Are You a Mushroom Marketer?

In a dense forest, mushrooms sprout quickly after a rainstorm—sometimes literally overnight.

Give them moisture and decaying matter, and they’re happy.

But within days, they wither and decay.

They die almost as fast as they come alive.

And while their impact on the environment isn’t nothing, it doesn’t last long or reach too far.

Oak trees take the opposite approach.

Its growth is slow—initially barely noticeable.

But decades later, the oak is still standing.

It’s become a towering, unshakeable giant, with roots digging deep into the ground.

The oak has survived through all kinds of crazy weather.

And it has a massive impact on the environment, providing shelter, food, and oxygen.

When it comes to your creative career, I’m sure I don’t need to guess whether you’d rather be a mushroom or an oak, right?

Most of us are clear on wanting a long-lasting career.

But when it comes to the marketing side, a lot of artists are mushrooms:

Opting for the fast and (seemingly) easy route but “decaying” shortly after.

“Mushroom marketing” is a pervasive problem, but it’s also understandable.

You put everything into your art, then you’re expected to put the same energy into a whole other thing.

It can feel like a new world, too.

Sometimes completely detached from the creative process you love so much.

So, even though you’re an oak in art, you’re a shroom in marketing.

Mushroom marketing is also understandable because it’s human nature to seek the path of least resistance.

Our brains like to conserve energy.

So, we look for patterns and paths that do that whenever we can.

It makes sense that we’d do this for the gruelling job of marketing, right?

Of course we want that path.

You might understand (and feel) this stuff.

But you’re also smarter than that.

You know the fast, easy path is not the way to go.

You know we humans thrive on growth and challenge.

And you know that for your creative career to flourish, you need to become an oak not just in art, but in marketing too.

If you’ve been with me for a while now, you probably value real long-term growth.

You’d have to—if all you cared about was short-term growth you would have left me already because I refuse to be a part of the ever-growing desert of useless, surface-scratching advice.

And this is where it gets tricky.

Because as much as you might value oak marketing, you may still unknowingly be a mushroom marketer.

How?

Surface—Level Saturation

The intensely frustrating way social media works is that it rewards content people respond to, not necessarily what’s good or right or real.

That means you could make content that’s…

• Full of lies
• Hyperbolic
• Or appealing to humans’ want for quick and easy results…

And it could far outperform content that’s truthful, grounded, and ultimately more useful.

This can have a direct impact on your approach to marketing.

Think about it like this:

• You see a post from a marketer that provides some “shortcut” for your marketing
• You go, ‘oh cool!’, get a little dopamine release and engage with the post
• That post then gets pushed out to more people, and they all get the same dopamine release and engage with the post too—helping it reach even more people
• Other marketers see this post working well and say “I guess this is what works” so they start creating stuff like that too
• Before long, all you see is this kind of content.

If all this content was genuinely helpful to you, no problem, right?

But what if it’s not?

What if social media is being saturated with surface-level advice that doesn’t actually help you?

And what if all the actually helpful stuff is getting buried because it doesn’t perform as well?

Because it doesn’t have the same ‘instant appeal’?

In a lot of ways, this is exactly what’s happening.

And here’s how that directly impacts you:

“Constructed misconception”.

Your brain takes in all this information and starts piecing it together into what feels like a logical and accurate understanding of marketing.

So, you think you know what you’re doing…

But this understanding is built on the wrong info.

And what happens when you try to build something with the wrong materials?

It falls apart.

Constantly drowning in these marketing ‘shortcuts’ paints the wrong picture of marketing in your mind.

It changes your expectations.

It pulls you away from process and keeps shoving outcome in your face.

You stay stuck in this loop of ‘this new marketing hack will 10x your results’ etc…

But somehow, you never have anything to show for it.

So, even if you want to be an oak marketer…

You might have a mushroom marketer understanding of marketing.

In your head, you’re thinking, “yeah, I’m playing the long game.”

But in reality, you’re only taking actions that cater to the short game.

I can’t tell you how many artists have come to me saying how much they care about sustainability and long-term growth…

(and I believe them)

…but their actions scream short game.

