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?

Hype dies. The channel does not.

The problem with your 15 minutes is that it will end. Especially if you’re renting other people’s attention, it won’t last forever. You’ll become a has-been very quickly if this is all you do.

For a long time, I didn’t blog or podcast very much. I just worked on my own stuff, in private, and didn’t develop my platform. I realized recently that it wasn’t a smart decision.

It was a mistake, because no amount of hype will ever carry you forward all the way to where you want to go. You need to own a strong, popular channel. No one will ever give you one forever. You need to build one. To do anything else is to be at the mercy of other people’s whims.

Those of you that are bloggers, think of all the PR pitches you get every day. Why are you getting them? Because people are throwing money at the problem– they’re trying to create hype instead of a platform. They’re throwing money at the problem– buying bags of smoke that often result in nothing.

Even if you do blog about one of their widgets, that hype will die. It’s inevitable. And it’ll leave them needing to throw more money at the problem next time they need more attention.

Seems like a vicious cycle, doesn’t it?

Rather than rent, the real way to freedom and power is to buy everything. Simple examples include buying a house so you don’t have to pay rent, buying a car so you don’t have to pay cabs, etc. Everyone can relate to that.

But the renting you do is leaving you at the same place you started, sometimes even digging you into a hole (in terms of money, favours, etc). The buying, on the other hand, is helping you accumulate advantage and facilitating leverage fore future projects.

The good thing is that the web allows you to buy a platform with your time– what people usually call sweat equity. Potentially, you can do that in real life, too– by building your own house, say. But the web is one of the easiest places to do it.

This is only one of the reasons why working on the web facilitates your rise to wherever you want to go. But there are many, many more.

I give change to pretty much everyone that asks for it on the street. This includes street performers.

It’s a habit I’ve developed since briefly working for Homeless Nation, an organization that has gotten a lot of accolades over the years for its work in Canadian cities on behalf of their homeless population.

Today though, I want to talk about one particular incident– at Plaza l’Enfant Station in 2007, one cold January morning in Washington, a young violinist is playing. He’s wearing a Nationals baseball cap. In one hour, 1,097 people pass him by. He makes $32.

What makes this one different?

“No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin valued at $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out a theatre in Boston where the price of seats averaged $100.”

Marko sent me the video today. Watch it.

Context Is King

You’ve heard this before, it isn’t news. People rehash “Content is King” into all sorts of phrases to prove whatever point they please, again and again (it’s the mashing-up of culture). But I’d like to take this one a bit further.

The content you’re producing is the same whether it’s on a blog, in a book, on a stage, or being broadcast from space. There are millions of brilliant ideas being uttered right now in the privacy of people’s homes that won’t be written down, and won’t ever be heard again.

You may not think this, but you are in media. Whether you have a blog, use Twitter, or even have a Facebook account, you are part of a media revolution. And as a media personality, your reach depends on one thing only: Sneaking your way onto the largest, most prestigious platform you can find.

If we had written Trust Agents entirely on the web (in the way of the Cluetrain Manifesto, say), would it have reached as many people? Sure, it may even have reached more. But as a book it reaches a different audience and, more importantly, it stands on a different stage.

Either way, the content is exactly the same.

I just finished reading Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety. It was a great read, but was it made greater by the fact that I first heard of its premise on the TED website? Unquestionably.

Would it have had the same impact if it were a blog? What about if he were heard yelling in the street? Think about it.

Last story. I was at the Contemporary Museum yesterday and saw the Francine Savard exhibit. Some (ok, many) people might dismiss her work as ridiculous and useless– after all, in one series, she literally “paints” the visualization of a hard drive being defragmented. In blue.

But it’s in a huge metropolitan city’s museum.

I’m not here trying to discuss the value of her work– only that all of these are credentials. Because we consider people in power to be largely like us, we assume there must be some value in the decisions they’ve made– whether that’s putting someone’s paintings in a gallery, their words in a book, or giving them time on a stage.

In every case, context imprints either a high or low status on each project.

Your work may be good or bad– that’s your business, not mine. But if you value it, you’re going to have to borrow the status of someone else– get their testimonials, borrow their platform, whatever it takes, until you develop your own. Otherwise you’re just another person with another blog, or trying to make a buck on the street.

Doesn’t matter how good you are. Obviously.

God, this makes me mad.

So, there is this massive selection bias that happens amongst some influencers on the web where they feel that good content will be found on its own. Why do they feel this? The same reason rich people think they deserve their wealth, of course; if they’re on top, they feel that they deserve to be on top– it can’t possibly be accidental!

