🪙Survivorship Bias

Imagine 100,000 people participate in a coin toss competition where, after each round, everyone who flips tails is eliminated. The process continues round after round until only one person remains—the one who flipped heads every single time. The odds of any one individual being the final winner at the start of the competition, assuming around 17 rounds, would be about 1 in 131,072.

Now, if we had no idea this outcome was random, we might assume that this individual, let’s call him Coin Toss Carl, had a lot to teach us about tossing coins. Coin Toss Carl’s perceived authority on the subject would bring him an audience, and Carl might start putting out some content online. Maybe he starts a YouTube series on the subject. Maybe he writes a book called How to Succeed in Coin Tossing.

The point is that a LOT of people try to get popular posting content online, and few succeed. But just because someone succeeds, it doesn’t mean they’ve got any sort of clue what they’re talking about, and it certainly doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about on every topic.

One of the things I have to deal with all the time (the bigger account you work on, the worse it gets) is people preaching influencer advice as though it’s gospel. I saw Coin Toss Carl say it, and he has millions of followers, so it must be the truth! It isn’t. Here’s the truth:

• Algorithms are weird, and nobody understands them. If they say they do, they’re lying.

• Your successes are half chance. So are everybody else’s. This goes for your failures as well.

• Every audience is different. What works for your audience might not (probably won’t) work for someone else’s.

• The only true way to know whether something is going to work is to try it.

• The quickest way to get lost in the crowd is to do what everyone else is doing.

• Consistency, iterations, and tiny adjustments as you monitor your content’s performance are the only sure path to growth.

And if all of that sounds a bit random and uncertain, that’s because it is. There is no blueprint. There is no “simple 8-step method”. There is no cute soundbite. There is no overpriced course and no all-knowing guru that’s going to guide you to success.

There is only hard work. There is only trying things out, paying attention to what’s working, and doing more of that.