The Digital Law of Relativity
Why the old laws of success still apply, even when the algorithm says otherwise
In 2014, I built a Udemy course on mindset.
Back then, Udemy was the Wild West of online learning. Anyone could upload a course on anything, and the internet was buzzing with bro-promises that this was the shortcut to passive income and freedom. Of course, that meant thousands of courses competing for attention, most of them destined to sink without a trace.
None the wiser, I poured weeks of work into recording, editing, and polishing my first online course, bringing my passion for teaching and the best of what I’d learned about personal growth to the modules. I couldn’t see a downside. I love teaching, I’m really good at teaching, and I was all-in on the whole digital scene. I was going to be a success story for not only doing what I love, but doing it in this new online ecosystem.
All I had to do was ship it and the money would flow.
Except it didn’t.
That’s not how this story ends. In the end my course went nowhere, swallowed up by the endless catalog of other courses and my lack of knowledge about what’s arguably more important than building the course: marketing it.
It’s one thing to create The Thing.
It’s another entirely to find enough people to buy it to achieve financial freedom.
I remember the defeat and frustration in my body. Weeks of effort, energy, and hope—gone. I kept asking myself, If Bob Proctor was right, if Earl Nightingale’s law of relativity was true, if these guys really knew what they were talking about, where was the equal and opposite reaction to all that work?
Years later, a very different moment arrived. Out of nowhere, a woman emailed me about my personal branding book. She worked at a billion-dollar company and wanted to hire me for a corporate consulting gig. The contract was solid. The pay was excellent. The whole experience was surreal and really cool. I saw it as the beginning of the next phase of my corporate consulting business.
I couldn’t have predicted it. That book had been out in the world for years without much fanfare. And suddenly, it became the bridge to an opportunity I never saw coming.
Despite extended conversations about having me coach her leadership team long-term, things didn’t pan out in the end. She left the company shortly after my gig, and we lost touch. Once again I was up against my own ignorance about how these things work.
Bittersweet, yes—but it taught me something crucial: the law of relativity hadn’t disappeared. It was simply playing out on a different timeline.
That’s the hard part for creators today. The algorithm messes with our perception of the law. We expect cause and effect to play out in the metrics of likes, comments, shares, and sales. When the reaction doesn’t appear right away, we assume the law failed. Or worse, that we did.
But the law hasn’t failed. And neither have we. The reaction is just hidden, delayed, or rerouted. The energy you put in doesn’t vanish. It compounds. It shapes your voice. It sharpens your thinking. It plants seeds in people who may never click “like” but quietly absorb your work until one day they reach out and say, I’ve been following you for years. Can we talk?
It also points you toward what you need to most learn next. That right there may be the best result of all.
Not everything will work out. That Udemy course didn’t. Plenty of posts I’ve published have landed flat. But nothing is wasted. Every action carries energy forward.
The digital law of relativity is this: stop measuring only by the algorithm’s scoreboard. The return might not be immediate, visible, or symmetrical but it will come back to you, often in surprising ways.
So keep creating anyway. Do what you’re called to do. Forget the algorithm. Do your work.