Yup.
Some thoughts on the article:
Year in Review: 2022’s Content
What were our best pieces of 2022?
There are a few that I really liked but didn't make the list.
Consider adding them.
Should Men Have Open Relationships is a real gem of an article.
You see this stuff discussed elsewhere, mostly by partisans for
and against, but noone gives a fair even-handed account of
what's the male-female dynamics of it and when it could and
couldn't work, and for whom. A really interesting read.
Logistics Checklist: What to Prepare for Good Seductions
I found quite useful for planning my outings. Great practical info.
When you're starting out, what not to do can be just as important
as knowing what you should do. Along those lines, I really liked
12 Mistakes that SCREW UP Conversations & Flirtations and
Negative Social Proof: 9 Anti-Social Signals NOT to Send.
I'm not getting into LTRs yet, but the following two I still found interesting:
Tactics Tuesdays: Implicit Relationship Expectations and
How to Stop a Woman from Doing Forbidden Things.
The latter is a follow-up to
10 Things to Forbid Your Committed GF or Wife from Doing
that's already on the list, so it would makes sense if you added it too,
although I see it's already linked under
READ NEXT.
New Theme: Progress Report
Hmm...
Seems you're treating your employees almost too well,
@Chase.
Employees can get spoiled like kids, you know?
Perhaps a lil' spanking would instill some much-needed discipline.
Skilled Seducer Forum Revamp
It looks great!
Upcoming Course: Dating App “Match Getting” Course
Potential Girls Chase Books
Sounds like great content I'll be sure to check out.
To be frank, I find it crazy how much quality content you've
churned out through the years, yet not have ballooned.
Really makes you wonder...
...
Perhaps the perspective of a reader/outsider that's been following GC on & off for some time might be of help?
(I've only recently come around to applying it.)
Been reading your older year reviews (see especially
2018 review and its sec
2019 Is the Year for Systems,
2020 review and its sec
Meta View on Girls Chase in 2020), the
2018 article on the first 10 years of GC, the
article from 2013 on the paywall, your forum posts on
how and why PUA businesses are closing down (2019) and
the state of the PUA niche (2020), etc.
Also, your (Chase) old comments,
from 2014:
On lack of topics, thing to understand there is that while I do have plenty of topics - we’ve got maybe 400 of them sitting in a big spreadsheet waiting to be written - some of them no matter what I write it’s going to sound like other things I’ve already written, and others I’m just not motivated to write, which means the article will turn out crummy (one thing you’ve got to be if you want to write a 3,000+ word comprehensive informative article that’s not completely boring is MOTIVATED!). Some of the ones at the top of my list still are the one on how to be funny and the one on men’s hairstyles. These are two guys have been asking about forever that I think I can contribute some good stuff on, but every time I sit down to write one of those it’s, “Ah, I can’t write that now.”
There are plenty of things to write on, but at least for the moment I’ve mostly exhausted the fresh topics I feel like writing about, and I find I keep circling back to ground I’ve covered before. I’ve seen lots of other guys do this in lots of different fields (including this one), and they either don’t recognize it, or refuse to, and continue repeating themselves. I’d rather exit when I’m still fairly good than wait until I’m the show cancelled by the network after people quit watching it because it used to be good but somewhere along the line it jumped the shark (maybe you could say I sensed my shark jump moment coming up, and figured it was time to get out of the water before that happened).
from 2016:
I’ll probably withdraw from writing too much once the new course is finally complete and I can start training new writers better to replace me and transitioning myself back more to business development and then eventually out of the business.
But for now, the business doesn’t work when I’m not a central part of it, and if I’m not actively involved I’ll also lose the ability to get specific, get to details, and teach to beginners, which I need to do to make sure the course I’m building now is as out-of-this-world good as I want to make it.
Once I’m finally done with that, I should be able to say: there, I did what I needed to do in this niche, put together a tool that is as darn useful and helpful and awesome for men as I could possibly construct, and now I can prepare to move on. Until then, I am not done yet, and have to stay on the grind.