“I’m up here because my sneaking suspicions are right– I really am amazing just like I always believed!”

But there’s another side to this equation: If some content is not discovered by itself, does that mean it’s not worthy of being discovered? Further, does it mean that all popular web content is worthy of being popular?

Does that seem right to you?

Or is it more likely that some great things are discovered, and others remain in obscurity for other reasons?

Let’s consider the famous JK Wedding Dance video. After all, it just started going viral again this week, so something about this video must be just that great.

I think we can agree that there are probably 50 other videos on Youtube right now that are just as funny as that one. But many of those videos haven’t made it; only the JK wedding dance video did.

What made this one different?

All other things being equal, the only differences between one funny wedding video being found and going viral, and another being forgotten are two things: LUCK and MARKETING.

Luck

Luck is the result of preparation and, well, happenstance I guess. It happens when you prepare for it. If you have someone come to you about a book deal, you may have gotten “lucky” because you were born with a natural ability to write well, or because you’re good at networking and you “prepared” by developing a huge network and you know the right people, say.

But luck isn’t really what we want to talk about here– I just want to include it as a very real, important condition that causes success, to make the argument that it isn’t just the cream that rises to the top, that isn’t always about merit.

Marketing

Marketing is the opposite of luck. It is planned success, deliberately created through strategy and analysis. Obviously it can work– otherwise we wouldn’t have all these systems in place that do their best to ensure a movie, single, or other piece of content gets heard.

Some people feel that some forms of marketing are snake oil and deceptive– they feel you should just let your great content market itself, and “let the rest follow” by telling other people.

Of course, many of these same people know all the web’s A-list influencers, have been on the web forever, or have many other advantages that compound their success.

To them I could ask: “What if you are just starting out, know no one, and weren’t there at the beginning? Do you deserve to be unknown and undiscovered?”

If great content just gets discovered naturally, when does that discovery happen? If your great content hasn’t been discovered yet, does that mean it isn’t worthy, it isn’t good enough? Or do you just have to wait for the right time? If so, how long?

So there’s this guy who keeps praying to win the lottery. He keeps praying every day: “God, please let me win the lottery,” and he does this for years, but he just never wins it. He keeps praying, but one day he gets impatient, and just as he’s about to give up, he’s like “Screw this, I’m done,” and suddenly he hears a booming voice that says: “Listen guy, I’m doing my best, but will you please just buy yourself a bloody ticket!!!”

Those that are successful often feel that they naturally rose to the top due to the naturally meritocratic nature of the web. They want to believe this because it allows them to feel that they deserve to be on top. In reality, they often don’t– sometimes, they’re just on top accidentally. Trust me, I know some of them.

My point is that it’s flawed thinking to believe that your content will naturally rise up. If you wait, you are that guy praying to win the lottery– ie, you’re deluding yourself.

Once you’ve created your great content, please do smart things to market it– go out there and meet people, figure out the systems that will help you get seen, do whatever it takes, please.

Don’t wait to be discovered. Don’t trust what other people tell you. They are not in your position. Only you are.

Only you can judge.

Children are naturally adaptable because that is how humans are born– flexible and curious.

As we grow up though, we become inflexible and rigid in thought. Why isn’t it the opposite?

Here’s my thinking: We should provide a training regimen to keep our minds flexible. It’ll make us better business people and human beings, and will make our world better.

Creativity Training

Edward de Bono taught us that routine thinking destroys creativity. We need tools like Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards and de Bono’s Po to keep us on our toes.

Humans tend to solve problems the same way over and over again, so we need to teach people that the best answer isn’t always the one that comes first. We all need to learn that, once we get one solution, there can (and often is) a better one further along the path… if we keep trying.

Rewarding Adaptability

Those who stay adaptable despite their age need appropriate reward mechanisms that show others that staying flexible is a valuable goal. I don’t know if we can do this financially, but in some ways we’re often doing the opposite– media calling those who change their views flip-floppers, for example, does nothing but start unneeded controversy.

The faster a workforce and a company’s executives is to adapt to a new environment or situation, the faster they can thrive when things are turned around on them. Companies need to incentivize those who move fast.

Overcoming Fear

Humans are naturally submissive in a lot of ways. We habitually look away from people when they look at us, and we shy away from leadership because we fear making mistakes. But mistakes are the stuff of life– it’s how we learned not to touch the burner on the hot stove.

