Ted Williams's Strike Zone
I'd been using a baseball metaphor for my own change in strategy recently.I don't think I'm meant to hit home runs. I don't mean just that the luck hasn't struck. It's more that I don't feel particularly connected to the mainstream and where they are headed, am sort of unreasonable about how I think the world should work in a way that makes me the opposite of a heat seeking missile, don't love scalable acts like creating a business that can scale on top of cookie-cutter jobs or on top of advertising or virality.And sure, maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll get to that. But I decided to stop going up to the plate trying to hit a home run.When I had venture capital, I thought I was Barry Bonds. But now that I don't, I realized I'm Tony Gwynn.I go up to the plate trying to hit a single. If I have a runner on base, I try to move them over.For my intention, a single is a business that will generate $10k in profit, has the potential to continue for several years, and can be completely run by other people, leaving me with time to go up to the plate again.What I found last year is that I have enough time/energy to attempt about six singles and that I connected on three of them. And it feels similar this year.You can score a lot of runners just by hitting singles and I think there's a better chance that will happen for me than when I was trying to hit home runs.The driving force for me though was wanting different optimizations. It's depressing to strike out year after year. And so hitting singles has a lot more positive reinforcement. And then two, I wanted to make more money, which has happened because these singles pay off immediately.Last, there is always the possibility of an inside the park homerun. Maybe I'll hit a line drive to the outfield, the fielder will kick the ball, lose track of it, chase it down, overthrow third, and I'll come running home.