I intend to take a long vacation after Girls Chase, but that probably won’t be for another year-and-a-half to two years yet.
from 2021:
actually, I am in a somewhat similar position with Girls Chase again. After performing well throughout 2017, 2018, and part of 2019, the business began to slide into decline. We tried a lot of great ideas last year; every one of them failed; and we posted a pretty substantial losing year. I have ideas to bring the business back, but I'm practical about it; I won't just abandon it, but if it's not going to recover I'll have to start thinking soon about what comes next for me, and what happens with GC if it isn't going to bounce back. I have a lot of things I want to do in life, and nursing an unprofitable business isn't really one of them. So, once again, I have set myself a "$N profit by Y date" goal -- and once again we'll see if I can hit it, and bring about another GC renaissance. Do I still have some of the old magic left, or has my bag of pixie dust run dry? Stay tuned to find out!
from 2021:
And yeah, as for me… I won’t stick around forever (I’ve actually tried to semi-retire twice already — once in 2015 and once in 2018 — both times the site wasn’t ready to run without me at the helm). But when I do move on, it’s not going to be due to disappointment with not having reached enough people — I have, and actually did a lot more than I intended to… I just meant to write my book, put it out there, then disappear from the space back in 2011.
It will only be because it is finally time to move onto my next mission
So it's been quite a journey, ey
@Chase? And happy birthday!
The Outside View
In the excellent book
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman introduces the idea of an "outside view."
Basically, whenever faced with a project we're involved in, we can look at it in two ways:
- by considering its particulars, what's going well and not, how motivated we are, what are our plans, etc. This is the "inside view."
- by considering the reference class it broadly belongs to, how well similar projects went, what were their success rates, obstacles, etc. This is the "outside view."
It turns out that the "outside view" is much more accurate.
Why? Because people are prone to a variety of biases:
- they underestimate costs and completion times,
- they overestimate their abilities compared to the average,
- they ignore risks and possible setbacks ("unknown unknowns"),
- they focus on what's under their control and ignore what's not, even though it's often equally important,
- project undertakers specifically are an overly optimistic bunch,
- etc.
So the proper way to find your chances of success is to start from the "outside view"
and then recalibrate up or down based on how good you truly are compared to the
average. See also
reference class forecasting and
Farnam Street on the topic.
For a longer explanation, check out Chapter 23 in Kahneman's book.
Both Chapters 23 & 24 could be very useful to you
@Chase, if you haven't already read the book.
For instance, they might help you avoid the
planning fallacy, like with the new theme.
Now the bad news. I take no pleasure in pointing this out and hope I'm wrong. But:
The outside view for GC succeeding, without Chase at the helm & creating most of the content, is grim.
Currently (and correct me if I'm wrong), the GC business works by selling content (dating advice for men).
Most of the revenue comes not from boot camps, group trainings, advising wealthy clients, advertisement,
or anything else, but from selling content, either on a per-a-product basis or through subscriptions.
The quality content that interests paying customers the most follows a Pareto distribution, with Chase
being the top producer, followed by Alek. When in 2015 and 2018 he tried to employ other authors to
create content instead of him, the business started declining. Additionally, the seduction niche has been
declining since 2014, taking a deep dive during the corona pandemic, having now partially recovered (?).
When thinking of businesses from the same reference class (creating & selling content
in a niche, one main author), how many do you think survive when the main author retires?
Thinking of the seduction niche, how many business have survived after the main guy moved on? For how long?
Now coming to the particulars, of those comparable PUA business that survived, what are the differences with GC?
For instance, were they larger or smaller at the peak?
Did their revenue depend more or less on one man? E.g., how much of it was selling content vs boot camps?
How many other people were on board to fill in the gap of the main fella leaving?
Did they change the business model after the main guy left?
And so on.
These are the questions that one needs to answer in order to get an accurate
asesment of the odds of GC succeeding, say 10 years from now.
I can't say for others, but my answers to these questions point towards low odds. 15% maybe?
(By contrast, an "inside view" focusing on all the great products that will be coming out,
the site revamp, various marketing ideas, etc., would give one wildly optimistic success odds.)
As you said,
@Chase, the traffic to GC in 2022 stayed about the same as the year before.
But you are still here, writing, hustling.
What will happen when you leave?
In
The Endgame Discussion, you touched a bit on this, but didn't really answer.
How does any of this help?
Being accurate and realistic is always a good starting point for planning ahead.
Along those lines, it seems that drastic changes will be needed if the business is to grow without you, Chase.
Attempting for a third time to have others write instead of you isn't likely to work...
(IIRC,
@Vision,
@WIA,
@Skills, and a few others also have businesses
in the seduction niche. Curious what they think of the "outside view"?
What sort of business models succeed here, especially when the main guy leaves?)