People often focus on what they believe will lead to a certain outcome instead of the outcome itself. This is because it’s usually easier to achieve the surrogate goal than the real one.
Surrogate vs. Real Goal:
Twitter followers vs. influence
Landing page conversions vs. sales
Getting national press vs. building a successful company
Many startups chase big-time coverage by large tech blogs, thinking it’s a panacea for their growth and funding problems. They saw XYZ company get coverage in TechCrunch and then become successful. Following this flawed logic, unexperienced entrepreneurs believe that coverage begets success, whereas success actually begets coverage.
You may think having lots of Twitter followers somehow makes you influential, powerful, or important. It doesn’t. People who are influential, powerful, and important usually have lots of Twitter followers, but just because you have lots of Twitter followers doesn’t make you influential, powerful, and important.
The real goal’s achievement results in the surrogate goal’s achievement, not vice versa.
