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Creativity

Your Message Is the Medium

Tony Ramella
January 27, 2024

I was in one of these new age shops and saw some bracelet that said it helps improve communication.

You know, it would be nice if gaining communication skills were as easy as wearing a $12 magic bracelet and suddenly being able to give a Ted Talk. But its one of the most difficult skills to develop because it requires practicing in front of others, which means failing very publicly.

But communication skills such as writing, speaking, and negotiating are crucial to finding success. And guess what? So is failure.

“Communication is the only task you cannot delegate.”
—Roberto Críspulo Goizueta, former Coca-Cola CEO

I always wondered how people get really good at speaking on a stage in front of thousands of people – then later in life I learned that every one of those people started off by improving their communication skills gradually, from the individual level, then to smaller groups, then larger groups and so on.

I am not a professional communicator by any stretch of the imagination – but I am incomparably more effective at communicating than I was only a few years ago.

Having ADHD comes with its own set of communication challenges. We tend to interrupt, have subpar active listening skills and not to mention the rabbit trails. But the way I improved my communication skills wasn’t through taking expensive courses at a university. It wasn’t by wearing a magic bracelet. It was by becoming a digital creator.

Your message is the medium for making an impact in the creator economy, not the platform you are using.

If you message resonates with one person, it will resonate with many others like that one person. The role of the platform you choose to communicate your message on is simply to provide an audience distribution engine.

It is your creative energy and curiosity that produces the medium of your message itself. That means your communication medium is you. Nobody else can express your message the way that you do, which makes your medium of communication a personal monopoly.

Do you see how you don’t actually have any competition in the creator economy?

The way you uncover your unique message is by exploring your own thoughts and curiosities through writing.

Writing is thinking. As the great novelist E. M. Forster once said, “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”

To become a better communicator, first become a better thinker through writing.

– Ask questions
– Seek answers
– Evaluate evidence
– Question your own assumptions
– Argue against yourself

Your message is not only the medium, its your most powerful weapon as a creative. It’s what you use to inspire others, start movements, defend your beliefs, spread the truth, spark curiosity and compel complete strangers to buy your products.

So if your message is a weapon, writing and thinking are the skills that empower you to use that weapon effectively.

Feedback is the fire that forges and refines your weapon. Embrace feedback as a tool to improve your message. Don’t just welcome it, seek it out to keep your communication weapon sharp.

Publishing your content online is a valuable way to cultivate feedback and sharpen your communication skills while getting your message out to the world. Pay attention to what content fails and what content resonates with people. The content that fails will also contribute to improving your messaging because it provides valuable real-time insights on what not to do.

This is how you fail in public without having to face thousands of people face to face. Your audience in the digital world is real but invisible, making it a much less stressful way to fail in public. Apply the feedback of your online audience to your face-to-face communications to ease the process of practicing in front of others.

With that said, I am seeking your feedback. I write these newsletters in my own time, free of charge. In hopes that they inspire you to leverage your unique traits as a divergent thinker, by contributing to the creator economy.

Has this newsletter inspired you at all?
Has my message resonated with you?
What can I do to improve?
What would you like to hear more or less of?

Will you share a quick testimonial? It will only take a few minutes and its the best way you can help me stoke the fires of my creative.

In the meantime, stay curious my friend.

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Whenever you’re ready, here’s 3 ways I can help:
1. Flow Vault Pro for Obsidian: Get a complete writing OS in Obsidian with a don-for-you Luhmann style zettelkasten and a zettelkasten mini-course.
2. Zettel Monetizer Course: Become a synthesizer and monetize your note-making with a newsletter powered by your zettelkasten.
3. Book a call to work with me and turn chaos into creative clarity.

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