It’s not their fault, but they’ve fallen into the trap.

If you’ve been struggling with your marketing, you may have fallen into it too.

And so, now I’m going to take you through 3 key principles of oak marketing.

I want to help you understand the shifts you may need to make to start getting real results, instead of just constantly being told you can get real results if you follow ‘x hack’.

Let’s dive in.

#1: Second-Order Consequences

One of the biggest shifts you need to make if you want to become an oak marketer is to start thinking about second-order consequences.

This means you consider the longer-term effects of your marketing decisions and actions, instead of just the immediate ones (first-order consequences).

A mushroom marketer doesn’t look beyond the immediate results they can get from an action or decision.

They think like this:

I do x thing > It gives me y result > I win.

Can you see how the shallow marketing content plays into this?

It gives you immediate gratification.

“All you have to do is x, and you’ll get y right away.”

Oak marketers are more cautious.

They’re suspicious of quick fixes like these because they’re focused on sustainable success.

This is how they think:

I do x thing > It leads to y immediate result > That leads to z long-term result > I win.

On paper it doesn’t look like much.

But this change in thinking makes a huge difference.

Let’s take buying followers as an easy example:

A mushroom marketer says, “If I buy followers, I’ll have more followers, so that’s what I’ll do.”

They might even convince themselves that buying followers has a positive long-term benefit (like getting a boost from the social proof) …

But that’s not really thinking about it properly.

An oak marketer takes a more considered approach:

“If I buy followers, I’ll have more followers. But these followers won’t be engaged or genuinely interested in me because they’re just bought.

So, as I keep showing up on social media, my posts will reach these people, but they won’t respond to them.

Over time, the platform will see my low engagement and think my content sucks, so it’ll stop pushing it out.

Eventually, my account will die and I’ll be back at square one, having wasted tons of time and energy on this whole thing.”

The little extra effort it takes to consider the second-order consequences of an action or decision can completely change your trajectory.

Here are two more examples:

Mushroom: “X content is trending right now—I’ll do that to grow my audience.”

Oak: “X content is trending right now. If I do that but it doesn’t align with my artist identity, am I attracting the wrong audience? Will they only be interested in this kind of content in future?”

Mushroom: “I just released a song—now how do I get as many streams as possible as fast as possible? I want my fan base now!”

Oak: “I just released a song. I have a plan in place to get on the good side of the Spotify algorithm within the first 4 weeks, but I’ve also prepared myself for a prolonged promotion with lots of content.

This song is just one of many in a bigger plan, and I’ll be taking small but consistent steps each day to build a real and genuinely engaged fan base over time. My results won’t look amazing on paper right away, but they’ll compound over time and ultimately, I’ll come out on top.”

To be a sturdy oak that lives for years, start thinking about the second-order effects of your actions.

It’s tempting to see the shiny thing right in front of you and reach for it…

But be careful.

Because sometimes that shiny thing can be a shard of broken glass.

And it might cut you deeper than you realise.

To get better at thinking like this and making “oak marketer” decisions:

• Get as much experience as you can and pay attention to what happens when you take certain marketing actions.
• Map outcomes: Before acting, ask, “What happens next? And then what happens after that?”
  See if you can trace the long-term path to see where your actions lead long-term.
• Challenge your assumptions: Consider different potential outcomes so you have a better picture of how things could go.
• Look at what’s happened in the past to help you more accurately predict future outcomes.
  You won’t always get it right, but you’ll get it right more often.

Ok, next one >>

#2: Habits > Tactics

A clear sign of a mushroom marketing mindset is focusing on tactics over habits.

There’s nothing wrong with tactics…

But that can’t be your whole marketing plan.

Much of the marketing advice you get on social media is tactic focused.

But without building the necessary habits for success, those tactics will either bring you short-lived success or they won’t work at all.

Here’s what you need to understand about building an online presence:

A lot of it comes down to—

• The right systems
• Creativity
• Emotional appeal
• Iterative growth.

And the way you nail those over the long term is through habits.

