It takes an audience to achieve a mission. If you follow great organizations who accomplish their mission, you’ll notice one thing; they all do great at building an audience.
For instance:
One Day’s Wages: Eugene Cho launched a Facebook Page with a simple request. For everyone that joins, ODW’s will donate $1 to fight poverty. He now has close to 900,000 fans. Needless to say, he has an audience.
Invisible Children: They told a great story through video. Then they launched a nation-wide tour and asked activists to show their video. Soon they had an international audience, they became a voice for boy-soldiers in Uganda.
IJM: They have a cause like no other. They confront the EVIL of Sex Trafficking. Their founder, Gary Haugen, wrote a book in the 90’s. Then, they connected with Call & Response and shared their story by through music. They are on the front lines of rescuing human slaves because they told a great story and asked people to respond.
Mark Horvath: Who is the founder ofInvisiblepeople.tv., decided to drive across America, visit homeless communities and tell their stories through video, twitter and blogging. We all followed along, and our hearts were broken as Mark showed us the reality of homeless people.
Ben Arment: He launched Whiteboard Sessions and because (among others things I’m sure) of that he got a dream job at Catalyst, which he ended up leaving to pursue his own dream, Story. He’s also releasing a new book about church planting in 2010. How did he do this? Ben added value to thousands of people by blogging for many years. It cost him time, discipline and effort, but no money, and he was able to build an audience!
You may have a dream, you may be super intelligent, you can have a 45 page business plan with every “t” crossed, and every “i” dotted, but, if you don’t have an audience, there’s a good chance your dream will be stalled, and your impact will be minimal.
So the question we have to ask is, “How do we create an audience?”
I’ll post my thoughts on that tomorrow…
Excellent post + look forward to your thoughts on it as well. Even being in a band + with several musicians that always try to create literally the same thing, I’ve found it’s just not easy. No matter what you’re doing.
Especially something like mission.