Showing Up

The Hotpot | January 2026 | By Lisanne

20.1

When we buy a ticket to the Arctic Monkeys, we already have an idea of what we’re going to get.

We’re buying into a specific experience—a sound and an energy they’ve spent years perfecting. We trust them with our Saturday night because they’ve proven, thousands of times over, that they know exactly how to hold the room.

A similar thing happened to my newsletter.
When people see The Hotpot today, they most likely notice its reach.

But reach didn’t come first.
To gain reach, we have to get comfortable with the embarrassment of showing up for an empty venue. To write for an audience that isn’t there yet. The venue eventually filled because there was something to be found.

It’s easy to look at the “stadium tour” and forget that every big stage started in the corner of a quiet pub.

We might obsess over the seating capacity—the follower count, and the likes—before we’ve even finished writing the show. Before we’ve given anyone a reason to buy a ticket at all.

However, filling a room with strangers is unlikely without first giving them a reason to care.

Instead, I published three times a week to what felt like an empty theatre for months.
Most of it felt like words sent into the dark. The work wasn’t answered back. Not yet.
Seventy-eight readers eventually became hundreds.

I think it boils down to something simple, but profound:

We have to give someone something to carry home from the street corner first, before they want to sit front row.

It means I had to show up for those first seventy-eight subscribers with the same heart as I do today.

So perhaps the secret to growth is paying the price of entry: the willingness to give your heart and soul to an empty room first.

By consistently training in the dark, we give ourselves the chance to learn what it takes to eventually become something worth watching.

Thanks for reading! Question of today:

Are you currently focused on the size of the room, or the quality of the performance?

Let me know in the comments!

Curious to see more reflections like this? Click through to see the rest of the series on success. I’d love to hear what resonates with you.