My friend Reagan once said to me, “The magician isn’t impressed with their own tricks.” The idea is simple: it’s fun and exciting when something is new to you, but it’s no longer magical once you learn how the trick is done.
You’re in on the secret.
As a result, we seek out the next hit of magic (only to learn THAT secret and get bored once again).
I see this cycle among creators constantly. When things feel new and exciting, you work hard to master them. Once you’ve mastered them, others are attracted to you because of the magic you're performing. But at some point, you get bored and start seeking your next magical experience.
Many creators hop from idea to idea like this, never fully reaping the rewards of their mastery. And while they're bored, they forget that what they’re doing is MAGIC to other people! And performing magic for other people is what pays the bills.
When this cycle repeats, you end up with a fragmented audience that doesn’t know what you stand for. Just as they start to “get it” and become interested, you change gears, creating an experience of whiplash.
Unfortunately, that whiplash comes at the expense of audience trust. As Rachel Botsman recently told me, trust comes from competence and reliability. And reliability comes from consistency.
Therefore, big swings in your identity as a creator should be approached with caution because of their potential to drain your audience trust battery.
So when you’re bored with your magic tricks…what should you do?
Most Decisions Are Less Permanent Than We Assume
A lot of creators ask me about shifting the content they’re creating. They’ve lost the magic and want to talk about [new thing] instead.
This feels like a fork-in-the-road decision because humans default to binary thinking: good or bad, right or wrong, yes or no. But most decisions aren’t so black and white – there’s typically a spectrum of possible futures.
James Clear classifies decisions as hats, haircuts, and tattoos:
Some decisions are like haircuts. You can fix a bad one, but it won’t be quick and you might feel foolish for awhile. That said, don’t be scared of a bad haircut. Trying something new is usually a risk worth taking. If it doesn’t work out, by this time next year you will have moved on and so will everyone else.
A few decisions are like tattoos. Once you make them, you have to live with them. Some mistakes are irreversible. Maybe you’ll move on for a moment, but then you’ll glance in the mirror and be reminded of that choice all over again. Even years later, the decision leaves a mark.
Tattoo decisions should be few and far between.
Use Small Detours (Low-Cost Experiments) First
When you feel the urge to change direction, don’t consider this a fork in the road. Fork-in-the-road decisions get further and further away from the other path as time goes on. Instead, ask yourself if you can make a slight detour first. Detours diverge from the original path but can still get you back towards the original destination.
What does the detour look like? Instead of declaring that you’ll be talking about [new thing] from now on, what if you just committed to a [video/podcast/essay/post] talking about that thing?
This serves a few purposes:
- You'll follow your interest in discussing [new thing].
- You'll receive more data about your current audience’s interest in [new thing].
- You'll learn whether you ACTUALLY liked talking about [new thing] more than [old thing] or if you’re just distracting yourself.
- It doesn’t lock you into talking about [new thing] or abandoning [old thing].
I consider these low-cost experiments. They provide a lot more data without draining the audience’s trust battery. They are a slight diversion but not a totally new direction.
Creating low-cost experiments transforms what you consider a tattoo decision into a hat decision. If you find yourself approaching a fork in the road, look for a diversion instead.
Protect Audience Trust by Avoiding Abrupt Leaps
Each abrupt pivot risks the trust you’ve built because whiplash undermines reliability. That’s why small detours matter: they keep your audience on board while you explore new directions.
The detour can continue to diverge from the original path. But that slower transition may be the difference between scaring people off with sudden, extreme changes versus inviting them along for a gentle experiment to see if this new path suits you both.