This actually deserves its own post, now that I think about it, but there’s a real problem with the way we’re brought up. We learn by making mistakes, but those mistakes also teach us to fear a lot more than we need to. We need to find ways to absorb the idea that the worst will usually not (or never) happen. How can we do this?

Anyway, those are three ideas to start you off, but I want to hear what you think next– write a post about this and link me, this needs to be talked about.

(Hat tip: Bob Goyetche)

You know, we didn’t always add strangers on Twitter or Facebook. After all, that isn’t the way most people communicate.

There’s always a little bit of apprehension when you join a new thing, but when we saw that this was the way powerful, alpha users started behaving (Scoble, etc), we started copying them. This is natural since we were trying to emulate their success. This has, in turn, shaped the way Twitter is working now.

It’s amazing to watch the innovations of the most influential users become commonplace on the rest of the web.

Another way this works is that those that build the platforms are able to leverage them in a massive way to multiply and reinforce their own future success. Twitter puts its friends onto the Suggested User List– Wordpress put all of their friends blogs on the default blogroll. This is natural nepotistic behaviour that we, as humans, all take part in. But being able to leverage the platform creates incredible success for all people the creators associate with.

If you succeed early, that will lead to further success with less effort, especially if your success involves a platform. If you fail early, you will have to overcome this to eventually get to a good place.

Visible behaviour gets seen and spreads naturally; invisible behaviour does not.

I think the result of this is that one of the most profitable things you can do for any social network is to get the sluts (the promiscuous connectors) to join. Think of dating websites; if they can get them to join, people will get what they are after. This will make the dating site more popular, which will drive people to use it even more.

If everyone is a wallflower, the opposite will happen. Right?

A single tip today, something really easy for you to remember.

There are conferences happening all the time in this space– special events that cause people to be out of their element, rushing around for whole days, and not paying attention to their usual stuff (like email, Twitter, etc.)

I just got an email saying I should become a fan of a particular thing on Facebook. What would have happened if I had been at an event, whether I liked this thing or not? I likely would have ignored it– not out of malice, just because I had to rush through 200 or more emails.

So, when you are sending stuff out and you want a response (especially if it’s direct to one person in particular), try to consider whether it’s a busy time for them– and if it is, send it later. Check their status on Twitter or Facebook– have they been online recently? Are they on a plane?

What information are you giving you that you can extrapolate from to get an idea of their state of mind?

That 5 minutes of research could result in a lot of saved time, or a much better result.

This morning, I did six– count em– SIX radio interviews for the book.

Here’s some stuff I kept reiterating, that I’ll say now for you, except I’ll expand on it, because you already get a lot of it.

Humans don’t change.

Only tools change. We’ve always trusted and liked the same kind of people + channels– those that were open with us, that are amusing and that tell us interesting things.

Social tools only succeed if they function around human needs.

Social recommendation sites like Reddit and Digg work because we do these things naturally; these tools just amplify it.

If you’re creating a social tool, you need to think, “Is this a normal human behaviour?” If it seems off, you need to make it more natural by reducing friction. Seems to me that it’ll get you closer to success.

Some human needs aren’t yet satisfied by technology.

There’s a lot of stuff that can be duplicated today by social technology, such as allowing for trusted networks, finding work recommendations, and so forth. But not all.

Some human behaviours aren’t yet amplified by social technologies. The trick to success is to facilitate the creation of these tools, and reduce the friction around adopting and using them.

Think Seesmic Desktop. Its main purpose its to reduce friction; as long as it does that well, it succeeds. That’s a smaller job than to duplicate a human behaviour, but it’s still a big enough job that it’s capable of sustaining a company.

The ideal social technology duplicates all human behaviours.

If you can duplicate one social behaviour that we humans have, you’ve got a real success. Think Digg, Facebook, Twitter, even PlentyOfFish– all hugely successful sites that facilitate a natural human behaviour.

If you can do many of them, you’ve got a… well, I don’t know quite what, but something crazy.

Your job, then, is one of three things:

a) Build a tool that facilitates natural human behaviour.

b) Reduce friction in facilitating one of these behaviours through an existing tool.

c) Become a master at one of them.

Each of the above is a bigger job than one of the one below it– so if you just want to relax, choose a simpler one lower on the pyramid, it’ll be easier and you’ll have more time to ride your bicycle with your family or whatever you do.

Anyway, I’m thinking these are the only 3 ways to succeed with the social web. What do you think? Make sense?