Whenever I’m in doubt and I don’t know where to turn, I turn to my idols, who never let me down: Brainiac, Two-Face, and Spongebob Squarepants.

Ok, just kidding about Squarepants. The rest is real though.

You know, until recently, if I were asked about my idols, I might have said someone like Marshall McLuhan, or maybe Hunter S. Thompson or something. Boring people. Real people.

Not any more. I have evolved. I now get my advice exclusively from imaginary criminal psychopaths.

It’s time you did the same. Here’s why.

What criminals get wrong

Let’s say a guy wants to rob a bank. He’s a normal guy like you or me. He doesn’t want to do a horrible job for 40 years, but he’s not qualified for anything either. He doesn’t think he has any choices in life, and society isn’t giving him of the upside he sees on television or anywhere else. He’s like “screw it, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Now, let’s just say that this guy is like most people. He has reservations about killing people. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Thankfully, a bank isn’t people. If the bank gets robbed, nobody feels bad for it. After all, banks rob us every day; they just gradually introduce it so that they slowly get your consent. Besides, all the money is insured.

So our guy figures he’ll end up in a tropical country somewhere with a beautiful half-Latina half-Asian girlfriend or something. Who loses? Nobody. Exactly. Why would a bank losing a million dollars be a bad thing? Seriously, everybody would be happy. I’m not even kidding. Banks fuck over everyone.

So here’s the thing: if nobody feels bad for a bank, and all the money is insured and nobody gets hurt (in theory), why does nobody do it?

Well, simple. Too many things could go wrong, and the consequences for anything going wrong are massive and dangerous. In other words, it’s too high risk.

They deal in social deviance, doing things that most people aren’t willing to do in order to get ahead. This, by itself, is actually fine. There are lots of methods of social deviance that aren’t illegal.

So the problem isn’t social deviance at all. It’s that criminals do it in an old-school way, for which there are laws, and because of that, there’s collateral damage, death, destruction of private or public property, etc. In other words, the problem isn’t that they break the law, or that they’re criminals. It’s that, in doing so, they might harm you or your loved ones.

Criminals do what they do because they see it as a high-risk, quick, low-effort way of making a bunch of money. They go to the edge of what’s acceptable (and over) in order to get what they want. Some of them are horrible people, and others are doing the equivalent of cheating on their taxes– in other words, not much.

So not all criminals do things that are damaging to society. Some do things that average people consider totally fine, but that just happen to be illegal for larger, sometimes antiquated reasons.

So here’s our first distinction. Violent criminals go to the edges of acceptability. They do high-risk things in order to obtain large rewards quickly. They do this because they are impatient and fail the marshmallow test. This is why they end up in jail.

But hold on, there’s more.

What criminals get right

I was watching a movie the other week about Jacques Mesrine, the public enemy number one in France and Quebec in the 60′s and 70′s. He’s a sociopath if I’ve ever heard of one, but also an epic success in his own way. They literally had to ambush this guy in the middle of the Paris and blast him with automatic weapons in order to kill him. He was like a modern-day Rasputin. Epic.

It was while watching this movie that it really started to click for me.

Here’s a guy that flaunts the rules in a way that nobody else can. Seriously, this dude escaped from jail and then proceeded to return to jail with automatic weapons in order to help his friends escape.

As homicidal as this dude was, I have no words to describe how much guts he had.

So, in that sense, this is a guy we can learn a lot from. Not murder, not mayhem, rape, or anything else of that sort, but definitely what a few friends of mine and myself have now dubbed “skipping the line.”

Ok, imagine you’re going to a bar and the line is long. You stand at the back of the line like a good customer, and the hostess says your wait is going to be like 15 minutes. That time goes by but you still don’t get a table. You’re still waiting. You’re starting to get impatient.

Then, some guy walks in, goes right up to the hostess, whispers something in her ear and she nods and shows him to a table. How do you feel? Pretty annoyed, I’m guessing. WTF, right?

Now, another scenario. Imagine you’re at the airport. There’s a long line for security, as there was for my flight today, but this guy goes to another line, one that you hadn’t noticed, and just whizzes through everything. You watch him show people his iPhone, and he speeds past a giant line. Everything’s the same, except in this case, the system for skipping the line isn’t covert or hidden. He used a 3D barcode or something to get into a special category.

Now, here’s a trick question. Out of all the preceding examples, which one do you consider the most wrong? The bar, the airport, or the bank robbery?

All of these, done right, are victimless social deviance. They’re just deviance with different levels of risk, correct?

Let’s ask another question: If no one got hurt in either of those circumstances, from a one to a ten, how wrong are each of them?

What you need to do is not “play it safe”– which is downright idiotic– but to find is something as high-risk and high-reward as a bank robbery, but without the massive downside.

Let me give you another example. I end up in France fairly often, and since I mostly deal with Americans for work, one of my easiest conversation points revolves around a guy called Loic Le Meur.

Some of you may know Loic, but you’re probably not French, so you don’t know his reputation in France– a country where the majority view government work as being amongst the highest forms of service and status. Where Loic comes from, he’s considered socially deviant as well. So is my French friend Erwan Le Corre (Movnat is doing a workshop in Montreal, btw, which you should check out).

Guys like this, and they differ by country, have labels that their homelands consider fringe or weird. They aren’t easily accepted. They trot the edge in their own way, and are willing to take risks that others aren’t. They’re skipping the line as well– defining themselves differently and placing themselves at the top of their categories.

Normal people are not willing to do this. We don’t have models if we want to be out on the edge. For most people, they have no one that can relate to their need to be that far out.

Entrepreneurs won’t do. They are too acceptable. Politicians won’t do. They are too criminal and unethical (no, seriously, they are). We need someone else– a group we can look to and emulate, the same way people think “What would Jesus do?”

Society is far too boring. There is no one we can look to, so we have no choice. Magneto, Moriarty, and Mr Freeze– that is who it has to be.

Acting like a criminal for fun and profit

Let me ask you a question: according to Rotten Tomatoes, 94 out of every 100 critics thumbed up the Dark Knight. Why do you think that is?

Is it because of Batman? Guess again.

It’s the Joker.

