Choosing The Wrong Goal

Focusing on win-win outcomes so you don't fail before you've even begun.

So I’m just wrapping up my first full week on Substack. Never have I spent so long writing and committing my thoughts to paper.

And what is there to show for it?

One subscriber.
That’s it, just the one, and he’s a friend!

On the face of it, that’s pretty disappointing, my mind monkey kicks in to questions whether this is worth it? How much longer?

Three thoughts came to mind to help me refind focus:

1. It’s probably worth choosing a different goal

2. It’s not permanent

3. It’s quite similar to running a business

So taking each one in turn…

Choosing a different goal

Focusing on the number of subscribers is easy, but not a good goal in the short term.

When starting something new, it’s good to treat it as a win-win.

Even if you write for 3 months and have zero subscribers. What’s the worst case -

• you’ll learn about yourself

• you’ll probably learn how to focus better

• improving discipline and habit formation

• you might have developed more ideas to use in other ways

Failing would be to not even try; and you’ll always learn something.

It’s not permanent

Reminding myself that the commitment only needs to start by being short term. The first goal was to write ten posts. That’s short, low risk.

In that time it’s probably not even worth thinking about subscriber numbers, let alone looking at them.

De-risk, simplify and focus on the positives.

It’s quite similar to running a business

Finally, there are a lot of parallels with how it can be running a business.

Sacrifice, stress, anxiety and questioning decisions and whether it will work.

Whether building a business or building a community, it takes time to refine the offering, build value and build the reputation.

It was only after 7 years of running my business, during the pandemic, that I finally felt like we were on the right track and building momentum.

Just like in business, it’s all about stacking things in your favour, getting out there and making your own luck to maximise chances of success. The boring part, the slow burn, gently chipping away to build something great.

This much is probably not surprising, but I think the main takeaway from this post is also that you can also choose how you define that success. Is it 1,000 subscribers, or something you can actually control… ?

Plus, the particularly cool thing about writing and Substack is that you can do it anywhere. It’s easy to avoid Netflix and put 30 minutes a day into something you love, that also might create value for others. That’s the hope at least!