YATM ✊ | What People Remember You For

Hi YATMers, I’m Dexter Dickinson, a marketing executive at Saline Business Services.

When I’m not working, you’ll usually find me spending time outdoors, whether that’s mountain biking, hiking or surfing.

Although living in Dorset means I spend more time checking the surf forecast and hoping for waves than actually surfing 😂.

I really enjoy the variety that comes with my role, no two days are the same.

For my recommendation today, I’m bringing back an older TV show which seems to never get old or stop being funny, Not Going Out on iPlayer. Lee Mack’s one-liners never fail to make me laugh and it’s a show I will always recommend whenever someone asks for something easy to watch.

Let’s make sure we connect today

Here I am on LinkedIn

Where I work here

You are not known for what you say you do. You are known for what people come to expect when you are involved.

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.

It Took Time For It To Click For Me

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.

How The Pattern Forms

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

Being known for something is not about self-labelling. 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:

I build spaces people return to and experiences people remember.

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.

Let’s Round Up

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

Share this with someone else 💌

youarethemedia.co.uk/what-are-you-known-for/

Time Wasting

Every day, one Wikipedia article that almost nobody has ever read.

Lonely Wiki

This Week Around The Web

GROWTH, CREATION & YOUR INDEPENDENCE

Why marketing agencies are in trouble - from Marcus Sheridan

👉 Most marketing agencies have failed to be truly creative.

When AI feels like a confidant: The illusion of privacy

👉 What happens to privacy when a system feels like a relationship?

THE COMMUNITY YOU CAN BUILD

Living between worlds - from the Minority Report

👉 How do we stay grounded in collapse and what's happening around us?

Making community happen - from Sarah Hawk

👉 If you build something your company depends on, the rest will take care of itself.

GROWING YOUR NEWSLETTER

Think of your newsletter as a media business - from Lex Roman

👉 Your mewsletter is not a funnel, it can be the business

Using SMS to amplify your email strategy - from Inbox Reads

👉 When you use email and SMS together, you’ll see a 97% higher click rate.

The people who come back to you...

The future doesn’t belong to whoever publishes the most, it who creates the strongest path back.

The goal is to build something people choose again.

Perhaps the question is no longer, “How do I get in front of more people?” but, “How do I create a place people want to come back to?”

That is the game now, not borrowed attention, but earned return and deeper roots.

Badges doing the rounds for Creator Day...

Matt (King) created a visual for people to share that they are coming to Creator Day, in May.

What's making this a fun exercise is that people are sharing pics with the backdrop of a holiday or their time with the beach behind them. This pic is with Claire Main, Stewart Perrett and Matt. Adds a bit more life, than boxes for profile pics.

If you haven’t booked yet, Creator Day goes up in April. Use the code yatmnewsletter to save £20. Lets get you in and part of it all. Book here.