A recent post on LinkedIn: “If you’re struggling to gain an audience and results from organic posts, remember that MrBeast uploaded 455 videos before gaining fame.”
While technically true, this leaves out a MAJOR KEY to his success—he didn’t *just* post 455 videos, he approached building his YouTube channel like a science experiment, constantly iterating his content, evaluating it, and modifying it again and again, testing hundreds of variables, such as the length of the video, thumbnail images, topics, headlines, and pacing for retention to see what worked and what didn’t work.
He also spent years studying other successful videos, breaking them down to look for commonalities, recruiting a small cohort of friends who were doing the same, talking daily, often into the wee hours of the night, about what they discovered, breaking down videos frame by frame, debating strategy, and challenging each other to innovate.
He also reinvested nearly all of the money he was making from YouTube to create bigger, more ambitious stunts, giving away millions of dollars and prizes, using stories and philanthropic initiatives to relentlessly pursue viewer retention.
Did he *just* post videos?
No. And whatever worthy goal you want to accomplish, you must do far more than merely going through the motions and putting in the reps.
Yes, you have to work hard.
Yes, you have to be consistent.
Yes, you need to get in the reps.
But if all you do is practice mediocrity, you won’t accomplish greatness. Zig put it this way: If you work at a job for 10 years, make sure you get 10 years of experience, not one year of experience 10 times.
This is why the question, “What’s the minimum I need to do to get marketing working?” is a terrible question. It reveals a desire to put in minimum effort, not to get maximum results (or any results, for that matter).
This is also why you need to be very selective about the skills you choose to master. Most people major in minor things, spending hours tinkering with some technical aspect of what they do to try to improve it. Usually those things are skills they’re already comfortable with and good at.
For MSPs, that tends to be operational and technical in nature. But if you invest hours in becoming the absolute BEST tech at your company, that skill won’t give you the same ROI as learning how to be a brilliant marketer or a master of building and leading a highly productive team of “A” players.
In your work, choose and double down on doing the RIGHT work to develop HIGH VALUE skills, then go for MASTERY, not just competence, not just “hours” worked.