The Joker is the personification of risk, something the average person finds thrilling. He does things that others would never dare to do, but everyone sees inside themselves. Why is that?

Modern society is stifling. The options for how to behave are limited and unfulfilling. Max Weber called it the Iron Cage because it eventually stifles and crushes anything polarizing. We have no choice but to submit in the majority of our lives.

What we start realizing if we spend enough time in cities is that this society breeds sheep. This isn’t even necessarily bad– it’s largely responsible for the stability of the age we live in. And these people can’t even be held responsible for it– the pressure of our society is so crushing that you have no choice but to submit, even at the cost of your long-term happiness.

The thing is, society also seems to have taken a wrong turn. When you combine it with the technological advancements we’ve had in the past several years, what we have turned ourselves into is a giant garbage production factory that is throwing itself off a cliff. There’s a fucking giant continent of plastic in the Pacific ocean for Christ’s sake, all made possible by the modern division between our actions and their consequences (Marx would have had a field day with this).

Clearly, social deviance is necessary at this point.

So who’s here to save us? Who’s here to make us feel alive once again, like a normal human being whose soul longs to be free and able to live without the crushing consequences of a drone-filled modern environment, where you can’t seem to make a difference and often don’t even know how to muster up the energy to care?

The only people who are capable of doing this are those who have lived outside society, those who have no place inside of it, and who ignore society’s rules.

The Joker is the personification of anarchy and freedom, and those feelings, when expressed to us in theatre or film, are deeply moving. It awakens a part of us that yearns to be free, but doesn’t quite know how.

But no modern hero exists for those that want to figure this out.

Now, here’s the thing: We don’t have to deface property, kill people, or rob banks in order to find edges. There are lots of modern edges to explore. They are valuable because they’re risky, and only through learning from criminals can we truly know what the edge is.

Finding an edge

Imagine a map of the world, but flat like it was thought to be a long time ago. At the edges, you fall off and die. But what about right before that, the places before these giant imaginary waterfalls? What’s there?

These are places nobody knows about because no one returns from them, or because no one even goes. If you go there, it changes you. You come back different.

But there’s a problem. The map doesn’t exist for these places. You don’t know how to get there. You need a guide.

Here is my suggestion. If you are looking for an edge and you can’t find one, ask yourself what you would do if you were a criminal, or a sociopath, or had delusions of grandeur, didn’t think you could fail, or that there would be no negative consequences. Ask yourself how you would act if you thought no one had the balls or brains to stop you.

The trick is to take on a personality. Play a character– one with no fear whatsoever, no conscience and no understanding of society’s rules.

Play a total sociopath. Find things with high reward, and act towards them as if there were no negative consequences.

Hard decisions will suddenly seem easy.

Fears that have no consequences will reveal themselves for the mirages that they are. Barriers will vanish.

My guess for what happens next? Your hurdles will have to be set a whole lot higher.

I have to leave the house right now so I’m going to publish this post early. It is not polished, but I think the ideas are strong. If that means it gets ignored, whatever.

I am not a real investor– just a writer who wants to survive from one bubble to the next.

But today, I am pretty confident a social crash is coming. Whether you agree or not, it’s important that you read this.

We think all of this social stuff is building value for us– building wealth for some and just well-being for others. This is somewhat true– but I suspect we are overvaluing what it can do for us– most of us anyway.

It is true that there is a massive population going social online, but this growth might just be building value for established companies like Facebook. A few of us are making money off of it, but many people are at the bottom of this pyramid and will be left without anything to show for it at the end.

Because most people are not financially invested in this space, the bubble will not leave people broke. But it will leave people thinking they’ve wasted a few years of their lives.

If you’re like most people, you did not start here early, which means you’re closer to the bottom of the pyramid than the top. So it’s possible you’re being had.

But I want you to avoid this, and I will endeavour here to show you how.

But first, why.

“Friends” are valueless. Well, maybe. I’ve written before that audience is an asset, but is it really? Most of your “friends” on Facebook, if you’re a typical social media douche, will never do anything for you except social proof your popularity, an effect which is blunted over time anyway as more people realize the reality of the situation.

I view the hyperinflation of friends the same way I see the valuation and false growth of companies based on inflated/purchased ComScore traffic stats. They convince those with money to spend, or those not savvy enough to tell the difference. But eventually valuations become so unreasonably high that they are unbelievable to even the uneducated.

This collective “A-ha!” moment is when the bubble bursts. It’s when we all call bullshit on online friends, comments, and connections as a reason to know someone– online, that is.

Most startups have no business model. I worked for a startup in the late 90′s with a great idea but no business model or revenue (it was an early Google Maps type thing). It was very interesting but the decline was evident. The model was clearly to get bought.

I had a discussion with an angel/VC type the other day who is very smart. I asked him why people do this instead of, say, real estate. One of his answers was “ego.”

I think another may be that people now feel that anyone can do it. This collective sentiment is based on watching regular guys be able to develop massive followings, but it’s common to all bubbles to find an “anyone can do it” mentality. Think housing, dot-com, and many others.

Everyone is looking for the “next” Facebook or Twitter. This is probably the question I get the most often from conference attendees, as many of you probably know. Possibly many of you are looking for it or are trying to build it. God bless you and I hope you do well.

But it’s likely that the “next” anything will not be social at all.

What’s really interesting is that Facebook, Twitter, etc actually benefit from this inflation. Their valuations are not public and therefore don’t impact the public at large, but those of us inside here will definitely feel it, especially if we work in the space.

Now to the next question. How do you avoid a crash?

You must exit. This means convert to cash.

Your assets must be diversified. You cannot sit there with your Twitter expertise– you, and your company, must do more.

Your assets must be real. They must be outside this space– or if they’re in it, they must provide actual profit.

If you do not have the ability to do any of these things, your personal stock may plunge– soon.

There are those who know how to really turn networks into an income stream, by the way. They are called SALESPEOPLE.

Do you consider yourself a salesperson? This is not most of us. Most people are anxious about turning weak ties into money, but for some, it may be necessary.

So your options are to step out, or to learn to create value from what you have built by stretching your social contract to include selling to them.

