April 26, 2026

Reader question re Awareness vs Action

Friend-of-the-list and Ditcherville all-star Clemens Adolphs replied to my last message (subj: Awareness vs Action) to ask a follow-up question (shared with permission):

But isn’t one the prerequisite to the other? If the action I want to inspire is, “buy my stuff”, I kinda have to make them aware of my stuff.

Fair question!

Thanks to CA for the opportunity to clarify...

I can think of hundreds - maybe thousands - of people who I’m aware of that do not inspire me to take action of any kind.

The extremely small list of people who do inspire me to take action are essentially anonymous (in internet terms).

Making an effort to increase the number of people who are aware of you will have no effect on your ability to inspire action in those same people.

If what you want is to inspire action, and you can’t do it with the people who already know you, making yourself known to more people will change nothing.

It’s a separate thing entirely.

(BTW - I’m not making a judgement call about which is better. Different tools for different jobs.)

Yours,

—J

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