The "Slog-It-Out" Method Is the Best for Slow but Extremely Sustainable Growth
Even though it suuuuuuuucks
No one wants to slog, do they?
That’s boring. Long. Completely the opposite of what modern life is all about - fast-moving growth. You only have to look at TikTok to see how fast people can go from zero to millions of views, likes, and followers (apparently our only metric of growth these days).
If the internet is to be believed, slogging it out is for losers.
I’ve been thinking about our modern-day obsession with fast-paced growth and the lengths to which people will go to get it, from obsessively spending every moment on *insert social media platform here* to spending an inordinate amount of money on influencer courses in the hope their success will rub off.
But the longer I’m on this earth, the more convinced I am that sustainable growth cannot exist alongside our obsession for fast growth.
You may be thinking No shit, Charlie, everyone knows that the most sustainable way to grow is slowly.
We may know it in our hearts, but it’s certainly not what we’re told, or what we outwardly see. We see people making it big, fast. What we see less of is burnout, the disappearing acts of people who do too much, too fast. And we ignore a whole swathe of people who engage in what I call the slogging-it-out method. The far less flashy, much slower but far more sustainable way to growth.
Today, I’m the slog-it-out champion. You should be too.
The stages of slog
Stage #1 - the fun bit
When you start out on any journey - be it a new career, a side hustle, a new life in the countryside or something else - it’s fun. If you’re anything like me, it might keep you up at night. You can’t wait to get back into it so you spend your weekends, nights, and almost any other time engaged in it. You want to blog about it, Instagram it, and make it your thing.
I love this stage, I think most people do. Some people love it so much they never want to leave its confines. They never even get to the slog bit because they’re onto the next new thing that makes their soul sing.
This is when growth can be fast because when you start from zero, anything is growth. If I go from zero to 10 Substack subscribers, I’ve 10x’d in possibly minutes. That’s what makes it so fun.
I see this all the time with new Medium writers who gain a bit of traction and then smash out 10 articles a week. They’re so excited about making money for their writing, even if it’s just cents, they become like machines.
For a while.
Stage #2 - the slog bites (and you have a choice)
After a while, your passion for the project starts to wane. Your growth is not going the way all the outliers on social media told you it would (unless you’re an outlier yourself).
I’ll never forget when my wine shop was just three months old and a relative asked me how it was going.
I’m worried, I told her. We’ve been open for three months, surely everyone who is interested in wine in the area would have found us by now.
*Embarrassed eye roll*
You’re beginning your descent into the slog. It’s now that you have a choice. You can give up whilst you’re still in early doors and move onto the next thing, or you can buckle down.
Frankly, most people bow out. Those Medium writers that dominated your feed disappear completely (I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to count). The side hustle isn’t so fun anymore so you phase it out until you’re embarrassed to think about how passionate you were about it.
But perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you decide to stick with your project and truly descend into the slog.
Step #3 - the slog vs. growth graph of despair
Using my trusty MS Paint simulator, this is how it feels to slog at this stage:
It feels like you’re putting in all your effort but the growth never catches up. If you’re lucky, growth looks like the above but I’d it’s hardly ever linear like that, it’s up and down - which makes it even harder. There could be a point when your growth does match the slog and you think hey, this is great!
Just for it to crash and burn the next month.
Full disclosure, I’m in this stage with my writing right now. I’ve had the fun bit, I’ve had the bit where I made the choice to commit and now I’m wondering about when the results are going to match the slog.
This is probably the hardest part of the slog-it-out method. But if you’ve made it this far, there is something very interesting going on that few people talk about.
You’re likely building the foundations of incredibly sustainable growth without even knowing it.
Because I’m too close to my writing (and I’m not yet at stage 4), I’ll use my wine store as an example of this.
The third year was the hardest. This was when we were truly in that graph of despair, working incredibly hard but feeling like it was not going anywhere near as fast as I thought it should.
In reality, I was building the best, most loyal customer base I could have asked for. I just wasn’t aware of it.
In the beginning years, we had a lot of people visit us but most of them were just trying us out. As they dropped out, we had fewer but far more loyal customers. They bought more and more from us. They trusted us more. They told their friends about us - and believe me, a referral from one of your cheerleaders is worth its weight in gold.
Many of the customers we gained and retained in that third year became customers for life. They contributed to yes slow, but very sustainable growth. Growth that never dipped - it was basically impenetrable. We would have had to have made HUGE mistakes to lose these customers’ trust in us because they had known and shopped with us for years.
The slog vs. growth graph of despair can last years. In a way, it should. This is about sustainable growth, not quick wins.
And thankfully, there is an end in sight…
Step #4 - the “nothing can stop you now” bit
It’s my belief that pretty much everyone who continues to slog it out gets there in the end because everyone else, at one point or another, falls away. And that’s not always a bad thing - not every idea, project, career, or side hustle has legs.
The ones that do continue will eventually find a way out of the graph of despair into one that looks more like this:
Or even - if you’re really lucky - this:
The growth line may not go up with a bang. But it also (shouldn’t) go vertically downwards either because you’ve earned trust. And it will start to take a life of its own, one you probably couldn’t imagine when you started out.
These are not flashy steps
They probably won’t make you go viral on LinkedIn or Twitter or TikTok. They will make you look less “successful” than people who start with a bang and tell you all about it.
But I’ve been around the block enough times to know that most of these growth success stories don’t have that stable, sustainable foundation of incredibly loyal customers / followers / audiences that are the key to making your project work long term.
Either that or the creators themselves burn out and disappear. It might take a few years, but most of them go eventually.
The slog is hard, believe me. I’m in the depths of it right now and more than once a week I claim it’s too hard, this writing malarky.
Then I remember those years in my wine store. The fact that it took what felt like forever to make it sustainable.
But it did make it.
Boring as it feels, slow and steady wins the sustainable race.
The hare and the rabbit became folklore for a reason. Because there’s truth to that story.
Superfans get super rewards
This week, I’ve launched a new paid category for Simple and Straightforward called the Founding Member plan.
It’s a bit more expensive than the usual $5/mo or $50/yr - I’ve set it at Substack’s recommended price of $200. For that, you’re contributing to the sustainability and future of this publication.
And you get stuff.
I wanted to sweeten the deal for anyone who might be interested in a) supporting Simple and Straightforward in an incredible way and b) a deeper simple living experience. If you go for the Founding Member plan, you’ll also get a one-hour custom consultation with me via Zoom (or similar) to talk about everything simple living.
You can ask me anything, from how to get started, to how to deal with naysayers to how to start Digital Nomading (or what it’s like to travel full-time) or even just a chance for us to shoot the breeze about living a life with less complexity.
I've long believed slow and steady wins the race!