Consistency over time

I was listening to a recent Sharp Tech podcast where Ben Thompson said something that struck me. He was talking about Spotify and how the two big podcasting deals that have paid off the most for them were Joe Rogan and Bill Simmons. What they have in common is that they both have prolific output and have been doing that for years and years. He contrasted this success with Harry and Meghan parting ways with Spotify, noting that their celebrity doesn't pull so much weight when you have to compete against so much other content out there. He summed up by saying the way that the people who win with content are the people who are consistent over a long period of time.

I don't think this dynamic is limited to content though. I think it applies to businesses in general. As barriers to entry have fallen with the emergence of AWS and cloud computing, there is very little that stops anyone from starting a business on the internet.

It used to be that getting started was the hard part. If you could find that capital to get off the ground, you were already far enough ahead of everyone else that you could make a good go of it. Now, starting is not the hard part, but keeping going is. It will be those people who can find that consistency over long periods of time that will win, not just in content, but in business in general.