You Don't Need to Be Discovered… You Need to Be Recognized

**Matthew Gottesman** (0:02)
Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now let's get into it.
Welcome to episode 837 You don't need to be discovered, you need to be recognized. You don't need to be discovered, you need to be recognized. What am I really talking about here? Instead of constantly putting yourself out there into the world with your work, to say, pick me, pick me, gatekeeper, pick me, I want you to actually consider being so involved with your work for what you're here to do, that the right people recognize you, the audience finds you, the people who need your work find you, the people who you would want to partner with find you, right? The way I look at discovery versus being recognized as one requires gatekeepers and the other requires clarity.
Because I've witnessed a lot of people who built all kinds of things and said, I have to prove myself for, so these other people will pick me or have me come on the podcast, or they'll want to invest in me, or they'll want to this, they want to all these things. And it's like, you know, often the people who removed doing that and actually just focused on building from a place of clarity for yourself, you will attract the right opportunities. I mean, this is no different than anybody else we're talking about. You know, if you want to attract the right opportunities, the right people, the right things, just be yourself, build the thing, do the work, right? And so, but I've seen a lot of people give away much of what they built because they were trying to get into rooms that, you know, they were trying to prove themselves to or into new places or institutions or whatever. And, you know, I look at, well, some of what I want to talk about in this episode, the first one being is that why the entire idea of being discovered is a leftover from an era that no longer exists. Because what's happening now more than ever, and you're seeing this on social media, maybe not a lot, I'm seeing a lot, but that's probably because of the discoverer is algorithmically giving me that. But like a lot of people saying, you know, a lot of people being really real about their work, like, hey, here's what I'm doing, here's what me building in public, or here's me talking about it, or here's my thought and perspective on this, and here's what it really looks like. There's this new emerging, thank God, level of honesty that is taking place, and it's growing real audiences of people saying, hey, I like what you're talking about, I like your interests, and I like the things that you're doing, and there's value there, thank you. What do you need to give away? You just created the audience, you created the connection, you created the real, the reality, you created the truth, you created the discovery, you created the, you created all of it within the container that you just built. And so, I want you to consider the beautiful responsibility in that, and how you don't have to prove anything to anybody at all. I also want to talk about the fundamental difference between being discovered and being recognized, so that way you can get even further this point that I want to bring home. Also, why discovery required someone else's permission, and why recognition requires only your own clarity. So basically, oh, I need this person to get me, to allow me to be on the podcast. I need this person to do this, I need this person to do that. You know, I had a, this was an interesting experience. I had a PR person, very savvy, very digitally savvy, very, you know, doing some interesting things and doing some interesting people. And we met last year, and this individual was funny, was like, I was breaking down your brand. I'm like, yeah. And this individual was like, the funny thing is, you actually really don't need PR. I'm like, I know. And I was like, you know, and it's not to say that there's, I think, a time and place for it in some capacity, of course. I was like, but why this person said that to me, and they broke it down, they're like, because you have a connection with your audience. You have engagement like nothing I have ever seen before. For people who are like three times the size of you aren't even getting that same engagement, like because I care about the community I'm building. And then this individual said, and like you go on somebody else's podcast, it's like, weirdly, your audience would actually grow theirs probably more than theirs would maybe grow yours. You know, and it was, you know, this person was, you know, it was very kind, was very nice, you know. And I appreciated what this individual was saying. But the point being that was made was because you built your own thing, your own container, your own platform, your own purpose within it, you're not trying to get attention from other people to prove your model. You're just helping the people your model serves. And that's what that's about. And we all have that ability with the democratization of the Internet. That's why the gatekeepers are gone. Sometimes you get people who are like, I got to build this so that these other people can like it, so I can get on this podcast, and then I've got to prove by making this amount of money. It's like, who are you proving all this for? What's the life you're building is the question you have to ask yourself. I also want to talk about how the shift from institutions to direct trust has changed what actually produces visibility now. Institutions don't have the same thing that all of you all have. Because you have the ability to stand up a piece of content that's like, whether writing, speaking, video, whatever it might be, right? And having conversations around the passions and topics and the things that you want, directly to the people. And so we'll be like, oh, no, my account's small. I don't know if you know this, but the discoverer shows me small accounts all the time, small accounts, including posts that only had maybe like 20 likes. The algorithm's changed. It's just more about what the person's interests are. So now you have no excuse. I was going to talk about the specific work of becoming recognizable and what it requires of you, and then what becomes possible when you stop waiting to be discovered and start becoming impossible to miss.