Final note. During the dot-com bubble, some very interesting people emerged. I think of Frank Schilling, who is quoted as saying that, after the dot-com crash, everyone just went back to using the internet every single day. And this is where Frank picked up over 300,000 dropped, and valuable, domain names– while everyone thought they were valueless.

Now, he lives in the Cayman Islands earning… well, let’s just say a lot.

There will always be people who survive crashes, or who grab undervalued assets and use them effectively to make a killing, one way or another.

But there are many more people who think “everything will be fine” and who walk along with people all the way off the cliff.

The choice as to which kind you will be, of course, is yours.

This post endeavours to help you learn more quickly– about any subject.

If you just want to see the list, see below, but before we start, try this thought experiment.

Let’s assume that you would be automatically successful at any project you took part in. You could make a startup into a billion-dollar company, become an Olympic athlete, or achieve enlightenment (assuming such a thing was possible). You aren’t guaranteed to be the best in the world at anything– just to do well.

Now, imagine that it wasn’t just you that could do this– some others would, too– and that you could succeed in each “category” only once. So you could only start one company, for example, or excel at one sport. You and all these other people would be a sort of Highlander-esque group that would go around, doing really great things. (Incidentally, I am writing this post in the Highlander Cafe in Singapore. Hello.) :)

I suspect a sort of competition would emerge, at a very high level, between people such as yourself, for top positions.

So here is the question. What order would you pick for your successes?

In other words, how would you choose what to be successful at first, and how would you prepare?

As it happens, I happen to have considered this for a very long time– and so have many other people– but not for the reasons you’d think.

One result of this thinking is the Hinduism’s ashramas, stages of life which every man must go through. Early stages prepare for later ones.

Another is education of the children of the very rich, where success is assumed, but needs to be optimized.

I personally considered this because I was trying to create the most awesome Dungeons and Dragons characters I could possibly make. Geeky I know– but true.

Wherever you get your reasons, thinking about life this way helps you ask certain questions, like “If physical capacities decrease– and mental abilities increase– with age, then what is the order I should do things in?”

Life is more complex than making D&D characters. People have different priorites and goals, so any system that is in place should be flexible enough to accomodate them. Also, the world itself changes, so your system should be adaptable to a changing technological and social environment.

I know this is maybe a bit convoluted. But here is my theory.

The most important things to have at the beginning of life are education, a wide network, and a bit of money. These three things facilitate all other endeavours– one provides understanding, another provides opportunity, and the third provides freedom to pursue that opportunity.

This implies that the first things life should be about is those 3 things. If you disagree, please say why in the comments, but I think they’re the fundamentals of any really successful life. But what comes next?

This is what I want to ask you.

What did you wish you knew earlier in life, and what do you think you need to know only later?

And finally, what books could teach you to obtain those things?

The result of this post could be nothing– or it could be a very comprehensive list of the best books to read on any subject (like a Personal MBA). So leave a comment with your suggestion, and I’ll add it below with a link to you.

Since I’ve read a lot, I’ll start.

The List

The best books I can think of to maximize income while minimizing work are Work the System and the 4-Hour Workweek.

For mental models of reality, I would say Poor Charlie’s Almanac and Seeking Wisdom as well as anything by Nassim Taleb (who is incidentally paleo and a student of Erwan le Corre like myself– expect to see some of that in his new book).

For meeting people, I am going to say something controversial and say Rules of the Game (there’s a story behind this), as well as Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone.

I could be wrong, but along the lines of “only book you’ll ever need” on marketing could be Purple Cow and the only career book might be Linchpin.

The only book on diet you ever need could be (maybe) Why We Get Fat.

The best book on relationships might be 5 Love Languages.

Joshua and Ricardo say the best book on people and relationships is How to Win Friends and Influence People.

A good lesson in humour is Breakfast of Champions, suggested by Jackson.

Ryan thinks the best book on influence is Influence (it is pretty great).

Mike and Ryan recommend The War of Art.

Monica suggests Amusing Ourselves to Death.

When I Say No, I Feel Guilty was recommended by Daan. I’ve read it, and it’s pretty great.

Patti and I both recommend Man’s Search For Meaning. This is one of my favourite books of all time, actually.

How to Think Strategically was recommended by Roland.

Please Understand Me was suggested by Jeremy.

Rick suggested Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars.

My friend Chris Guillebeau‘s book The Art of Non-Conformity was suggested by Peter.

Now, add yours below. I’ll update with your suggestion and a link to your blog.

What if there was blueprint to help you break bad habits?

How would more willpower change you? What would you become capable of?

Over the past few months, I’ve been talking with Todd Becker, who claims that willpower, eyesight, body weight, and more can be improved through hormesis– a normal biological reaction the body has to short, moderate stress, and which anyone can use to their own advantage.

By using these reactions to our advantage, he says we can change ourselves into the people we want to be.

So, for the past few weeks, I’ve been interviewing him– learning why he takes daily cold showers, or abstains from food for up to 30 hours at a time. I’ve also been doing it myself– fasting once a week and more– with great results.

Today, we’re going to show you how it’s done.

Why you would expose yourself to stress on purpose? Answer: To have a transformative effect on your mind and make 2011 the year you want it to be. Enter Todd Becker.

†

Positive change doesn’t happen without taking risks.

It doesn’t happen without facing fears, getting off your butt and taking the first step.

But when you face those fears and take the plunge, you usually find that things aren’t as bad as you imagined.  You almost always gain by taking on the new challenge. Even the failures become learning experiences.

That’s good advice for making one-time changes like leaving a bad job or relationship, starting a new venture, or getting yourself organized. The problem is that it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

It’s all well and good to bite the bullet and join a health club and start a diet. But can you sustain your efforts past the initial resolve and enthusiasm — or will you inevitably backslide? You can resolve to be more diplomatic at work or more understanding at home, but can you do that when feel stressed out and frustrated, when you’re at your weakest?

To make lasting changes to your behavior and habits, you often need to change the way you react.

Your reactions to food, people and events can be deep seated, visceral, and automatic. Hunger pangs sabotage your attempts at dieting. A hot temper undercuts your relationships. This often seems to be where “free will” ends and physiology takes over.

The conventional wisdom is to accept that we have such “hard wired” responses while finding ways to sidestep them.

