“No one is more convinced of the fairness of a game than the man who won.”
Let that thought sit in your mind. Let it simmer. Let it marinate. Take it all in. Truly think about what it means to you and how it may (or may not) affect your life.
Now, I haven’t given you any context to work with.
I just gave you a quote. I didn’t even mention who the quote is from just to give as little context as possible (you receiving this email from me already has context included based on your perception of me and what I write about, so no context is, quite literally, impossible).
Just to give praise where praise is due, I found the above quote in an old blog post from historian Bret Devereaux, talking about the Spartan agoge, their infamous training regime which is oddly similar (in some, or sadly many, cases exactly alike) to indoctrination regimes terrorist organizations use for the creation of child soldiers—except these organizations have the decency to only abduct young boys from the age of 15 and up, compared to Sparta who takes boys aged 7 and up.
Anyway, I’m getting off track.
See, even though I didn’t give you any context, I’m quite certain you immediately thought of something when reading the above quote. It’s a perfect example of survivorship bias, after all, and can be applied to many, many different cases.
For one, the seemingly overabundance of people who preach about the magic powers of social media marketing (or any other marketing trend for that matter), preaching how everyone should become a creator and if you’re not creating dancing videos on TikTok (or whatever the current trend is), you’re just not serious enough.
And, while they’re not totally wrong about the power of social media, they’re not entirely correct either.
For one, not how I italicized the word “seemingly” in the previous paragraph.
That’s precisely because of this survivorship bias, the phenomenon where, in our case, only the most successful people who just so happened to succeed at social media have the ability to make noise, get the algorithm’s attention, and appear on everyone’s timeline. Everyone else, including people who might have done the exact same things as the “successful” people, showing how it might not be entirely black and white in the talent vs luck department, aren’t able to be heard and thus have no way to warn people about the dangers, obstacles, risk, or any other important reasons explaining why the grass in social media marketing land maybe isn’t as green as it first might appear.
And sure, I love talking down on people’s overreliance on social media, and how they don’t own their audience, are relying on the whims of the algorithm gods, or even the U.S. government as we’ve now clearly seen with the TikTok ban, and could randomly lose their entire business one day; and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Except there is:
It’s called taking accountability for your business, being prepared, not relying on anything you can’t control, and making sure you build your email list—one you own completely and back-up regularly so even if your current Email Service Provider decides to lock you out for any reason whatsoever, you still have your list and didn’t lose a single thing (except perhaphs a few hours of frustration moving over to another ESP).
And sure, the rule of survivorship bias works for people who preach about email, taking accountability, and self-reliance as well.
But I’m guessing, if you just think about it for a moment, even though there might be some survivorship bias happening around here, the arguments still stand, the reasoning is solid, and the suggestions only ever improve and secure your situation, without putting you at any risk whatsoever.
With that said, check out Email Valhalla here to learn more about how to build yourself an email-centered business, including how to write entertaining emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla