Sticky Floors and a Broken Mic Stand

I was 19 when I saw my favourite band for the first time. Something For Kate, at the university bar.

I remember the plastic cups, the PA system that buzzed and 30 other people who’d wandered in without a plan for the evening. The carpet hadn't been replaced since the 70s and it grabbed at your shoes as you walked.

By the end of the night I was a fan. I bought all their CDs and I’m still listening to their music 30 years later.

Nobody reviewed that show. You won’t find any footage of it on YouTube.

But that’s where it started and that’s where almost everything starts.

The Beatles played over 1,200 shows before they recorded their first album. INXS spent years grinding through Australian pubs before they attempted to break into the US. Hundreds of shows that nobody documented, nobody streamed, nobody remembers except the people who were there.

We call these stepping stones but they’re the actual work. Everything after is the same work in front of more people.

Most people want to skip the beginning and jump straight to the end, especially when they’re trying to build a business or profile online. They post for a few weeks, look at the numbers, and start wondering if it’s worth continuing. They want the headline show without the sticky carpet.

Small rooms don't feel like progress. That's what makes them easy to skip.

But whether it's 30 people or 11 likes, someone was there.

* * * * *

3 things that made me write this

1. I read that James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes of his bagless vacuum. The DC01 finally went on sale in 1993, fourteen years after he started pulling the bag off his old Hoover. Nobody saw prototype #3,444.
2. Phil Knight kept his day job while he was building Nike. Accountant at Price Waterhouse, then lecturing at Portland State, driving to track meets at weekends to sell shoes out of the boot of his car. He didn't go full-time until 1969, five years in. In his first year, he grossed $8,000. Nike now does that in about five seconds. That all started in a car park in Oregon.
3. Something shifted with LinkedIn in the last year or so. I used to judge a post by how it performed in the first hour. Slow start meant it was dead. That’s not how it works anymore. Posts that barely moved in the first hour are still building three days later. The algorithm stopped rewarding the spike and started rewarding the accumulation. The platform caught up with the metaphor.