The long tail of volume

It’s been one week since launching Opening Bell Daily and two weeks since I quit a job I loved at Business Insider.

The fourth edition of my new morning column came out this morning. Things are moving fast. I’m learning a lot about the non-writing side of my profession. I’m grateful the work has been well-received by people I love and admire. 

Already, I’ve had a handful of late nights, and each morning starts before sunrise. 

I’ve kept similar schedules before, but it’s different when the hours are dedicated to projects of my own. I’ve had a taste of this same feeling before with my blog, books, and various media and consulting projects. 

The entrepreneurial spirit in me has been there a long time. But never before have I gone all-in on it, as I am now. I’ve always held a full-time job, and my other projects were relegated to moonlighting. 

To be fair, I would not have changed any part of my path. Working in a big corporation and newsroom is instructive. Like any industry, there’s great value in bearing witness to “how the sausage is made.”

And, with the right people, it can be a lot of fun.

I never allowed Business Insider to teach me exactly how to think or what to believe, but it did bestow skills and acumen. My colleagues became friends and mentors. 

The upside of being prolific

I penned more than 2,000 bylines in the last three years. 

Now with Opening Bell Daily, the initial plan is to write one post each weekday. 

A month from now I’ll have 25 editions out. 

In a year, about 300. 

The hope must be, naturally, that each successive newsletter is better than the last. Compounding is what makes volume such a strong strategy. 

A marginal daily improvement is a more realistic goal than aiming to make leaps at a less frequent cadence. For most skills, accruing a large number of reps in a narrow span of time is the best path toward proficiency and eventually excellence. 

The best part: all it takes to be prolific is will and consistency. Huge output over time compensates for any shortfalls in experience, resources, or know-how.

I’ve cited this quote from investor Josh Brown before, but it’s worth resurfacing: 

There’s a component to success in nearly every endeavor that involves attrition and not being the one who gets attrition-ed out of the way. Some things require aggressive action – seizing the moment, sprinting toward an opportunity. But those things are rare. I’ve found a significantly larger set of opportunities around showing up and being someone whom others could depend on to be there, to deliver. I would argue that, although it’s the long road, it’s the right road for enduring success.

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