The Compound Effect of Showing Up

This post originally appeared in my Substack newsletter, The Work Behind the Work. Subscribe here.

Twenty-three weeks ago, I sent out the very first edition of this email.

It wasn’t great. Looking back, there are plenty of sentences I’d rewrite and ideas I’d explain more clearly. Still, I sent it. And the following week, I sent another one. And the week after that, another.

Twenty-three weeks in a row. Not because each article was brilliant, but simply because each article appeared—on time, every Tuesday, without a single miss.

I don’t say this to boast; I say it because this email has become, almost by accident, a real-life illustration of a subject I often write about: the compounding effect. And it turns out the compounding effect isn’t limited to marketing and brand-building; it also applies to regularly creating and sharing your ideas over time.

Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash

What consistency can do that intensity can’t

There’s a common fantasy about content: you publish one amazing article, it’s widely shared, your readership grows overnight, and from then on you’ve got a platform. The hit piece. The viral post. The instant success.

It happens sometimes. But for every viral success, thousands of people release one thing, wait for it to take off, and fall silent when it doesn’t. The graveyard of abandoned newsletters, paused blogs, and unused social accounts is huge—and full of good ideas that never had the benefit of time.

Consistency does something different. It doesn’t create a peak; it creates a slope—a slow, compounding rise that builds so gradually you can barely see it week to week, but that becomes obvious over months.

Here’s what I’ve noticed after 23 weeks:

The first few articles had hardly any readership. I was publishing into almost nothing. A handful of people signed up, there were a few clicks, and very little interaction. If I’d measured success only by immediate response, I would have stopped by Week 4.

Readership grew by accumulation, not from any single big success. Each week, a few more people subscribed. A few more articles were shared. A few more LinkedIn contacts started to recognise the email. No one article caused a huge jump; the growth came from the total effect of regularly showing up with something useful.

My own thinking became sharper. Writing every week forces you to clarify what you believe. You can’t stay vague when you’re filling 1,200 words on a specific subject. The act of writing has improved my structure, raised questions I hadn’t considered, and given me language for ideas I’d only half-felt before.

The body of work creates its own pull. With 23 articles in the archive, new readers don’t see a newsletter that’s just begun—they see a library. They can browse by topic, see the range of themes, and judge the consistency of quality. That library is now doing work I don’t have to do actively. It attracts subscribers without my involvement.

The same principle applies to brands

Everything I’ve just described about this email also applies to large-scale brand marketing.

A brand that posts on social media every day for a year builds something a brand that posts occasionally will never build: a presence. Not a campaign, not a stunt, not a fleeting moment—a presence. An ongoing, reliable, easily found trail of evidence that this brand exists, has a point of view, and regularly shows up.

I wrote about this in Week 11, when I covered building a social presence from nothing. The zero-audience phase is when consistency matters most, because there’s no external reward. There’s no applause. The system isn’t paying attention yet. What keeps you going is believing in compounding benefits—that turning up today makes turning up tomorrow a little more worthwhile.

The brands I’ve seen succeed on social media weren’t the ones with a single viral post. They were the ones that published regularly for months until the compounding effect kicked in: more followers, more engagement, and a brand that became well known in its niche. By the time people noticed, they’d been at it long enough that their success looked inevitable. It wasn’t; it was built.

The same effect shows up in careers, too

The compounding effect isn’t just for content and brands. It shapes your professional standing as well.

A marketer who shares their ideas openly—on LinkedIn, in a newsletter, in meetings, in team discussions—builds a reputation that grows over time. Not because any single idea is groundbreaking, but because the regular practice reveals something hard to fake: deep understanding, commitment, and a real point of view.

Over time, that reputation becomes an advantage. People start approaching you with questions because they’ve seen you think about these topics repeatedly. Opportunities appear because your name is associated with a particular area of skill. Your professional relationships improve because you regularly contribute, rather than only appearing when you need something.

The professional equivalent of an abandoned newsletter is the person with strong opinions they never share. Their thinking might be excellent, but no one knows. Thinking only compounds when it’s visible.

Why people give up

If consistency is so powerful, why don’t more people stick with it?

First, they expect results too soon. The compounding curve is almost flat at the beginning. If you’re chasing weekly increases in subscribers, followers, or engagement, the early numbers will disappoint you. The value sits in the long-term pattern, but our minds are wired to respond to immediate rewards.

Second, they prioritise perfection over frequency. “I’ll write when I have something truly good to say” sounds reasonable. In practice, it means you write twice a year. The bar for “truly good” keeps rising because you never get the repetitions needed to tell the difference between work that’s genuinely weak and work that just feels imperfect because you’re too close to it.

Third, they underestimate the value of turning up in bad weeks. Not every post will be your best. Not every week will feel inspired. The discipline of consistency means publishing even when you’re not sure the work is great—because the total body of work matters more than any individual piece within it.

Finally, they don’t treat it as a system. Irregular publishing is a weekly decision: “Should I write this week?” Regular publishing is a system: “I publish every Tuesday.” The system removes the decision, which removes the chance to opt out.

The calculation

Here’s the simple maths of turning up:

One post a week for a year is 52 posts. In two years, that’s 104. In three years, 156. That’s a library—a body of work that demonstrates skill, builds confidence, and creates a resource people can find, share, and return to.

One post a month—about what most people manage—produces 12 posts a year. In three years, that’s 36. It’s something, but it doesn’t have the same weight or pull.

The difference isn’t ability; it’s frequency. And frequency, maintained over time, is the engine of compounding.

Nobody remembers the first post

I doubt anyone reading this newsletter remembers what I wrote in Week 1; they might’ve read it, but likely didn’t – and that’s alright, as the benefit isn’t in any single piece. It’s in my continuing to be here, to write, and to refine the same ideas, now 23 weeks in.

No one remembers the first post, but people do remember that you’re still here. That’s the real benefit of turning up regularly.