Known For The Promise You Keep

That expectation is not built in a day. It happens when people experience something from you often enough that they can describe it to someone else.

If people cannot say what you are about yet, the answer is not always a better description. A lot of the time, the answer is persistence, repetition, and working hard to prove it. 

For a long time, I could not clearly explain what I did.

I had spent my working life in creative and marketing agencies, so there was a familiar language around what work looked like. It was full of words such as strategy, content, campaigns and brand. That was the world I knew, but none of it fully explained what I was trying to build.

For years I struggled to make people care about YATM because they could not see themselves in the picture. A lot of what I shared was generic content marketing advice, but when people came to Lunch Clubs, it was clear that what mattered most was not just the learning, it was the camaraderie.

As I continued, I realised what I was building did not sit neatly inside industry convention. The themes were on self-sufficiency, audience building, visibility and community, but the real value was not in teaching a tactic. It was in helping people feel part of something bigger than themselves. That meant all the work started to come into the picture, as a way to share the proof.

Looking back now, patience matters. If the thing you are building is unusual, you cannot expect instant clarity from the outside world. Sometimes the understanding arrives years after the doing starts.

What I wanted to make with YATM had a community-led shape to it. People could step into it in different ways. It could be through a newsletter, events, or membership.

It was never just one product. It was a place people could keep coming back to. In 2024, we took the clearer stance of YATM as a professional learning community, but the shape had been there for years.

It took me time to understand that.

What I was really doing was building spaces and creating shared experiences. I was making places where people could return and feel part of something. That is different from simply publishing content or promoting a business. It is slower, more layered work. If your work does not fit into the usual industry labels, it will mean it takes longer for other people to recognise it too.

A moment where I realised this was the YATM Conference in 2018, I had normally been used to making smaller events, but when you have a room of 120 people for the whole day, it was the first time I realised I could build a place people felt a part of.

This is how I have come to understand it.

First, you do not get to decide your work is worthwhile, other people do. The work has to mean something to someone else. It has to serve a purpose in their life, however small that may seem at first.

Then, you have to accept that unfamiliar work takes longer. There are elements from YATM over the years that may have looked odd or out of place at the beginning (such as adding challenges at events), but make complete sense in hindsight because they helped create a feeling people now associate with us.

Then, repetition helps recognition. The more often people experience a certain quality from you, the more easily they connect you with that idea. People are drawn to what feels steady, familiar and recognisable. They do not want to have to work hard every time to understand what you are about.

Then, refinement deepens trust. You cannot assume that because something works once, it should never change. To remain relevant, you have to keep shaping the experience around the people you serve.

You protect the heart of it, but you keep improving how it feels, how it works, and how people step into it. If we stuck to what we started, an annual event would still be called the YATM Conference. In 2022 we changed the whole experience to Creator Day.

People do not return for novelty alone. They return for a promise they trust.

Being known for something is not about self-labelling. It is about a repeated association that helps other people to understand what you stand for. When your work becomes connected to a specific idea, it becomes easier for people to remember you. Hopefully, they’ll then tell other people.

This is what I want to be associated with:

That is not because I sat down one day and picked a personal brand. It is because over time, that is what people have come to expect when I am involved.

That is how an audience grows in a meaningful way. Not because everyone knows your name, but because the right people know what role you play.

That role does not have to make sense to thousands. It may only need to make sense to a handful of people who open doors, bring others in, and recognise the value of what you do.

I want people to know that whatever stage they are at within the YATM ecosystem, from the newsletter, to events, they are part of something with other people, who are on their side.

Your reputation is not built on what you claim. It is built on what people feel often enough that they remember it.

That is why it helps to know what you want to be associated with. Not so you can force it, but so you can keep strengthening it. The clearer you are on the promise, the easier it is to keep making decisions that support it.

Now AI increasingly summarises, recommends, and explains who people are, clarity matters. The people and systems around you need a clear association to latch onto. What is the idea that follows your name? 

If your work means something to one other person, then you are already building a reputation. You do not need huge numbers, you need the right people to understand the role you play and trust you.

That is how people become known for something, by staying with the work long enough for others to recognise the promise.