Consistent Publishing = Infinite Serendipity

I’ve been watching from the sidelines for a while. It’s easy to be behind the scenes. There’s less pressure. No judgment. It feels like the safer option. Unfortunately, the opportunity cost is massive. I can no longer ignore it… so here we are. I will now be leveraging the internet and I invite you to do the same. Here’s why:

Play the game to win the prize

To fully leverage the internet, one must recognize that it's akin to a game, and actively participate instead of passively observing. The internet is intentionally designed with more spectators in the stands than players on the field. Unfortunately for the spectators, they have to pay to be there while the players get paid to show up. Nobody shows up if there’s no game to watch. The players create value.

Creator vs. consumer

You’re likely not getting paid to open up Twitter, YouTube, or Tiktok. 99% of people are on the consumer end of this equation. The currency of the future is attention and you’re giving yours away for free. If you want to stop getting robbed every day you either need to switch sides or quit the game entirely. Due to the abundance of serendipity available, I suggest you play.

Your first is always the scariest

This is still one of my first attempts at publishing on the internet. A few days ago, I published a video on YouTube about a new software called Skool. It’s an amazing tool and few people know about it, so it was easy to create a video for that. Even though I’ve been thinking about publishing under my own name for years, this is the beginning for me.

Getting lucky

Serendipity by definition is “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought”. AKA, getting lucky. People get lucky on the internet every single day. They’re getting paid, hired, and connected online for free. In exchange for publishing ideas and creating things, they’re getting rewarded handsomely.

That’s all completely impossible if you’re impossible to discover.

You become easier to discover by increasing the number of instances of yourself on the internet. (You become more sought after based on how valuable each instance is)

For example, the guy who tweets once a year about his sports team is going to receive zero opportunities. The guy who tweets daily about his industry and publishes a valuable newsletter will receive the lion’s share.

How I’m applying all of this:

I’m writing this newsletter, Research Dispatch, to share what I’m already working on and thinking about. I was privately exploring these ideas. Now there's going to be a record of it.

As I stack these instances hundreds of times, my association with the topics I share will only grow stronger. Will I get recognition the first time I post? …probably not. But like the thousands that have followed this exact same well-worn path, the ROI is massive after a thousand repetitions.

Side note: traffic is lifeblood

Over the last ten years, I have created numerous projects and perhaps the most significant insight I have gained is that ideas hold little value without traffic. Even if you build something exceptional, it is rendered useless if no one is aware of its existence.

By publishing on the internet you’re developing free traffic for whatever you want to build. Traffic gives you the freedom to create whatever you want, forever.

You can do this too

I used to believe I needed to be an expert on a topic to talk about it. I thought I needed to be the best writer to publish. I lost ~4 years because of these thoughts. What a waste.

You can assume the role of the apprentice at the very beginning of your journey and share as you learn. Your content will not resonate with the experts. It WILL resonate with the noobs two steps behind you, which is most people.

(I also thought I couldn’t create videos because I never knew what to say when people pointed a camera at me. Turns out, nobody knows what to say when you point a camera at them and most people on camera are using a script. All you need to do is learn how to write a rough script and you can do it too.)

100 repetitions before failure.

I hate being bad at things. My desire to be great fuels everything I do. It also holds me back sometimes. You’re probably similar. So remember, you need repetitions to get good at something. As Ernest Hemingway says “The first draft of everything is shit”. He’s right. Do it 100 times and I promise nobody will think it’s shit.

Whether you enjoyed this post or not, it’s 001 of 100+. I guarantee you, my 100th post is going to be awesome.

What I’m reading:

The Neuron updates me on AI without wasting my time. Their news is condensed beautifully and everything they share is remarkably useful.

If you’re tracking AI and innovation at all, this is going to be the most efficient place to put your attention.

What I’m up to this week:

• Believe it or not, figuring out how I wanted to construct this newsletter, Research Dispatch, took a while.

• Building a cold email campaign for Flourish that will scale to 30,000+ could outreach emails per month.

• Designing ad creatives and mastering client onboarding for Clickable.

• Reading How to Cook for Odysseus by Simon Sarris.

Thanks for your time! I hope you found something here valuable. Have an awesome week.

Until next time, see you on Twitter

- J C

My Website