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Singles vs. Home Runs · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, this is Kent Sanders from Inkwell Ghostwriting.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to episode 153 of the Smart Business Writing Podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is the show that helps you grow your business, amplify your authority, and increase your impact through the power of writing.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me on this episode today.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who knows me well will be shocked at the content of this episode.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not really a big sports fan.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: However, I do live in St.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Louis, and people here love the St.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Cardinals baseball team.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's impossible not to get at least a little bit sucked into baseball mania at times, especially during the summer, even though right now in the year 2020 and the summertime, no teams are playing baseball right now.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So people in St.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Louis really miss the Cardinals.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So today I want to honor the baseball season and honor all of you who love sports by using a couple of baseball analogies to help us understand the value of putting in the work every day.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest reputations that you can acquire as a baseball player is that of a home run hitter.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody loves the player who can reliably step up to the plate, crack the bat, and send the baseball flying into the stands.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: As writers and artists, and as business people, we all want home runs.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: We all want that New York Times bestselling book.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: We all want that number one hit.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We all want that big consulting gig.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We want that major show in an art gallery, or we want some other type of major win.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think we often feel paralyzed whenever we create or we write.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: We put all this pressure on ourselves to be perfect and to create the greatest work of art the world has ever seen.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Great writing and great creative work in general is never created in a single moment of glory.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's always preceded by a long series of small victories.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know how long it took a Michelangelo to sculpt his famous David statue from gleaming white marble?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: It took him over two years.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Every day the twenty six year old artist showed up and he went chip chip chipping away at his masterpiece.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't happen in a day, it happened over hundreds of days.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, back to baseball.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was curious about how many major league baseball hits were singles, doubles, triples, and home runs.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I came across this cool graphic from a baseball stats website, and this graphic shows the distribution by decade of the four types of hits over the history of baseball.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously you can't see this graphic because this is a podcast episode, but on this graphic, there is a jagged line running across the top of the graph that sits far above three other lines.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: The top line represents the vast majority of hits which are singles.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a single, for those not in the know or those who are not sports fans, a single is when a batter gets on to first base as opposed to hitting a double, a triple, or home run when a batter respectively gets on to second or third base, or they get a home run and go to home base, of course.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting because the distribution of these hits has changed over the decades, but one fact is absolutely clear.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Most hits are singles.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, games are won mostly by batters who hit singles.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Division titles are won mostly by batters who hit singles.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: A World Series is won mostly by singles.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Legacies are created mostly by singles.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now in general terms, a single, quote unquote, just means a small victory.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know what a single means for you personally, but here are some examples of my singles, of my small victories.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I write, record, edit, and upload a podcast episode just like this one, that's a single.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: When I write and post a blog post, that's a single.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I answer a client's email, that's a single.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I work on my next book for an hour, that's a single.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I get on social media every day and I add value by sharing people's posts and commenting on other people's posts and liking things and publishing good content, all those things are singles.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: A single is one little slice of work that isn't going to move a mountain by itself, but the cumulative effect of a bunch of singles over a long stretch of time is really, really massive.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at this from another perspective.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at this, okay, if you're not a baseball fan, let's shift gears and talk about music for a minute.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Recently I was doing a little bit of 90s musical reminiscing, and I was listening to the Backstreet Boys.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you just to suspend your judgment for just a minute.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who are not Backstreet Boys fans, I'm not usually a huge Backstreet Boys fan, but just kind of humor me for a second.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: As I was listening to some of their music, it dawned on me that I only knew a couple of Backstreet Boys songs.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that got me thinking, you know, the Backstreet Boys have only had a few major hits over the years, even though they've been making music since the mid-90s.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for about 25 years, they've been making music.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And with nine studio albums, that's not a great batting average.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have nine albums, but you only have a handful of hits over like 25 years, that's not really a good batting average.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what we've got to keep in mind: it's the same story for almost every musical artist.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: On average, a full-length studio album might only have one or two quote unquote hits.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a little discouraging if you stop and think about it.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the same thing is true for other industries.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: If we go back to our baseball analogy, my research shows that the Major League Baseball batting average for 2019 was 0.252.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what that means is that baseball players on average are considered successful less than 30% of the time.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if a pro baseball player has a 300 batting average, they're considered excellent.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, you can only be quote unquote successful less than 30% of the time, and you're considered a professional.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're considered really good if you only are successful about a third of the time.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my point.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We can't expect to hit a home run every time we write or create something.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever written something and expected people to immediately love it?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you wrote an article, a book, or a social media post and you felt disappointed that it wasn't really a home run.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you were frustrated that it didn't get the likes, the reviews, or the traction that you expected.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if we look to both the music industry and the professional baseball industry as a standard, we're going to have quote unquote hits less than three out of ten times.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So does this mean that the other seven attempts are failures?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think so.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it means a few different things.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think number one, we don't get to choose what is successful and what isn't.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Our job is to write consistently with excellence and let other people decide what is a hit.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: We don't actually get to decide which of our things becomes most popular.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's for other people to decide.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Our job is just to create the work consistently.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, every time we are at bat, or every time we step up to the plate, it's practice.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every time we step up to the plate, we're putting in the work.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're developing our craft.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're honing our skills and we're getting better.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing that all the time.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless of whether we actually get a hit or a home run, every time we step up to the plate, it's practice and we're getting better constantly.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, and maybe most importantly, number three, games are normally won or lost by singles.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this means that we shouldn't ever denigrate the value of a small chunk of work.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those small chunks of work add up over time.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: They really do.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to write a book in one setting.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unless you're drinking like a thousand cans of Red Bull and you stay up for like three months straight.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh nobody's actually going to do that, and I don't recommend that for sure.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: But a book is always written in a bunch of little small chunks.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: People don't sit down and write a full-length book in one setting.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's done in little pieces over a period of time.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just that's how the creative process has to work.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't control whether somebody's going to love your work.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many factors at play that it's nearly impossible to engineer a hit.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the more times we step up to the plate and swing that bat, the more likely it is that we'll get that occasional hit.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this coming week, don't worry about hitting a home run.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just focus on hitting singles every day.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just focus on doing the work consistently.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And just like Michelangelo, when he was 26 years old carving that David statue, we have to keep chip, chip, chipping away until that masterpiece is done.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, those little victories add up quickly.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So my question for you is what are the singles that you need to hit every day?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: What are the singles that you need to hit this week in order to be successful and keep working toward your goals?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear your thoughts.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can shoot me a message on Twitter at Kent Sanders or also find me on Facebook at Kent Sanders.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And remember that you can find lots more resources for writers and creatives at Kent Sanders.net.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that your writing has the power to change people's lives.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.