talk about it over and over again to quote unquote break the seal of content creation. He used basketball cards to figure out the mechanics of what works, what formats hit, when to actually put yourself out there, and how to do it without freezing up.
How to handle putting something into the world and seeing what happens. And when he eventually made the switch to golf, he had already built that muscle. The fear and uncertainty of being a complete beginner. He'd already burned through it on basketball cards, and I love this framing. Find something you're willing to screw up so that you can learn what works.
Because the irony is that when we find our true thing, the topic we're so deeply passionate about, it actually becomes harder. To share The stakes feel higher. You wanna do it right? You're terrified of messing up, but there's a learning curve to putting yourself out there. There's a format to figure out, a muscle to build, and sometimes the smartest move is to practice with something that feels lower stakes, just so you can get the reps in.
Start somewhere just so you can try this thing, [00:11:00] and then when you bring those skills to the thing you actually care about the thing you really want to dedicate the next few years or even your life to. You're not starting from zero. You've already built the confidence and the mechanics. The seal has been broken.
This is one of the easiest ways to escape the hidden genius trap,
but there's a vicious cycle, right? If you don't escape this trap. This is what happens, and I've watched this play out with so many creators. You spend a ton of time on a piece of content. You're scared. You don't share it, nobody sees it, you don't get any feedback, you don't get good feedback, you don't get bad feedback, and that absence of feedback feels safe.
So you start the next thing and you don't share that one either. And now you're stuck in a cycle where your best work, the stuff you spent the most time on, the stuff you care about the most never actually reaches anyone. You don't know where to improve because you're not getting that feedback. You don't know what's resonating and what isn't, here's the part that might sting. You might not even know if you actually enjoy the [00:12:00] topic or just the idea of the topic. You won't figure that out until you've posted about this a few dozen times and paid attention to how it feels to you. And without sharing, you're never gonna get there. You're stuck in your own head, just guessing and wondering.
And sometimes the reason work stays hidden is because it hasn't been tested yet. Feedback is what turns good work into great work. Without it, you're polishing something in a vacuum. Now, I wanna be honest with you here, this never fully goes away. Every time you start something new, this can creep back in.
I used to write deep dives every week, putting in 40 to 60 hours into each piece. This was the thing I became known for the reason people shared my work with others. And when I pulled back on deep dives because I wanted to do a podcast and launch a community, I had this voice in my head saying Anything I publish that wasn't a full deep dive, wasn't worthy.
So I stopped talking about my work on social media. I stopped telling friends about new pieces. Sure, they went out to the email list, but that was it. I didn't promote them. I didn't talk about them. [00:13:00] They just went out. And you know what happened? People actually loved the shorter pieces of content. Some of them even thought the shorter posts were deep dives.
So who was I to decide that my own work wasn't valuable enough to promote starting the podcast? Brought back the same feeling, launching the community again, same thing, experimenting with video. Each new format brings a new, fresh wave of this feeling like this is probably not good. This probably sucks because you have that gap between what you know you want it to look like and where you are right now, and that's going to happen every time you do something new.
But that's okay. We just have to get comfortable with this feeling of uncomfortableness. So the answer is always the same here. Just share it anyway, and you'll figure out the rest as you go. Your genius is way too important to stay hidden, even if it's scary. Even if you don't feel ready, even if you're not sure anyone will care.
Just share it anyway. Tell a few people, post it on social, send it to a friend. You don't need some grand launch strategy. You just need to break through that silence. [00:14:00] The world needs fewer hidden geniuses and more people brave enough to share their own work. Please don't let the graveyard be the only place that gets to enjoy it.
If this resonated, I'd love for you to share this episode with a creator. You know who might need to hear it? Seriously, if someone came to mind while you're listening, send it to them. That's the exact kind of thing I'm talking about here. You sharing something you think is valuable with someone who needs it, and if you want help building the momentum side of the equation.
Which is the other half of the framework. I put together a free guide that walks through the exact tactics I've seen work hundreds of times with different creators. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.
