Post Bad Content

When running a marathon, you’ll endure 26.2 miles of intense physical exhaustion in your desperate attempt to reach a clearly defined finish line (don’t ask me how I know this, I’ve only ever completed a half marathon). Unlike running a race however, content creators don’t have the luxury of knowing when a project is finished. Sure you may have a deadline to deliver something, but that doesn’t mean there’s not still work that can be done. Even worse, your deadline may be self-imposed, giving yourself this illusion that it’s okay to push things back until it’s “perfect.”

If you are chasing perfection, I give you full permission to stop right now and instead, begin posting bad content. Now, obviously I’m not saying you should intentionally sabotage your work or diminish the quality of your craft, but if you continue refining something until it’s perfect, you’ll one, never share it, and two, you’ll miss out on all of the learning moments that come with future projects waiting for your attention. One of the best quotes on this topic came from a guest speaker on my favorite podcasts, The Graham Cochrane Show. He said, “Use your time of obscurity to prepare for your time of popularity.” So what does this mean for us, and how does posting “bad” content help? Let’s discuss 3 things that happen when you publish a video and move on.

#1 - Your content library grows

The first, and most obvious benefit to posting imperfect content, is that you begin to develop a presence. One of the biggest challenges you’ll face as a content creator is the battle with obscurity. If nobody knows that you exist, how will they see the ultra-perfect, highly refined video you’ve been working on for the past 6 months? It would be far better to have 30-50 videos posted in that same time frame. They may not have quite the polish as a video you’ve obsessed over for half a year, but I promise there will be a noticeable improvement, and you’ll start making better videos faster.

Now, I won’t pretend that I have any knowledge of how the YouTube and social media algorithms work, I just know that more is better. Besides, if you’re not posting regular content, how do you even know if your ‘perfect’ video is valuable? You’ve not received any feedback from your viewers! Post bad content now, and by the time you’re discovered, you’ll be pumping out videos in your sleep that surpass what you once thought was considered perfect.

#2 - Your skillset develops faster

At this point, I’ve participated in hundreds of video projects, from filming, to editing, to even acting (I use that word lightly here). Every one of these projects has taught me something new that I’ve carried on and implemented into a future project. I’ve heard it said that “the quickest way to success is to double your rate of failure.” If you want to learn quickly and develop your skillset, you’ve got to be creating constantly, and expose yourself to as much of the process as possible. Is everything going to be a 10/10? Not even close, but that’s not the point. Go back and watch some of the first movies released by your favorite directors. Even they needed time to develop their craft.

Or another, more relatable example… me! I launched Guided Productions in August of 2025. At the time of this post, I’ve only published 14 videos on YouTube (with plans for many, many more), so the sample set is quite small, but even that tiny of a gap is enough to notice an improvement in production from my first video, to my most recent video. Be my guest, and laugh it up: Does Your Camera Really Matter? The irony of this video is that I shot it on an iPhone with pretty terrible lighting, but I learned immediately and made some big improvements. If that change can take place with only a handful of videos, imagine the difference after 50 or 100!

#3 - Your confidence surges

The last thing I’ll touch on is something of a psychological benefit to posting bad or imperfect content. When you create in a vacuum, there is no feedback telling what stinks. But there is also no feedback telling you what’s amazing. Just by merely posting something, you’re giving an audience the opportunity to be impacted by your message which is a pretty big confidence booster in my opinion. As long as the message is clear and relevant, viewers may overlook lower production quality, at least at first, and if you’re just starting out, this is the perfect time to learn.

There’s an expression used often in the corporate world of “building the airplane on the runway.” It doesn’t have to look pretty to fly. Not to mention, you’ll be able to see a pattern in the views, likes, and comments, that will help you better understand which content performs better and where you should spend the most of your time. As strange as it sounds, simply seeing your own video library growing can be enough to boost some confidence because you know that you’ve developed valuable resources on a topic and these resources are helping people. Keep going.

Bad, good, great, extraordinary

That’s it for today, my friend. I hope you find this encouraging, and can stop obsessing about the perfect video. A happy consequence of producing a lot of content is that it will naturally improve over time. Publishing a cringy video is still better than posting nothing at all, and what better way to monitor your progress than to look back at how far you’ve come! While there’s not always a clear indicator that a video is finished (if that even is a thing…), learn what you need to learn with each project and move on. Start ugly, learn, grow and amaze.