Diet experts advise us to eat frequently to avoid cravings and the risk of bingeing. Drug and alcohol treatment programs like Narconon and AA promote the gospel of lifelong abstinence: once an addict, always an addict. That’s certainly one approach, but it leaves you vulnerable to relapse from the slightest chance encounter with the forbidden fruit.

I think there’s a better way.

Use behavioral science to “re-wire” your urges and your emotional and physiological responses. A century of science shows us how to do this, starting with Ivan Pavlov in the early twentieth century and continuing through to more recent breakthroughs in neuroplasticity, backed up by studies of brain imaging, neurotransmitters and hormone signaling.

Here’s the key insight. Our emotional and physiological responses are conditioned by cues in our environment, and these cues are often subtle and act synergistically.

Let’s take the example of appetite for food or the urge to drink. We get hungry at certain times of day, in response to certain aromas, visual cues and even social situations. These cues activate the hormones and neurotransmitters that control our appetite.

I used to find that just driving up to my house triggered my urge for a cocktail.  It was a conditioned response. A similar thing happens when a particular person’s nagging tone of voice can get you riled up.

It’s enough to make us seem like robots without free will. But the opposite is actually true. Within the last decade, neuroplasticians and behaviorists have found strong support for a radical idea:

Our responses to these environmental cues are not hard-wired. They can be changed, often within a matter of weeks.

This approach has been developed into a method called cue exposure therapy, a rapid yet long-lasting way to “extinguish” cravings or negative feelings. Among other uses, it has been found to be effective in overcoming drug addictions, with low relapse rates.

The idea is to expose yourself to the cues that normally trigger the problem response, but without letting it happen. Repeat this enough times and the response eventually dies out.

Here’s the real meat of it. A study of the most effective elements of cue exposure therapy found four key success factors:

1. Make the cue exposure as realistic and varied as possible.

Alcoholics who detox in articifical hospital settings often relapse. A more effective alternative is to practice avoidance– or even moderate drinking behavior– at the bar and at home. Apply this lesson to dampen your appetite: Expose yourself to different aromas and visual cues in different settings and times of day– without eating. Mix it up.

2. Repeat the exposures frequently, and at varying time intervals.

Frequent cue exposure leads to more rapid and permanent deconditioning. So plan multiple “sessions” with several unreinforced exposures at each session, and vary the time intervals between sessions.

This helps prevent “extinction bursts,” where cravings will come back stronger than before. Think of casinos: they know well that unpredictable payout schedules at the slots are a powerful inducement to gambling. Firmy resist these delayed extinction bursts, since they’ll undermine your success.

3. Include an active behavioral component.

Deconditioning works best when addicts don’t merely view and handle their drug, but actually go through the motions of smoking or shooting up without actually ingesting the drug. One very effective thing I did to decondition my own food cravings was to prepare scrumptious meal for family and friends, without partaking myself. They feasted, with some amusement, while I sipped an iced tea itself.

4. Follow up the cues with an alternate response, not just the lack of a response.

Extinction works best when addicts replace their habit with an alternative response to stress. Apply this idea the next time you are stuck in traffic or are confronted by a cranky boss. Have an enjoyable CD ready for the traffic slowdown. Actively plan to intently listen to the boss without firing back.

Think of these actions as training exercises– ways to strengthen your ability to handle stress without overreacting.

Finally, reward your success! Whenever you outwit your bad habit, follow up with some pleasant activity. Go for a walk, call a friend, or read a good book. Get creative with this. Plan your training episodes in advance, just as you schedule visits to the gym.

Remember: Willpower is a muscle. Training makes it stronger.

Good luck! And if you’d like more stuff like this, please enter your email here and press enter:

There is no piece of knowledge, anywhere, that is useless.

Everytime you read a book, a blog post, or have an insightful conversation, you learn more than. Each piece of knowledge is applicable in certain circumstances, but also leads towards a broader understanding of the world, showing patterns in human behaviour, systems or more if you look for them.

Everything in the world works at patterns. We are pattern machines (in fact, all of life is) so for good or ill, we see them everywhere. If I learn about retail businesses, then biology, and then stereo equipment, I will learn things in each that apply to the others.

Most of the highly valuable information falls into two structures: people and systems.

An understanding of human beings means understanding emotions such as fear and greed and others, how people view themselves and those around them, as well as how they behave and for what reasons.

A knowledge of systems means that you know the math of how things work, how to use leverage and how to invest, how to debug and find solutions to technical problems.

Often, the two overlap. They’re also masculine and feminine, yin and yang, etc. You can view them through any lens and apply archetypes to them if you like– the trickster, the magician, the king… whatever. It’s all the same stuff with a different shell, so the more you absorb from the largest variety of sources, the better off you are.

That is when you can find the patterns in human behaviour, and in systems– which means the patterns in everything.

I guess that’s kind of like being psychic… sorta.

Spam is a hell of a way to make money– or so says my neighbour.

“I have a friend who sells Viagra online– makes over a million dollars a year,” he said to me a while ago, as I nodded in acknowledgement. “You could get into this business if you wanted to.” This was true, I guess.

The other day someone told me that my blog “had no business model.” In a sense, they were right. I’m not trying to get you to buy something on here, except maybe my credibility. This blog’s purpose is basically to help me build audience, which helps me sell books, and eventually to charge pretty decent sums for speaking fees, etc.. All are credibility buys to get to the top of the food chain.

But that’s not an excuse. I do leave money on the table. So do you.

A few weeks back a pretty well known speaker told me he was hanging out in Vegas with some affiliate marketers, and that after leaving the stage, they told him he’d “left over $100,000 on the table” by not selling the audience on something at the end of his speech. This was also true. I’ve been in the room during hard-sell talks that caused feeding frenzies. They work.

When you get into this space, you realize that because you’re speaking, writing, etc., you can basically insert a sales pitch anywhere. Some of these are classy, but many of them are not.

What money you choose to leave on the table says a lot about who you are. My friend Mitch has something called The Gladwell Test that he uses to decide for him, that goes “Would Malcolm Gladwell do this?” If you are a certain calibre of speaker/writer/blogger, then there are things you just won’t do.

