Category: Longball

I have this fantasy of myself giving a Ted talk on success.  I open my talk by saying, “The secret to success is to be really successful early on.”  Then I walk off the stage.

It makes me laugh, but it’s true.  Advantages and disadvantages tend to accumulate.  The rich do get richer.

On the surface, it’s a worthless insight.  Who wouldn’t choose early success if they could?

However, there is utility in having a deep understanding of this idea because it provides a more powerful paradigm for long term decisions.

Update 10/3/2020: You can hear Dan and a guest discuss the risks presented here on this podcast.

My all time favorite podcast is the Tropical MBA.  I’ve been listening to it for most of my entrepreneurial journey.  It’s an entertaining and insightful look into the modern small business.

The podcast hosts Dan & Ian have developed lots of useful frameworks to think about decisions in business.  They’ve coined concepts like “Rip, Pivot, & Jam” about innovating within proven value chains and “if it makes you money you shouldn’t be doing it,” a rule of thumb for where an entrepreneur should spend their time (and money.)

I’m a huge fanboy.

But I take issue with one of their key theses, “The Thousand Day Rule.”

The Thousand Day Rule is a pattern that they noticed where entrepreneurs needed about a thousand days, or 3 years, to build a business that surpassed their job income.

At best, the Thousand Day Rule is incomplete.  At worst, it’s destructive to new entrepreneurs.

Photo:  Winged Victory

I was doing product research on a Shopify plugin we’re developing and I came across this post in the Shopify forums from someone trying to sell clothing:

I invested 2000 and nothing

I’ve had my store redesigned twice. I’ve took courses, marketing courses, ripped off by *mentors* and 600 on SEO. I don’t know what to do I’m so anxious.

On the one hand, I’m sympathetic- it sucks to invest, to work, and to see nothing in return.  On the other hand though, that’s sort of how it works.

Yes, there are people who stumble into customers.  The dice in the roulette wheel lands on their number and they have a huge head start on everyone else.

And we see those stories.  Entrepreneurs brag about their success or others promote these stories to sell their own products and services- see this method works, here’s an example.

But that’s not the way it works for most folks.

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Have you ever read a Sherlock Holmes mystery?  It starts with a case presented to Sherlock and Dr. Watson with quirky circumstances and odd details.  As you read things become even less clear with increasingly bizarre events and nonsensical information.  At the end though, the great detective explains all with brilliant deductive reasoning that puts each element into its place in a logical series of events.

New endeavors have a lot in common with Sherlock’s cases.

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Study the hard while it’s easy.
Do big things while they’re small.
The hardest jobs in the world start out easy,
the great affairs of the world start small.
So the wise soul,
by never dealing with great things,
gets great things done.

– Tao Te Ching, Ursala Le Guin Translation

I took a personality profile called Strengths Finder six years ago and I’ve found the results of it to be accurate and useful. One of the recommendations that stuck in my mind was for “Strategic”, one of my signature themes.

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