A Long Term View, Moving the Needle, and a North Star Metric

“For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth” — Peter Thiel .

How do you define a long term view?

• A few months ago I saw a podcaster griping about his lack of traction after recording 4 episodes.
• Many bloggers never get past the 90 day mark because nobody is reading they’re work.Lots of business owners throw in the towel in year one after what is actually a half assed effort.

In a world that moves at a breakneck pace, littered with tweets, status updates, and instagram photos it’s easy to delude ourselves into thinking that one year is a long time. In the How to Start a Startup podcast, Sam Altman says a lot of aspiring founders think they’re going to work on something for 3–4 years, cash out and be done. But if you’re serious about it, a long term view equates to about 10 years.

My editor at Penguin says that by the time most people are sitting in her office they have been honing their craft as writers for about 5 years. The outliers might cause us to believe otherwise because they get the most media coverage. And in many cases you’re hearing about them because they’ve been at whatever they’re doing for a really long time.

MOVING THE NEEDLE

So now that you’ve committed for the long haul, what do you spend your time on? There are only a handful of activities that move the needle in any business or project, the critical few as opposed to the important many.

• If you’re an author or writer, writing moves the needle
• f you’re a photographer, taking pictures moves the needle.
• If you’re building an app, what moves the needle the most is acquiring new users.

In his newest book Cal Newport makes a compelling case for what he calls deep work, work that adds more meaning and purpose to our life, and also moves the needle. If you spend a week religiously tracking your time, you’ll be amazed at how much of it is spent on shallow work (social media, mindless web browsing, responding to email, etc), on reactionary workflow. The most insidious thing about that kind of workflow is not that it distracts you, it reduces your capacity to do work that matters.

Here’s a simple filter for whether or not you’re spending your time on really valuable activities.

“Does this move the needle on things that matter?”

When we put gas into our cars, we expect the needle to move from E to F. But in other aspects of our lives we’re not as deliberate about things. We often confuse activity with accomplishment. The question we need to ask is does X change Y. Are we putting gas in the tank? Or are we putting coca-cola in a Ferrari?

Take the example of writing a book. If Y is 50,000 words, there’s only one activity that moves the needle; the act of sitting down to write.

Momentum windows, traction an growth are the result of spending your time on things that move the needle.

Most people don’t because its really easy to confuse vanity metrics with the ones that truly matter.

North Star Metrics and the Pulse of Every Business

I used to hate metrics. I dreaded looking at a spreadsheet on which we list downloads of our podcast, email subscribers, and the cash-flow of of our company. That was until my business partner Brian said “this spreadsheet is the pulse of the business.” The key is to be aware of metrics by not hijacked by them. In medicine, an anesthesiologist’s job is to keep a person alive. My sister who happens to be one, says it’s like being an airline pilot. The most exciting parts are the takeoff and landing. She keeps an eye on the pulse.

Keeping an eye on your metrics is like being the anesthesiologist of your business or your art. If you don’t watch the pulse you could find yourself with a dying patient or on a short runway, flying a plane that’s going to crash land in the ocean.

In our new agey self help driven world it’s tempting to get high on hokey new age bullshit and write off metrics. But it’s not a coincidence that the world’s most successful individuals and organizations are incredibly data driven in their decision making.

If you listed the habits of successful people, tracking and measuring would be near the top of that list. I see it with people, companies, and teams that I work with. I see it in my own behavior. — Fred Wilson

This past weekend our team got together to plant for 2016. Derek Wyatt, our chief growth instigator likened it having our own startup weekend.

• We filled 70 whiteboards with not just ideas, but actionable insights.
• We took our business through a pre-mortem
• We determined the one metric that we’re going to focus on: New listeners to the Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Even if you’re a freelancer or solo entrepreneur, you’ll be amazed by how effective the insights in Sam Altman’s startup playbook are for your work.

Think like an artist and work like a mechanic

I’m the host of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast. You can subscribe to the show on itunes.