Look, there is a lot of money to be made on the web these days. It’s everywhere, and if you can think about selling it, someone is already doing it somewhere. But if you are one of those hard-sell, squeeze page people, that is all you will ever be.

Delay monetization (or cancel it) as often as possible. Here, you will rise as high as the best work you do, but you will also fall as low as the worst tactics you’re capable of. Choose wisely.

There’s always someone who will do your job for cheaper than you will. In fact, you can bet on it.

That’s because there’s always someone who’s more desperate, who wants the sale more, or who is doing it for something other than money. So how do you know if you should discount your services? Of course that you don’t ever truly know. But here are some hints.

1. If someone tells you it’s an opportunity, it probably isn’t.

If someone has to convince you of the opportunity they’re presenting in front of you, they’re trying to sell you something. Opportunities are obvious, but sleight of hand is subtle. You can tell which is which.

To find out if someone is being cheap, you do the math on the kind of business that they do, how much they make per customer, and then calculate how much they make per month. Then you not only know that they’re cheap, but just how cheap they are– which in turn tells you how much they do (or don’t) value you. By this point your pride should kick in, and you’ll know what to do.

2. See if you can leverage it.

Leverage (or lack of it) makes something either easier or harder to achieve. If someone is leveraging you (which they usually are in one way or another), you can usually do the same with them. Speakers doing free stuff can suggest a mailing list or to visit their blog, or if they like that kind of thing, they can sell a product (ugh).

Once you start making an ok living, you figure out pretty quickly that (some) money is actually the easiest stuff you can get access to, and that a big network, a powerful platform, or other different forms of value are much harder to obtain. So if you’re making a living, the next steps are to obtain those, since they’ll expand your capacities in ways currency cannot.

3. Pricing is entirely about perception.

Someone that charges $50k for a website design tells people what they are about, instantly. Someone who starts at $1,000 and then discounts to $750 says something else entirely– namely that they’re willing to find 25% more clients to make the same amount of money, and they’re comfortable with that (ugh).

All pricing is a matter of framing and perception, which is why discounting is usually bad. That said, if you’re on the edge of a “yes,” it might be appropriate– but a good reason should be presented to the person, not just because you need the money. If you discount yourself early, it means you’ll probably be comfortable with doing it again, later. Imagine a marriage based on that principle– fun right? ;)

Anyway, people are in all kinds of situations, where they may need to drop their prices or make another kind of sacrifice, but I guess I’m trying to say that, more often than not, you should stand up for your value, and raise it more often than you’re already doing. The result is less work, more choice for you, and the ability to spend more time on what matters.

All that is so much better than pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Bartenders make $500 a night in tips. Baristas make $20.

Their drinks are equally complex. They serve similar numbers of clients. They perform the same job, but during different hours and in different settings. Why do bartenders make so much more?

It isn’t performance. Some bartenders are sloppy, and some baristas are excellent, but their compensation will never go up or down enough to reach the other, no matter how good they are, so quality has very little to do with it.

Could it be an issue of how much we order? Bar patrons order several drinks, but rarely have as many in a Starbucks. Would baristas get better tips if the size of drinks were smaller? Maybe, but that doesn’t seem right either.

To be treated, and paid, like a bartender you should act and put yourself in the context that bartenders are in. After all, we feel like bartenders deserve their dollar, but it’s the rare individual who’d tip a barista the same.

Bloggers have the same problem with speaking events. They work for whuffie but aren’t sure how to be taken seriously or get paid. They move from one Podcamp to another, hoping to make it onto a bigger stage but often, it doesn’t seem to work.

I think I have an answer as to how to make it happen, but it doesn’t involve doing more speaking events, though practice helps. It’s about gaining credibility, changing context and applying leverage.

Method 1: Testimonials/Word of Mouth

A few weeks ago, I was introduced through Twitter to Erwan le Corre. Erwan is the founder of MovNat, an exercise method which is founded in evolutionary principles and usually goes hand-in-hand with my paleo diet. I already thought it was cool stuff but my opinion was changed when I found out that Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, had done it.

This, of course, is totally irrational. Taleb is a smart dude but the system itself doesn’t change based on whether he knows about it. He isn’t even in good shape, really, but I’m still influenced. I can’t help myself. I hold it in higher esteem because some famous dude did it. You might too.

What we can learn from this is that the more passive the method through which other people find out about you, the better. If you make it look like you worked for it, it cheapens the recommendation, but if you are just sitting back while someone else hears about you, you’re doing great.

Word of mouth is actually how I get the majority of the speaking gigs I do. This method works, but only if people really do think that you’re great, are willing to talk about it, and those people are highly credible in other circles. This brings us to #2.

Method 2: Your Easy = Their Difficult

I love how impressed we are by movie stars, how we feel that they’re talented, etc., no matter how they got there. In a way, it gives the impression that the end justifies the means despite the fact that all our moral teachings tell us otherwise. Sons and daughters of movie stars, specifically, are clearly not selected by talent but rather by proximity. This is the same thing I’d like you to take advantage of, in your own way.

What is easy for you that’s hard for others? If you’re loaded, fly everywhere and meet everyone– it’s comparatively difficult for others, so you’ll gain an advantage. If you have a ton of time, produce more content than others so you’ll get on people’s radars easier. It’s all about the gates you can cross but others can’t.

One of the big lessons from this method is that it isn’t impressive for you to be a social media expert in the social media space.. everybody can do it, so nobody cares. You have to bring your expertise to a place where it’s magical, and show them stuff that’s bleeding edge to them, but normal to us. As Arthur C. Clarke said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” What you do isn’t magic in your circle, so you have to go somewhere where it is.

Method 3: Be Aggressive

I loved this so much when I saw it on Put This On, so I have to share this advice with y’all as well. Often, you are already speaking at an event or getting asked to come, it becomes a kind of “well, we have no budget, etc. etc.” conversation that heads back down the slope of free. You have to fight this with an actual belief that you are worth paying for. Here’s the best quote from the post:

Pretend you’re giving it all up and going back to school in a year. Act like you have one year to make it work before you give up and try something else. What haven’t you done? Where aren’t you being aggressive enough? Go do it and embarrass yourself with your pushiness- after all, you’ll be doing something else in a year anyway, so who cares what people think? Push until you feel uncomfortable, and then double it.

