How to know what to prioritize next (or first)
Everything stops working. Here’s what to do next, and how to prepare yourself for the inevitable.
Hi,
Every week, somebody asks me some version of the same question:
“Russell, how do I know what to focus on when there’s so much coming at me all the time?”
It’s hard, especially with a billion things flying at you every second of the day. You’ve got a dozen strategies floating in your head. Your inbox is full of newsletters saying you need to be on TikTok, or Reels, or Kickstarter, or launching an anthology, or building your Substack, or whatever trend was hot three weeks ago.
So you do a little bit of everything. Limp through a launch. Dabble in social media. Sort of commit to email. Bounce between projects like a raccoon in a trash can.
Maybe you even find a strategy that works…for a while. Then you look up one day and realize that thing that was working really well suddenly is floating like a dead fish. No matter what you do, there’s no way to revive it.
That’s when you let out a deep guttural scream and maybe even have a little cry. This is normal, though. In fact, it happens to everyone, because, the harsh truth is that everything stops working.
No matter how good your strategy is, no matter how well it worked before, it will eventually slow down. Sometimes it dies a slow death. Sometimes it gets shot in the face by an algorithm update.
It all breaks eventually. The trick is knowing how to see it coming, and what to do next.
I should know, I’ve been through this cycle a dozen times.
Facebook groups worked. Then they didn’t.
Kickstarter was magic. Then it became less so.
Substack blew up. Then growth plateaued.
Anthologies popped. Then they got saturated.
Every strategy has a life cycle. It always starts strong, stabilizes, then starts to suck more energy than it gives back. That’s because over time every growth curve collapses from exponential to logarithmic growth.
This is where things get a bit wonky, because we’re going to talk about maths. I’ll try to make this painless. It’s mainly to give language to what we’re talking about. You don’t have to do any equations.
For our purposes, we’ll say there are three types of growth curves: exponential, arithmetic, and logarithmic.
They look kind of like this, with arithmetic growth in red.
Phase 1: Exponential growth
This is the gold rush. You put in a little effort and get a lot back. You launch a Kickstarter, and it funds in an hour. You post a reel, and it blows up. You publish a book, and strangers actually buy it. This is when things feel magical.
For our purposes, we’re going to call exponential growth any time you put in 1 unit of effort and get more then 2 units back in return. It might be 10 units you get back, 20 units, or even 100 units.
This phase is a signal that you found arbitrage. Your effort-to-reward ratio is unfairly in your favor. That’s good. It means you’re riding a wave. Your job now is to ride it hard and fast before it dies.
Because it will die. Maybe because more people find it, or your audience acclimates to it, or any number of reasons, but some day the exponential return you get from your effort will dry up.
Phase 2: Arithmetic growth
Once your exponential effort withers, you enter a phase of arithmetic. This is when you put in 1 unit of effort and get back 1 unit of effort.
This isn’t bad per say. You’re still getting results, but now they’re... average. One email in equals one sale out. One ad dollar in equals one ad dollar back. It’s stable. Predictable. It feels like you’re maintaining momentum but not growing.
If things stayed here, it would be okay, but they don’t. Eventually, you enter phase 3.
Phase 3: Logarithmic growth
Again, you’re still growing here, but it feels like a slog. Now you're working twice as hard for half the results. You’re putting in 1 unit of effort and getting less than 1 unit of effort back. You’re doing all the same stuff, but the list is flat. The ads are bleeding cash. The launch feels like shouting into the void. You’re burning energy and getting very little back.
This is the death spiral. Most people cling here out of habit, ego, or fear. Don’t. When a strategy hits this phase, you either radically retool it or walk away.
Understanding this cycle keeps you from making bad decisions. It helps you quit the right things at the right time. If you don’t know where you are on the curve, you’ll think you’re the problem.
You’re not. The curve just changed. It will literally happen to every strategy, no matter how good. It’s just that some strategies take a longer time to reach this phase than others.
The good news is that you could have a million subscribers before something goes logarithmic, but growth always stalls as people on a platform make decisions about you and money stalls when people on your list grow accustomed to your strategy.
Why does this happen? Saturation and fatigue, usually.
A great example of this is Kickstarter. After Brandon Sanderson’s epic $41 million campaign, authors flocked to Kickstarter and saw their income explode. The minute they saw money, they made Kickstarter their only strategy. A couple special editions priced at $150 are a fun novelty, but when every author has a dozen of them, and is launching them constantly, the novelty wears off and people tune out.
It became harder and harder over time. Now, most authors I know are complaining that they’ve see a 25-50% drop in revenue from their campaigns. That doesn’t mean you stop using Kickstarter, just that the effectiveness drastically waned in just a couple years as the market flooded.
If we understand this is a natural state of all growth, we can prepare so that it doesn’t stall your business growth overall.
This is maybe the most important point, so I’ll say it again. Just because a strategy stalls doesn’t mean your business stalls.
Platform growth might stall. A strategy might stall. A tactic might stall. Your business is more than those things, though. Those things feed into your business, but they all work to expand your fanbase and your money. If you’re business is a strategy, that’s a big problem.
You need multiple strategies working to build a sustainable business exactly because they lose effectiveness.
If we accept all this is true, then where you should focus?
On the strategy that you like the most. By “like” I mean that you a. enjoy doing it and it b. has a positive feedback loop. If you are putting effort into a strategy and it’s giving you nothing back, you probably don’t really like it, or at least won’t for long.
That gives the highest ROI. Focus on a strategy that have the highest exponential curve, and commit to it for 3 months to see if there’s a real opportunity for growth there.
You can use to hit success fastest, then reinvest in more growth strategies. Once you find a success path, it’s about taking the excess and reinvesting it in either doubling down, automating that process, delegating that process, or deleting that process over time.
So when that strategy goes from exponential to logarithmic, you have already spun up another one that’s feeding your business. The more strategies can invest in, the more robust your business becomes over time. Then, when something’s not working, you can just shift your focus to another growth lever you know works.
We call this your path of least friction. You can build an incredible business with just one strategy, but you’ll only find stability when you have many working for you. That won’t happen overnight. First, we need to find one path. Then, we double down on it. Then, we stabilize it. Then, we integrate the next. If you don’t do it in that order, you’ll mess it all up.
If you don’t know where to start, this series is a good primer. Start with the Eisenhower Matrix. Then follow this order to the next one.
Find what’s exponential. Milk it. Reinvest before it loses effectiveness.
This is not how publishing was built, but this is how you have success in the new normal. Not “do everything.” Not “chase trends.” Not “build a perfect long-term plan before you act.”
Just find the thing giving you the most leverage today and build around it while it lasts. You don’t need to be everywhere. You need to be present where it’s working.
Let everyone else waste time doing more.
You? You’ll be doing better.
I think trying to ‘find the thing that goes exponential’ is the root cause of chasing the next shiny object. It’s hard to run three month experiments time and time again without hitting the growth curve. Have I missed a secret step here to finding the thing that goes exponential?