If you've worked in marketing, you've likely been asked how to go viral (or, meh, tasked with it). No one gets to the big leagues because they're trying to go viral; they win because they're [waking up earlier and sleeping later](https://www.netflix.com/title/80203144) than everyone else to practice. Sounds simple. But when I managed brand marketing at consumer product company W&P, our top Instagram posts came after endless rounds of iteration. It took months of daily workshopping with our creative team to hit our production stride. Fumbling and missing deadlines. Leading 10+ brand giveaways, cultivating relationships with 200+ influencers, and getting to know our community well enough until I intuited their hopes and needs. Their Instagram following has grown 235% (43k to 144k) since my time there, wherein our team put in the effort to build the foundation for economies of scale. Because at the beginning, you don't have space to obsess over creating cool content. We were focused on aligning business priorities, creative capabilities, and editorial timing to produce magic. Listen, if influencing was easy then we'd all be influencers by now. Trust the process.  (First iteration of this section was written for [Julia Lipton's Awesome People newsletter](https://awesomepeopleco.substack.com/p/awesome-people-ep-80?s=r).)