I wouldn’t go as far as this, but it’s still great advice. We are so shy about doing what we do, and not being self-promotional, that we often sell ourselves short. We become the unsigned hype instead of becoming Jay-Z, all because we refused to hustle.

This final method is a third form of social proof, one that completes the equation with the other two: proof from others, proof from the environment, and proof from yourself. When you put together all three, you have evidence on all sides telling everyone that you’re worth a premium. Apply enough pressure on each of these, and you’re golden. But don’t apply enough, and there will be a lack of congruence when people look around, so they won’t believe it.

Here’s the thing though: You actually have to be good at this thing you’re doing for free. You can be average and apply all of these methods I mention and still get paid, but people only feel good about it once they’ve gotten great value from your work. So you might be able to convince a few people, but then you’ll quickly go back down the ladder again. When you start to get paid, realize that you need to up your game very seriously and it’ll keep you up there. That’s when it’s even more important to work your face off.

Have you ever had success with any of these methods, or others? How did you make it work for you?

(Hat tip for inspiration: Taylor Davidson)

Uses of social media have to be timely or they lose their value. The stuff below works, and impresses me, right now, but it’ll become common later. Use them before that to leave an impact, ok?

• FAIT ICI, a local shop that focuses on local, organic food is opening next door to the café I sit in every day to write these blog posts. Last week, they put up the banner and I got curious as to what store was going to open. When I checked my email a few days ago, there was an invite to their opening. Jackson Wightman saw that I kept logging in nearby, saw my tweets about organic meat and eating paleo, and figures I’m interested. I am impressed, and tell him so.
• COSSETTE, a pretty huge an marketing agency in town. There are enough employees using the service there that it keeps trending when they login. I see this because I use 4sq multiple times a day. This paints Cossette’s as being on the cutting edge, and aware, of what’s new in social software. Who would I hire if I saw this and wanted to do LBS stuff? Right.

None of these things lead to profit directly, but all of them leave an impression and help me see these businesses differently. All of them are cheap or free, and if you have a business, you can use them too.

It actually offends me how difficult it is to build a Twitter audience by using Twitter. Ridiculous.

Here’s a great example from this morning. I found an amazing quote from a Bruce Lee book on Reddit and tweeted it out. Here it is so you can see how fucking awesome it is.

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile. [...] So this morning he said to me “We’re going to do five.” I said, “Bruce, I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.” I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go on any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” –and we’re still running– “if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you do that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physically or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

Great quote right? I thought so, and so did Twitter. It got retweeted a bunch of times, and then RT’ed again by their followers, etc. Someone even said they printed it and pinned it to their wall. Good for them. But is anyone new following me as a result? Nope.

For me, the most effective way to get followed on Twitter is actually not to be on Twitter at all, but instead to be somewhere in person (conference etc.) and show your Twitter handle onscreen. Shoemoney recently told a story about this and how effective it is, which is worth reading. But the point is that if you point your audience from Twitter to a blog, they might subscribe, and from a blog, they might follow you on Twitter. But getting RT’ed is doesn’t build audience if it doesn’t go to your content.

This has a lot to do with incentive. I love quotes like these and finding them is awesome, but if I have no incentive to send it to my audience, then I’ll lose the will to do so. If I lose the will to do so, so will many others, which empoverishes the medium as a whole.

It follows that the reason blogs flourished is partially because of attribution and citation. The hyperlink says “follow this to go somewhere that’s really cool,” but the medium of the tweet is too ephemeral to even cause someone to do a simple follow unless they put considerable work into it– at which point you’ve put a ton of work into a platform you don’t even own, and can’t create link equity from. And let’s not forget the devaluation of the follow itself, and the fact that a follow 4 years ago was worth something, whereas most people currently do not even look at their own timeline (ask any power user about this, it’s true).

The reason this is important is because the web’s value is in its distribution of the power structure, and that you can build a powerful channel with much less cost than you previously ever could. So it only follows (heh) that the smart thing to do is send people from Twitter to your own content, at which point they go through the sales funnel (or subscription funnel, whatever), where they can turn into someone that actually pays attention. (Twitter’s design is actually interesting because it actualy encourages this jumping, incentivizing the reader but devaluing the publisher’s content.)

A lot of people in this space work with the idea that they should be on whatever platform is most popular, but that’s actually pretty stupid. The real value is in whichever platform gives you the most credibility and leverage. For some people, that’s Twitter, but for many others, it may not be… they need somewhere to send their audiences.

Is Twitter actually working for you?If so, I’d like to hear how.

Next time I’m on a plane with a child yelling behind me, I’m just going to start yelling too.

Whenever this kind of thing happens I’m always thinking “Hey kid, you’ll have plenty of time to complain as an adult. Right now, this is quiet time. So shush.”

Thing is, we all have social roles. I can’t start yelling in a plane because I’ll get kicked off it, but the child can yell all he wants, because expectations and our roles are different. Any treatment you receive is based on what people see and hear from authorities. The visible matters to them. The rest does not.

Two things become interesting here.

ONE>>> You need a strong social role to be taken seriously. A big part of social engineering involves taking on false authority in order to bypass security measures. If you want to get in the back door and out the side the way the best do in the internet age, you need to do it the same way.

Those that learn to do it go up the ladder fast, because they are doing a form of simplifying complex business models that is based on doing what’s needed to find results, instead of going through the usual bureaucratic maze.

TWO>>> The message must come from a social role they respect. I read a lot about anarchism but the street punks asking for change won’t listen to me because I don’t look like them. If they see my tattoos it might be different. Same with any person– the role must be congruent with what they feel themselves to be or the message isn’t heard.

I don’t think any of this will help me yell in an airplane, but certain parts of it might ensure I don’t get put on any blacklists.

What tricks do you have to subvert this kind of behaviour? Teach me something.

Free was a great book. But I don’t think it went far enough.

The premise of Chris Anderson’s book was awesome: When something gets too cheap to meter, it will inevitably become free, so you should act as if it is free. Since every abundance causes another scarcity, you will be able to make money in a new way, revolutionize your industry, etc. etc. Read the book if you want to find out more. (It comes out on paperback next week. Notice the new subtitle.)

