You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
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Hi YATMers! I'm John Espirian. I used to be a software tester and then a technical copywriter but a few years ago I specialised in LinkedIn training.
I run the Espresso+ community and the UpLift Live conference, both of which are focused on getting better results from our marketing efforts on LinkedIn.
Despite living in South Wales, I've been attending YATM events in person since 2018!
I'm borderline obsessed with Severance. It's a bizarre and brilliant look at work-life balance. Take a free trial of Apple TV and binge it asap!
As an experiment, I'm running a smaller version of the UpLift Live conference in the form of UpLift Live Nano, a lunchtime learning event in Cardiff on 11 September. If this works, we'll run more of these around the UK! Come and have a look here.
You never know who might see what you’ve created, or what it can mean to them.
Holding back in the name of perfection, or the short route of pressing the AI button, or your own anxieties, hinder your most impactful work
There’s something that happens when we care about our work, we stall.
The longer we hold on, the fewer people get to see what we made.
This is a cycle that many creative and thoughtful people fall into, especially those who genuinely want to make a difference.
This article is influenced from a moment in a recent YATM Club, Swapsies session.
This is a knowledge sharing session where the focus was on video creation.
Matt King, is a talented person when it comes to creating video and shared his hesitation about publishing his work. This feeling resonates with many of us, we often look up to those we admire and feel that our own work doesn't yet measure up to our aspirations.
Tamara Howard replied with a response that made me think (hence progressing the ideas I want to share with you today). 52 seconds here.
“Even if you’re unsure, it might just be the thing that someone else needs today.”
It raised a question that sits alongside what I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
Are we creating to impress algorithms, or to make an impact on someone else?
The Trap Of Perfectionism
In 2019, I wrote about how perfectionism often masks something deeper, the fear of being ignored or misunderstood. In Striving For Perfection, I shared, ”Perfection becomes a wall we hide behind. But it’s a wall that blocks others from seeing what we stand for."
And even further back in 2017’s Normal Is The Differentiator, I challenged the belief that better always means more polished or more conventional. We don’t need to play in the same lane as everyone else.
This tension is still with us, only now it’s amplified by the platforms we publish on.
Social media makes everything feel like a performance. LinkedIn, for instance, is geared toward views, not value.
There’s pressure to hit the right tone, optimise the first line (I feel myself drawn into this even more), make sure you add a comment and watch for a number that tells you how worthy your contribution is.
You can work on something personal, thoughtful, useful, share it and receive four likes. It feels like a slap.
Those metrics are not a measure of impact.
They’re feedback on how the algorithm felt that day. Not whether your words resonated. Not whether they helped someone.
Perfection Is A Cost You May Not Need to Pay
When we always aim for something higher or the person we want to be, we hesitate and we take that step back.
Often, we never return. Every delay adds another layer of self-doubt. Every draft feels further from finished.
There are many unpublished drafts when looking in my Wordpress ‘posts’ where I just held back from sharing. In my head, it meant that no one would call me out or become the day I got it wrong.
It also meant that no one saw or potentially helped someone with an idea to progress.
Don’t Default To The Easy Route
This is where it becomes even more challenging today.
We can take a step back and feel we’re not ready or even worse let AI become the fallback for all our content creation.
It’s not because AI is bad, but it’s tempting to use it to avoid the discomfort of real creativity.
Perfection isn’t just delaying us, in 2025 it’s driving us toward convenience.
If we wait long enough, we might just hand over the entire job to AI tools. Then again whilst it can replicate our voice, can it capture our humour, heart, or the hill we’re prepared to die on?
When we hold back for fear of not being the person we think we want to be, we often sand down our uniqueness, the very things that make people want to follow us, trust us, and buy from us.
We trade the risk of being overlooked, for the safety of meeting people's expectations.
A Reminder From The Room
In that Swapsies moment, what Matt said came from a place of creative integrity, wanting to be proud of your work, to have it match your ideals. Tamara reminded us this:
Impact doesn’t always come from mastery. It often comes from timing.
Someone may need to hear what you’ve got to say, not next week, not in its refined form in the future, but now. That’s a reason to let go a little sooner.
Here’s what I wrote down after the session:
Share when it’s ready, not when it’s perfect
Share even when you’re unsure, especially when you’re unsure
Share to connect a thought, not to impress
Share to help, not to perform
Share because what you say might move someone else to begin
Creating for Visibility or Creating for Value?
This is the dilemma we’re in today, social platforms push us to be visible. But visibility often leads us to perform. The game becomes about reach, engagement and attention.
But attention isn’t your job. Value is.
This is why I continue to send you this newsletter. It’s not at the mercy of algorithmic favouritism. It doesn’t require gaming someone else’s system. A newsletter says, this is for you. One person. One inbox. Then we move onto next week.
Giving yourself deadlines for a day of the week you promise you’ll show you for other people. It does give you practice of repetition, so you can’t hesitate and miss a week, particularly if people have subscribed to hear from you.
You don’t need thousands of likes. You need a handful of people to say, “This helped.”
Redefining What ‘Good’ Means
When we say our work is not good enough or not quite ready, what do we mean? Not popular enough? Or not helpful enough?
Perfection is often measured by the wrong yardstick, slick visuals, crafted copy, high production. When we think about good work, it’s there to change people. It shifts perspective and builds trust.
I love this manifesto that Sonja Nisson and Sharon Tanton shared in Valuable Content.
Let’s Round-Up
If you’re sitting on an idea, a post, a sketch of an article, and you’re thinking, “Maybe not yet…”, the last thing you want is to feel held back.
Tamara’s point that “someone might need it today” aligns with “you never know who’s looking.”
Who might this help now? It’s a call to act now, not later.
Let that answer guide your actions.
The more we let our anxieties become the editor, the less our ideas have a chance to do their job.
What you share doesn’t have to change the world. It just has to change someone’s day and that is enough.
If you'd like to join in with our sessions in YATM Club, have a look at how the Club can be of benefit to you. Read more here and if you'd like I can show you before you commit, book a time here.
What can leave you feeling broken and dejected can end up defining you.
There are moments to take it on the chin, but at the same time acknowledge the opportunity that can be presented, which you will never realise at the time.
What doesn’t work now, can make an impact tomorrow.
What is important is that you keep playing, that’s an exhilarating place to be.
Creator Day '26 | Spread Your Payment Over Three Months
A payment plan is now in place for Creator Day '26 (May 14th).
The Early Access ticket is £165 until 18th July, but you can spread this across three months. This means £55 for June, July and August.
Let's get you up to speed. We're adding more to the week, other initiatives from around the country are bringing their 'seaside specials' to Poole. Have confirmations for presenters, whom you'll love. The after party now has a late license to 1am.
I have also started a fortnightly email that is just for Creator Day '26 attendees, that shares this whole journey that is full of twists and turns. We start together new, we end it in May '26. You can book here (and the choice to spread over three months).
You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
