On showing up // Early days // The promise of consistency

January 27, 2022 · living

In London, nine years ago, I started a small meetup called Startup Burger Night. Every Wednesday: same time, same place.

For the first twelve weeks, I mostly just sat there by myself for two hours and quietly ate my burger, because nobody else had shown up. A year later, that event had grown into an important part of London’s fledgling startup ecosystem, seeing 30+ amazing attendees each week.

(And today, looking at these old photos, I see several faces who went on to start $100M+ businesses, others who became impactful investors, and more.)

Whenever starting something new, I’m reminded of those quiet, early weeks at burger night.

We often expect results too quickly. We run one month’s worth of events or articles or whatevers, and it doesn’t seem to be working, so we stop. But maybe that was just too soon. Maybe it’s supposed to be a slog. 

These sorts of things start small, grow imperceptibly, and then suddenly start to snowball. But only if you keep showing up.

When I started this site’s Wednesday Q&As, I expected it to start quietly, like burger night. So far, that’s been true: one attendee the first week, two the next, and three after that. This week, there were six of us. Beginnings go slowly.

In our authors’ community, the weekly writing events were the same. For weeks on end, it was very often just me, on a zoom call by myself, doing my writing. As the weeks ticked by and it kept taking place, folks began to trust that they could arrange their week around it. Today, those writing groups are thriving. 

When you’re building something that you know will start slow, you must resist the urge to check the analytics. Resist the urge to change course. 

Stick to the plan and keep showing up, for longer than you think you’ll need to. It’s an underutilized approach and, for certain challenges, the only one that works.

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