Here’s the thing though. Free isn’t the only inevitability.

Look in every business and you’ll find them: The end of oil, the aging of the population, universal access to the web, objects tweeting, etc. All of these things are inevitable, and when they happen, there will be a radical change in the way businesses work with them.

In your business, you must find out what the inevitable is and act on it today. Place your outpost there when there’s no competition, because you’ll want it when it becomes obvious to everyone in your industry.

This is the equivalent of your cool friend knowing about every hot band before you. He’s lower on the filter ladder than you, so he profits more when one of his choices hits gold. The difference is, your friend just looks avant-garde when his pick is right. With your business, it’s profit that’s on the line. :)

So in a way, acting on the inevitable is like picking horses in a race or buying land. You’re betting that things will go in a certain direction in the future. But inevitabily in an industry is usually much more obvious, and easier to hit for upstarts than big companies.

The question is how you become a foursquare instead of a Brightkite. Being there early clearly isn’t everything.

What else matters? I’m trying to figure it out.

Happy Monday. :)

I would like to use today’s blog post to introduce you to a thinking tool created by Edward de Bono– the word PO. Here is the basic idea (here’s a great book review if you need more):

NO is a tool of logic. You use it to refute and prove things false and to clarify murky subjects.

YES is a tool of belief. You use it when you’re looking to confirm something.

The problem with YES and NO as the only two options is that they present a closed worldview in which every discussion leads to either confirmation or denial of a supposition/hypothesis. A conversation around “is this a good idea” tends to lead to either a YES or NO conclusion.

So far I’m sure you’re with me. Now here’s a third one that we’ll introduce for usage on this blog (and in your life):

PO is a tool of creativity.

PO is neither YES nor NO. Think of PO as being a combination between “consider this,” “what if?” and “let’s follow this train of thought, even though it might make no sense.” We can also combine two different things that might normally not go together at all, then use PO to force us to combine the two in a creative way. This leads to new kinds of thinking and, over time, to a general attitude of openness to new stuff. And openness is the key to success.

Basically, the point of this word tool is to expand discussion, to remind us to stay open, and to lead us to new possibilities to understand or create the future. A new word forces us into that mode when we hear it. It’s shorthand for an open, creative “what if.”

All I wanted to do was introduce this today, but I’d also like to give you guys an example that shows both how to use PO and that you can use as an exercise (leave your response to the PO in the comments below).

PO: In the future, everything can send out status messages (like people do with Twitter now). All social objects/metadata are status messages, including location, mood, “busy-ness” level, “on/off-ness” of objects, and more. For example, the oven sends you a status message when it is left on.

Where does this lead?

If you are afraid of the new, then you are afraid of success.

Seems obvious to us that we can’t follow the career path our parents did, right? We feel so smart when we say that it’s soooo evident, people change careers all the time, you can’t have one employer your whole life, etc. etc. Everythone thinks they’re a total genius when they say this.

The principle behind the statement is true. We just won’t profit using old models. However, we don’t seem to understand how much we rely on old models ourselves.

We still believe in:

- Rising to the top via the usual corporate ladder.

- Becoming self-employed using the same BS methods everyone else uses.

- Following the same relationship ladder as everyone else.

- Taking the popular trips everybody else takes.

Some of these things still work ok, and others don’t. But allow me to make this as plain as I can for you:

The paths in your head are your enemy.

They are paths because they have been taken before by other people, and because they were taken, they are no longer profitable. Someone else found that route. They picked up the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow before you did, and it’s gone now. Get it?

The Tragedy of the Commons means that everything that’s done before is not as good as it once was.

Someone else had that experience you wanted, and you didn’t. It was great then, and now it sucks. Guess what? That’s how things go. That is why I talk about scars.

Some people want you to believe that it’s easy, but it isn’t.

You’ll have to suffer.

You’ll have to break your own programming again and again.

You’ll have to fight everything in your past with every ounce of your being in order to become someone new.

Risk = Reward. There is no other way.

I’m starting to like these little thought experiments.

The other day I talked about luck and acting as if it wasn’t there at all, behaving as if there was no such thing. Let’s see what happens when we do the opposite of this– in other words, if we considered ourselves lucky, how would we behave? (Like Hurley from Lost, maybe.)

Belief in luck (and having it) leads to what I like to call “checkout aisle syndrome.” This is what happens when we start to believe that incredible, out of the ordinary events will just happen to us as we go ahead and behave the way we always have. It’s named after the idea that people think they will be “discovered” by someone in power at the checkout aisle, usually accompanied by the phrase “ZOMG!!! You are the one I’ve been looking for!!!”

In other words, they believe in a prince charming that will sweep them off their feet (career-wise or personally) so that they don’t have to do anything. It’s a belief in destiny that isn’t accompanied by any need to change any of their behaviour.

Of course, people that believe that this will happen to them (they’re more common than you think) also believe that they are special– otherwise this unlikely event that will happen to them would also happen to any number of other people. Since it doesn’t, they must be different.

I loved Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s answer to this– place ourselves in as many “lucky” instances as possible by accepting any party invitation we could (instead of staying home, say) just because the likelihood of meeting a future business or romantic partner is much more likely than if you’re sitting there microwaving Michelina’s. That said, a basic set of skills to find opportunity should still be cultivated.

Are you still waiting? I know I do it sometimes. Usually this happens in some parts of your life, but not in others. What do you think?

The way I see it, there are only two directions– up and down.

I used to say that it didn’t matter how fast you were going, as long as the direction you were going was up. Keep moving up, as slowly as you want, and you’ll get to a good place in your life. Don’t rush past people, don’t get greedy… just be that tortoise, taking one step at a time.

Up means fitter, more successful, more focused, or anything you want it to. (Down is just opposite of those.) But as I think about this I realize that it might not be enough. People can stay in their job for years, waiting for that next promotion, thinking they’re on their way up so it’s ok. But that isn’t up– it’s flatlining.

I used to rock climb a lot with my roommate. We did bouldering– the kind with no rope that requires a lot of strength. One of the things you learn while doing it is that there is a huge energy cost to just sitting there, wondering what the next move is. It’s better to plan ahead– or to try and fail– than to hang there, your energy being sapped away.

