Back when I was an active amateur magician I'd always go to watch the annual “close-up competition” at our local club.

Close-up is the ultimate form of magic for me because it's performed right under your spectator's noses. And at a magic club competition, it's performed right under the noses of people who know most of the tricks, secret moves and subterfuges.

After watching competitions for a number of years I began to notice a pattern.

Very often some of the worst performers one year were the best the next year.

It really puzzled me. There were people who were consistently good year-on-year, but who were never quite good enough to win.

And then there were a few who were a bit embarrassing one year or made a lot of mistakes who then were brilliant the next year. Very often the winner was someone who had been pretty so-so the previous year.

Eventually, I kind of figured it out.

The people who weren't all that good had to be pretty brave to put themselves forward for the competition, knowing they'd be criticised and most likely wouldn't win.

That same bravery meant they performed regularly for laypeople rather than staying home in their bedroom practising in front of a mirror to try to get everything perfect.

And performing “for real” in front of real spectators is where real improvements come from.

You can only learn so much practising in front of a mirror. You can get the technical side right, but you can't learn audience management or angles, or performance skills or humour, or mastering “outs” for when something goes wrong.

The thing that made the difference was that the “not so good” performers were brave enough to get out there and do magic in the real world. And so they improved fast.

A year later they were often the best performers.

When it comes to creating content to market your business it's important that content is great. Be that articles, podcasts, a book, a presentation, videos or whatever comes next.

But the path to great content isn't to “sit at home and practice”. It's to get out and perform. Publish your content. Get feedback. Improve.

Great content comes from bad content in a way – as long as you're prepared to put it out there and improve.

I've said regularly that I cringe when I look back at my old blog posts and videos.

But if I hadn't done them my writing and presenting wouldn’t have improved.

And as it turns out, they were good enough at the time for where I was in my business. 

If you're ever hovering over the publish button on your blog or YouTube or wherever –  just press it.

It's the first step to greatness.