11 Comments

Thanks, Paul, for the great examples and the metaphor of the planes. Very informative and helpful article. And I can think of a number of Substacks that are fan favorites, but (in my mind) utterly puerile. Many that are terrific, but with few followers. Success is subjective.

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So true, Paul, of Substack writers sharing their success stories. The Substack publications that succeed have a few key ingredients in common, but are often vastly different. The ones that fail have a thousand different traits (and perhaps less well-armoured fuselages)?

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I’m so glad you wrote on this, Paul! I only just recently learned about this phenomenon myself, from Jono Hey and his awesome site Sketchplanations…

https://sketchplanations.com/survivorship-bias-silent-evidence

We’re missing the most instructive bits by only looking at the markers for success v. failure. TRUTH!!

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PS, as I was just further noodling on my dog walk… too TOO rare that we don’t actively share our failures, pursuant to this exact advantage for others…

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Those are some serious bullet holes! Keep playing that guitar!

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Great article! I watched a YouTube video recently by Mary Spender talking about a similar angle on being an independent musician today, v interesting…

https://youtu.be/E36Ku6MvaFY?si=ocAsWM8mQ-scEngM

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