Your systems need constant input and refinement.

Your creativity needs to be nurtured.

Your ability to connect emotionally with your audience (or to attract an audience in the first place) requires an ever-deepening understanding of that audience.

And your ability to keep growing depends on your commitment to iteration and improvement.

Tactics play a role in your marketing for sure.

But they’re nothing compared to the habits you build as you walk your path.

If you care about making real progress, instead of implanting tricks and tactics, try implementing habits.

Here are some helpful habits to build:

• Showing up on social media on a consistent basis—I recommend working your way up to at least 3x a week.
• Regular idea generation sessions to nurture your creativity—aim for at least 20 minutes every day if you can.
• An ‘audience understanding’ session once a week—take 10-30 minutes to learn something new about the kinds of people your audience is made up of.
• The 1% better habit—for your repeatable tasks (posting to social media, practising your instrument, etc) aim to push yourself just beyond your current abilities to keep growing.

See the difference here?

If you want tactics to work better for you, build habits.

I’ll never forget the band on TikTok that blew up back in 2022 after 5 posts…

…Had no music out on DSPs…

…No habits built to sustain themselves online…

…And haven’t been heard from since.

Don’t be them.

Build your habits.

Ok, the last one is expanding more on one of these habits.

#3: Iterative Growth, Not Wild Leaps

Maybe one of the biggest problems this shallow marketing content has caused:

Giving artists the perception that growth is supposed to be fast and easy.

That you’re supposed to just hunt for those big moves that change everything overnight, and ignore the boring, slow (but reliable) build.

People do have viral moments where things change overnight.

But in most cases, they have those moments after and because they’ve built great habits—including iteration.

What you see on the surface is an artist who had some videos blow up and now they have a huge following.

You see those videos, assume that’s the only contributor to their success, try and do something like that for yourself…

And then wonder why it doesn’t work for you.

Despite the evidence you think you see, marketing is not primarily about these wild leaps.

These big plans that quickly turn your life around.

Not for you, a creative who’s doing this independently, anyway.

Those wild leaps exist and can work wonders, don’t get me wrong.

But they don’t replace the grind.

They don’t magically get you out of that commitment to the constant flow of energy you pour into your growth.

Iterative growth—repeatedly showing up and making small improvements—is the less interesting but right answer.

If you spend all your time and energy focusing only on the big moves your favourite artists make…

All the clever tactics they employ to get attention…

All the exciting stuff…

You’re falling into a trap.

You’ll be consumed by the idea that everything should be happening faster, that you should be further along by now.

And none of that ‘big stuff’ you try will work properly.

Because it’s not how things typically work in reality.

Most of your success won’t come from these wild leaps.

Most of it’ll come from the small steps.

Improving 1% every time.

The stuff many see as unimportant, boring, and small-time.

That’s the secret.

I wish I’d known it years ago.

It would have saved me so much frustration, overcomplicating, and exhaustion.

If the stuff you’re consuming on social media is telling you that—somehow—you’re wasting your time by doing this…

Or that you “should” be much further ahead and that this path is actually easy…

You’re being tricked.

You’re a means to an end for those people.

They have a solution they want to sell you and they don’t care about the damage it’ll do to you.

There are no shortcuts.

• Think about second-order consequences
• Build strong habits
• Commit to iterating and improving bit by bit
• Pay attention to what happens when you do things
• Do this over and over.

That’s how you’ll win.

I hope this helps!

Now it’s my turn to sell you something.

If you want some real help—some honest, grounded, practical direction for your online presence, your branding, marketing, releasing, or personal growth on the artist path, I’ve got you.

When you’re ready, here are some ways I can help you:

• You can book a 90 minute session with me in which I can help you get organised, show you where to focus, help you with marketing, work on your blocks, etc.
• We can work together 1:1 over a longer time to help you get on track and take the next step(s) down your path.
• I have a Release Plan Builder + Content Planner Template bundle to help you stay organised with your online presence and plan your releases.
• You can come and join my YouTube channel & podcast 😊

You’ve got this!

Talk again soon,
—Alex