👋 Hi, I'm Nicholas Roberts. I create and perform music and write this daily blog.

I currently live in Los Angeles with my wife and golden retriever.

Email me: hello@nicholasroberts.io

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Over time, most creative projects and businesses lose their edge.

In the beginning, the founder used their taste and opinion to start something new and move the culture in a new direction.

It was an experiment that might not have worked.

But as time goes on and more followers find themselves using and engaging, the project starts to get rounded corners.

It finds its way to the middle of the pack—a little less innovative and a little more predictable.

Every new listener, follower, fan, or customer asks for more of the same. What attracted them to the project in the first place was its novelty. What kept them around was its consistency.

Consistency isn’t bad. It’s just not groundbreaking.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

If innovation attracted the first audience, it can surely attract a new one too.

If the reason you started your project was to appeal to everybody, then getting really good at making the same things over and over is the fastest way to expand your reach.

If you want to counteract this shift, you have to intentionally pivot.

What you make next won’t be for everybody. And it may not even be for the people already here.

That’s OK. That’s the point.

Making something special is different than making something again.

Embrace it.