Mr. Consistency
Writer Patrick Rhone has always been determined to put his work into the world - and by any means possible. His ventures into alternative-publishing started when he was a preteen spreading his ideas on college campuses where his mother and grandmother were professors. He remembers the sense of accomplishment that came with photocopying and stapling handwritten poems and then the thrill of distributing his own writing. He was 10 or 11, with creativity to spare and share.
After that, he was working with fellow artists to publish “zines” – small-circulation, often photocopied counter-culture magazines – through the 1980s. Years later, when the Internet made a new platform for authors and essayists, he was all in, from the early 2000s and before. He’s written and self-published seven books so far on the topics like mindfulness and minimalism and, of course, tapped out plenty of blog posts.
But there’s one writing goal he hasn’t been able to fully realize, a habit practiced by one of his creative heroes: Seth Godin. Known for his prolific output, marketing wordsmith Seth Godin achieves that aim that feels unattainable for almost anybody who’s ever given it a try. He blogs. Every. Single. Day.
The longest Rhone has been able to do the same was a six-month stretch. “I wish I had Seth’s routine,” he says. “Here’s someone who is extremely successful. A big part of that success comes from showing up every day and writing something on the web for free and putting it out there.” Because Godin “shows up” every day, so does Rhone. He’s been a longtime subscriber to Godin’s
RSS feed, and checking in there is a must for his mornings. It doesn’t matter whether Rhone is at home in Saint Paul, Minnesota, or vacationing with his wife and daughter, he stops to read his daily dose of Godin wisdom, waiting for him in his “high priority” feed reader folder, an exclusive list reserved for Godin and four others. “It doesn’t matter where I am, if I can’t take 10 minutes to read it, then my life isn’t being lived the right way,” Rhone says. “I know I need to fix my life if that happens.”
He can’t tell you how long he’s been following Godin’s ideals; reading Godin is a habit that has become fused with Rhone’s own creative process for years. He can see it when he looks back at his work. The way Godin shapes his books, sometimes a repackaging of posts, has provided a model for how Rhone approaches his own books. When he saw the look and feel of the books produced through Godin’s publishing venture, the Domino Project, Rhone knew he wanted his to be similar. And Godin’s thoughts on finding a tribe sculpted how Rhone built an audience for one of his most successful websites and subsequent books, “Minimal Mac: What We Believe In.” Whether it’s a monumental impact, or something more gradual – some idea Godin has been building on for hundreds of posts that sharpens Rhone’s perspective – Rhone knows where to look. And he does, every day. He is a faithful follower.
How did Godin win such ardent support? It wasn’t the instant avalanche that so many aspire to when building out online messaging. Godin took the long road, blogging faithfully since 2002 or 2003 – totaling thousands of blog posts. At least once a day, sometimes twice, he speaks to his followers. One graphic that maps his “5-year overnight success” shows what is, in reality, a slow-blossoming success. The real secret to how he eventually came to garner more than 8,000 social media likes on a single post? He only took twenty two days off in the five-year stretch they measured. It wasn’t sensationalism; it was repetition and dependability.
Godin, himself, when he spoke to us, said writing daily takes deliberate effort, a choice he makes because he feels like he needs to be there for his readers. It’s about them - and not him. “I do feel responsible to my readers. I think of this every day. And I love having the privilege to speak up in this way. I’ve never seriously considered not blogging. I’ve done it for nearly 20 years, and it makes me who I am.”
His conscious decision to be there with what his followers need - and to be there himself, not using a copywriter or other avenue for producing daily content - is one part of his own philosophy on maintaining a more human connection and resisting pressures to commodify people on the receiving end of marketing. “My goal is to have my students teach other people to stand up, speak up, and make a difference. If every one of my million readers did that for just ten people, it would be quite a ruckus.”
But he had to speak with regularity before he could build a loyal base of a million potential pot-stirrers. Even before his web presence, he was known for his volumes of commentary, starting with his first big hit in the 1990s with the concept and book “Permission Marketing.” He’s now a bestselling author of 18 books so far and has upwards of 263,000 RSS subscribers to his blog, which covers ideas, marketing, and change-making in punchy 300-word bursts. It consistently ranked near the top of Ad Age’s Power 150, what was a daily ranking of the Internet’s abyss of marketing blogs. The list shut down in 2013; Godin’s blog goes on. He has become the voice with staying power in an era where most others’ best efforts seem ephemeral.
Chicago-based writer and photographer CJ Chilvers, who’s been blogging since 1998, said the daily goal still eludes him. He’s okay with that. He knows Seth Godin does something special, and he appreciates him for it. Godin’s advice, which Chilvers reads every day, has molded how he writes his own posts. Instead of aiming for in-depth, Google-optimized thought pieces, he shoots for a quick but poignant point, made in a few hundred words. Like Godin. But he’s still stumped on how to do that once every 24-hours, no matter how he breaks it down.
“I tried to look into a strategy of how he could possibly do that every day,” Chilvers said. “I started making a list of twenty or thirty ways a normal person could blog every day. I write for hours a day. He writes five blog posts a day and only publishes one.” Chilvers hasn’t been able to find any faster routes to writing, and that makes what Godin does more admirable. “He doesn’t do the
shortcuts. He actually does all the hard work.” And Godin has been able to write, and be read, for twenty years because of it.
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Seth Godin puts in the effort. For him, it’s consistency, to a degree that other would-be competitors just can’t replicate. Because readers can count on Godin’s writing and guidance - the same way our ancestors would have looked for potential co-explorers who could do good work not just on the first day of the journey but until it was complete - he won followers who trust him to keep them safe in their creative journeys.
Once you identify what it is you do that makes your people safer, it’s not enough to do it occasionally. They have to know they can depend on you to provide it for them today, tomorrow, and the next day for years to come. And you need to show that you’ve got what it takes – the knowledge, the resources, the talent – to lead them safely into the future.