I think there’s a lot to be said here about deluding yourself, thinking you’re going up when you’re really not. You think your position is stable, but it isn’t. Momentum is important.

The thing is, we wait for the right time– the perfect time– to take the next step, just like we did bouldering. But there is no perfect time, except for right now. Just like people say there’s never a perfect time to have kids, and if you wait for it, it’ll never happen.

The circumstances will never be perfect. It’ll always be a little harder than you want it to be. But it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means you’ll have to make yourself… a bit uncomfortable.

Have you ever been asked to sign an NDA?

Non-Disclosure Agreements exist because of lack of trust between parties that need to discuss a subject– in fact, that’s the nature of any contract– to provide legal recourse in the case of non-compliance.

Here’s the thing though. You introduce a contract because there’s friction in a relationship. It’s an additional social and financial cost for a situation where trust doesn’t exist. It’s also a result of living in a world where we deal with strangers in everyday life, because when we have trust, we need less contracts.

So let’s talk about these social and financial costs. Stephen M. R. Covey’s Speed of Trust wasn’t a very good book (sorry), but it was right in that sense– things can happen faster and cheaper in tighter organizations.

Turns out that Ronald Coase, a Nobel prize winning economist, talked about this in the 1937 Economica article The Nature of the Firm. The reasons people enter into firms (or purpose-oriented groups of any kind, really) is because it reduces friction– social and financial costs– and improves efficiency. Otherwise, we’d all be free agents.

Now, what happens when your social graph gets massively huge? When the number of strangers around you gets reduced due to their connecting with you en masse through social networks? Friction may not be reduced to zero, but costs are reduced a little with each individual, making it extremely easy for you to get things at a cheaper social and financial cost than almost anyone.

This is the very definition of an Agent Zero– the equivalent of the It-Girl who knows everyone at the party. She gets everything for free because she knows everyone. She may be rich, but she doesn’t need money (except maybe to keep up her It-Girl status). She just needs connections– which, it has been proven, reduce costs.

Further than this– what happens when all people get just a tiny bit more connected? Friction is reduced across the board. All middleman institutions naturally become a little bit less funded, whether they be law firms or PR companies.

We don’t need them, because we’re not strangers anymore.

I hadn’t considered this when we were writing Trust Agents, but damn, does it ever make sense. Do you have connectors in your organization? They are literally like money in your pocket. Damn.

It combines interesting factoids with tons of illustrations. Each page is evergreen content, and will probably still be looked at years in the future.

Remember those Top 10 List sites a few years ago? Well, this is its 2009 incarnation. The perfect linkbait blog, but taken to the next level. In fact it’s probably made by a guy super familiar with SEO (the smart kind). You can tell because every piece of content is designed and targeted to the audiences that love to spread content across the web, through things like Reddit and Twitter.

This is the way to think about your next project– check out the stuff you already love looking at on the web and then take it up a notch. Don’t just copy– level it up somehow.

Update: Hahahaha, oh boy was I right. Good on you Matt, I’m impressed. :)

Taylor Davidson called it “my phrase” at Tribecon, but it isn’t really mine– it’s been used many, many times before.

I started getting interested in it when I began doing Alexander Technique, which attempts to return your body to a natural, relaxed state through re-training (or “un”-training) you out of your bad posture habits.

But there’s more to it than that. The reason Alexander Technique is valuable is because it does a lot more than change posture– it also changes the way people see you, the way you project your voice, and a bunch of other stuff that is really valuable on a human level– particularly to me as a public speaker. (This is why many actors and musicians practice it.)

So I started to think: “If you’re sending non-verbal signals in person, you’re also doing it online. So how can you improve the signals you’re sending that aren’t verbal?”

If body language is a large part of what you’re showing people when you’re not speaking to them, digital body language is what you’re displaying to people on the web without speaking. And trust me, you’re sending a lot.

Let’s take the metaphor a bit further. If body language includes “stance,” what is stance on the web? It’s the way you or your company stand, what you look like, when you’re “in neutral.” What does your stance say about you, if people are just observing?

If being “tense” in real life means you look uncomfortable and frightened (which results in people feeling ill-at-ease around you), then what does tense mean in digital body language? Maybe a defensiveness in your writing and the way you position yourself vis-a-vis your market? That you’re not at ease with yourself?

People that are hunched over don’t look healthy– people with good posture do. What signals are you sending out that people assess as showing illness within your company or yourself?

Think about all of the signals you’re sending out. They’re happening all the time– they’re not just verbal, they’re everything you’re doing (or not doing). People intimate information from what they feel, and you’re making them feel it through your digital body language.

Like our body, which we often take for granted and forget about, we lose track of what our body language is telling people. But it’s vital not to ignore it like we do our body. It really is speaking volumes. Think about it.

Have you guys noticed yet that I love birds?

I’ve just gotten back from a few trips, including NOLA for Tribecon and up North in Quebec for BitNorth. Both were really cool events.

It’s become pretty evident over the time I’ve spent at conferences that your level of achievement is intimately connected to your social circle. I’m reading Connected right now, which strongly proves this with a number of examples, including how your friends get fat if you do, how much happier they are if you’re happy, etc.

In fact, it’s pretty crazy how much your friends (and their friends) influence you, which is why “Connected” is the perfect title for the book. But what can we do about it?

In my speech at Tribecon, what I suggest is that it’s your duty to lead your network to better achievement, whether losing weight, quitting smoking, or building a business.

What does this imply? Well, if you’re influenced by your network, but you’re first to change, it means you’ll encounter resistance, both internal and external. You won’t only make it tough on yourself (by breaking old habits), but other people’s habits will reinforce your old ones.

Second, maybe it means you need to spend more time with people that are already what you want to be like. This doesn’t mean don’t spend time with your friends, but if you want to be a writer, spend time with those that do it often. You’ll be hearing about it from them and it’ll encourage you in a number of ways. Then, you can bring that encouragement to your peer group.

Think of the way geese fly in that classic V-shape. The lead bird always encounters more wind resistance, making it easier to be in the back than the front. But if no one want to take the front, no one will get anywhere.

So all this stuff isn’t easy. Patterns reinforce themselves. Do you have any tricks to help you persevere in your goals?