If you want to compete as a creator—to help your work gain recognition, to improve your craft, to earn respect and prove yourself, to monetize your work—then you will need to show up to the marketplace.

In your early career, as you still improve, you want to find every opportunity to do this. Sometimes this may be at high profile contests and venues, but many times this may be in other minor, organized, events. 

As a pro basketball player puts it, “All the work that you do in the gym, it doesn’t matter if you can’t translate it to the game.”

You can hold the world record for shooting consecutive free throws, and not be able to make a critical one during a real game. 

The pressure, the disappointment, the rivalry—all of it makes for good practice. It’s part of competing. It’s part of going pro.

Seize every opportunity you can find. If you believe something is beneath you, that’s your ego speaking, and it needs your help.