Being Consistent Isn't Enough Anymore

More than half of the things that I'm writing are just reminders to myself, and this is something that I've perpetually struggled with, which is the extent to which you're obligated to narrow your focus so that, like you said, you can be recommendable versus stay broad enough to remain interested in the topic, um, or to remain interested in what you're doing, right? Because like the, the number one way you fail at this game of being an internet person, whatever, is by getting bored and quitting, right? Like that, that's the main way that you fail, more than picking the wrong niche or choosing the wrong platform or whatever, right? Like if you stop, then you fail. So in some ways, you have to do whatever is going to let you keep going. And, you know, I had, I had at that point, and still largely to this point, not found any one niche that was interesting enough to stay in forever. Right. I, you know, I spent a lot of time in SEO. I spent a decent amount of time in like men's sexual health. I spent a decent amount of time in crypto. And now a lot of my articles are like if anything, like philosophical essays. And it's just sort of always been what I feel like writing. And I, the first couple of times it was scary in the sense of, you know, oh, if I stop talking about this thing, will anybody still be interested? And you certainly do lose some of your audience. But I think the people who stay on, you actually develop a deeper relationship with. As a counterexample to that, think about all of the like Twitter thread boys, who were building 150,000 follower audiences over 6 months by just juicing the Twitter algorithm with these threads.

Yeah, because you kind of wrote this in at the height of the Twitter guy craze, like mid, mid-2020.

Yeah, it was starting to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if that's what you're doing, then you're completely replaceable. Like, you're a totally forgettable creator because as soon as you get slightly off your game, the next thread person who can regurgitate Wikipedia articles will replace you. And because you are like, the more niched down you are, the more kind of like boring and replaceable you are too. So I think there's this trade-off between speed of audience building and longevity. And like, I'm fortunate that I've been doing this for 10 years now. And I don't have the biggest email list by far, you know, I have 45,000 people or something. But those people will be interested in these like pretty personal, thoughtful reflection type essays. They're not expecting a 1,000-word article on, you know, how to make money online or something. And in that sense, I'm sort of like irreplaceable because nobody else can write those kinds of pieces. And so the audience is like extremely focused in that sense. So yeah, I guess it is part of it comes down to goals too. Like if you want to make a lot of money really quickly, then definitely don't be yourself.

Unless yourself is like a really hot person who can, you know, how do you think about now that we've been in this creator game for a while and like we know how to do a lot of the things, uh, when it comes to audience monetization, um, you know, revenue, business building. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is making the jump from just showing that you can do the work, from being consistent, from making good things, to making something that is like really great, to increasing your quality level, say from like that Hey, this is 80% of what I want it to be, I guess, or this is 100% of what I'm capable of right now. But I know I could go further. Like, I know that I could make YouTube videos better than I'm making them right now. I know that, like, one of the things Tim, producer, co-host, and I talk about a lot is like, what are a couple of things that we can do with the podcast to make it like 10% better than most of the like hit record, interview podcasts that are out there. And so I'm thinking about like, once you've established yourself as like, as a reliable kind of like expert level person, feeling more freed by that like level of accomplishment to try and go up a level rather than feel like complacent and be like, ah, you know, whatever, I'll throw some stuff out and people are going to like it because I'm, I'm, I'm a person in this field. What do you think about going like to, to that next level? Cause I found it really hard. In, in YouTube to make that happen?

I feel like the first question is, do you care enough about the thing to make those leaps? And this is a really helpful question for me, and this is why I stopped doing much YouTube or short-form videos or podcasts or any of that stuff. I've, you know, made forays into it multiple times, and I kind of blew up on Instagram and TikTok over the last year doing short-form videos, which was fun, but I started to ask myself, okay, you know, how do I make this better? How do I take this to the next level? And I realized I didn't care. It didn't, it didn't really matter to me. It was a means to an end. And I think that once upon a time, you could play these content games as a means to an end, and you could still do well. And I think those days are past. Like, I think that the competition is so fierce,. And people are so invested in getting that YouTube ad revenue, like building that big Spotify podcast, whatever, that if you don't deeply care about making your craft better and better and better, you just won't win long-term. Like consistency isn't really enough. And so I do think that's like a big question everybody has to ask with these things is like, you know, if they want— if you want to do better at them, you do really have to say like, okay, well, do I actually want to become insanely great at this, or do I just want to make a lot of money, or do I just want to be famous, or like these other things? And for me, I mean, I, I get legitimate joy out of working on getting better at writing. And, you know, I read tons of writing books. I like study books to try to figure out what's different between their writing and my writing so I can incorporate that back into mine. Like when I read, I'm 50% reading for how the book has been written as for what's in it, right? It's like, I just can't turn that part of my brain off. It's just endlessly fascinating to me. And so that's kind of like the ultimate sign that this is the thing that I should be doing, because I don't feel that way about anything else, really. And I think people just have to be honest with themselves, right? It's like, I mean, trying to get into any of these games, right, like YouTube or building a podcast or being a writer or any of it, like, you've got to really like it because it's an awful way to make money. It's an awful, like, type of business to start. Like, it's hard and your odds of success are extremely low.

Yeah, for all that we talk about and all that gets promoted for, like, you know, easy internet money, here I am with the, with the air quotes. Is like I mentioned my, my college buddies, we were just like out, you know, we went on a golf trip earlier this month and like, I'm very much like just very mid when it comes to like all of them when it comes to like over like overall financial success, if we want to like make that comparison because like you got guys who are just like incredible, incredible salesmen at tech companies. They are like running, you know, running big teams. They are like developing, you know, developing and building real estate. They're in all kinds of different businesses, and like, they are also busy, sure, but you know, they're not wondering like, hey, what, what am I going to throw to, to the Twitter feed tomorrow? Like, they're not, they're not bringing their computer on the flight over so they can schedule the newsletter for Saturday.

Yeah, I mean, if you join a company in almost any role and you work really hard in that role, in 10 years, you'll almost certainly be making a good amount more money than when you started just through promotions and job switches and whatnot. If you start writing or start a podcast or start a YouTube, you might still be making nothing in 10 years. Like there's, there's good news, everybody. Yeah. There's no like ladder that you get to climb necessarily. Right. It's, it's very bimodal and most people aren't going to make it. So it's— you've really got to enjoy it. It's, it's really got to be rewarding because if it's not rewarding, you'll never put in the work that it will require to become great.