Missing The Boat
Thanks to content marketing being a thing, I often encounter success stories and case studies of how other startups did X to great success or how they used Y channel to generate explosive growth.
Due to the reach of great content, I also inherently know that these opportunities won’t be available for ever, because tactics become over-used and channels become crowded.
In many of these instances, I ultimately end up not doing anything because I think that I’ve missed the boat already.
This however makes me think about buying property or stocks.
The consideration is always about when is it a good time to buy? I mean — prices seem a little high at the moment, so let’s just wait a couple of months to see what happens.
The reality in that situation is that property prices will go up. Stock exchanges and global economies will continue to grow. (Mostly.)
So it’s almost a sure bet that by waiting you end up paying more when you eventually invest.
This post was triggered whilst listening to Hiten & Steli’s podcast, where they discuss their learnings about podcasting.
I’ve been considering starting up a podcast for Receiptful and I think I have some great ideas. But then I think that everyone is already doing it (podcasting is the new rage) and I doubt whether we can find traction easily there.
So I never pursue this and I miss the boat.
I have very few regrets in life, because that frame of mind just doesn’t align with the way I choose to live my life.
One of my biggest regrets though is letting my blog and the audience that I had during 2007–2009 slip. At its peak, I was doing 8000 uniques and 30 000+ pageviews a day.
Then I stopped investing in my blog and today I have to work hard to drive 3000 uniques a month to it. Everyone has a blog these days and is vying for someone else’s attention, which makes getting attention for my writing so much harder.
Yet, great content will always find engaged readers regardless on how over-used the tactic or crowded the channel is. It probably just requires a longer-term investment.
The reality is that it’s super-easy to miss the boat on anything if you don’t do anything about it.
It’s likely never too late to have completely missed a boat on a tactic or a channel. You might not have early-mover advantage, but there’s probably still value to be had in the long-term.
And sometimes, there’s actually loads more value than you thought there would be, which means the best / cheapest decision you can make is to start investing in those tactics & channels today.
If you enjoyed this article, you can always have a look at some of my best writing on my blog where you can also subscribe to my semi-regular e-mail newsletter (which has more than 3000 readers patiently waiting for me to publish things more frequently).
