Happy Monday, Creators 👋
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Welcome to Remarkable Monday. This is our corner of the internet where we get the inspiration and insights to crush our content goals for the week ahead. Make yourself at home and feel free to hit reply if you want to get in contact with me, your host. I’m Mark Patterson, and my hope for you this week is that you make it remarkable!
You don’t always realize which lessons stay with you…
In elementary school, I actually liked math. That version of me would probably be shocked to know a college statistics class eventually cured me of that joy… but before that, I loved the challenge.
Of course, I didn’t always get the right answer. And when I didn’t, my teacher wouldn’t just circle it and move on. She’d stop, look at my paper, and say, “Show your work.”
Because without the steps, she couldn’t help me. There was no way to see where I went wrong. The answer alone wasn’t enough.
That idea came back to me recently.
I was listening to my conversation with Jeff Cabreja on the ConvoRoom podcast, and he said something that seemed simple but stuck with me: his earlier content looked better but performed worse. Eat your heart out, perfectionism!
Why didn’t the polished content perform better? The messy middle was missing. No process. No tension. No story.
A defining moment
Now layer that into the moment we’re in. There’s so much conversation around AI right now. And it has accellerated the scale of content that con be produced. How can emerging creators like us keep up? Agents that can automate tasks, generate content, and manage workflows. I’ll be honest—I’m fascinated by it.
On the other hand, subject-matter expertise is not hard to come by. So what makes the difference is the personal connection we can build with the people we intend to serve.
So we have to show our work.
A week in review
If I zoom in on my own week, here are some highlights:
First, I’m consistently reminded that God is my source. Not my job. Not the client. Not the contract. And that means I can work from a place of rest—not wait until the work is done to finally rest.
Second (this one surprised me a bit), I think I actually like clients that are…a handful. I need to find a better way to say that, because no one wants to be called a handful. But you know what I mean. And if I’m honest, I think that comes from my grandma. She passed in 2016, and I adored her. She was layered. Strong-willed. To know her was to love her, and I certainly did. I was protective of her in a way, because I knew what she was made of—even when others misunderstood her.
The challenge for this week
So maybe the question this week isn’t, “What should I post?” Maybe it’s: Am I showing people the how and why behind what I’m building?
Because if all they see is the final answer, they can’t fully connect and learn from us. When you show our work, they can join in the process. Celebrate with us. Grieve with us. Champion us in the rooms they are in.
And that’s where everything starts to change.
If you’re reading this far… I hope this message finds you well. I’m sharing from my heart in hopes that you will be inspired to unearth and live out your God-given purpose. Hopefully, something I said resonated. I would love to hear from you if so. Please feel free to reach out to me on social media.
FYI: I’m mostly active on LinkedIn these days. If you were forwarded this message, you can subscribe here to receive thoughts like this directly in your inbox. And don’t forget to check out the latest episode of my podcast, ConvoRoom with Mark Allen Patterson.