The 80/20 Rule of Content Creation, Freelancing, and Online Business
This will alleviate your fears and anxiety
I published my first article ever in February of 2015.
Since then, I’ve written more or less every day without quitting or taking sustained breaks.
The last time I took a long stint away from writing happened when I contracted co-vid 19.
A deadly virus has literally been the only thing that has kept me away from the keyboard.
I approached writing in a way that set me up for long-term success. For about the first 90 days or so, I just dove in and wrote like a mad man.
That gave me the confidence to tackle all the different facets of building an audience online and making a living from it.
In about a year or so, I pretty much knew the chessboard. I started working on my first book and building my email list.
It came to a point where success was inevitable. The universe just needed a little bit of time to catch up to my efforts.
Contrast this with what most aspiring creative entrepreneurs do. They come in guns blazing and then they quit very, very, very quickly.
Did I say very?
If I ventured a guess, the vast majority of people who try to build a writing career quit in the span of…
Not months
Not even weeks
The vast majority of people who try to build a writing career quit in the span of days.
It’s that bad.
It seems like everyone, their mom, cousin, and best friend is creating content or trying to start an online business. The space seems supersaturated and competitive.
But, it’s not, because the vast majority of people quit very very early. New ones keep piling in, which makes it seem like there’s massive competition.
But this competition is a never ending revolving door of aspiring creators who fail to get any level of momentum whatsoever.
Quick example.
“Of the 2.4 million podcasts on Apple Podcasts tracked by Podcast Industry Insights, 22% have produced a podcast episode in the last 90 days, according to Goldstein's analysis of the data published in December. Over 1 million of the 2.4 million podcasts have not produced content in over a year.” [1]
Look at that number…22%. Remember I titled this post around the concept of the 80/20 rule? It rings true in this statistic.
It also works when it comes to the timeline of building your creativity-based business or producing content.
The first 20 percent of the journey accounts for 80 percent of the results.
It took me about five years to go from zero money to full-time writing. The first year was the most overwhelming.
There was so much I didn’t know and so many technical hurdles I had to climb. It took time to build confidence in my craft.
By year two, I wasn’t rich, but I made it past the most important hurdle. I went hard for a year without quitting.
By that point, I’d invested so much time and effort that quitting didn’t make much sense.
I get it, this content creation entrepreneurial landscape seems super daunting. There’s all this jargon and buzzwords.
I promise you if you just take some time to sift through the noise and learn how to produce consistently, the rest is pretty much smooth sailing.
You pretty much know what to do and it just takes time to reach your ultimate goal.
If you make it past 90 days in any sort of creative endeavor you’re literally in the top five percent of all creators. And I’m probably being generous.
So, put your head down and work ruthlessly until you break that critical threshold.
You won’t feel like this forever, I promise :)
The 80/20 Rule of Content Creation, Freelancing, and Online Business
It develops mental strength.