The Hierarchy of Bullshit – Clarity Lab Issue 77

Hi there,

With the miracle of modern technology, when you’re reading this, I will be far outside of cell phone and internet coverage, deep in the Mars-like desert sandscape of Moab, UT.

Here’s where I was yesterday afternoon, in Arches National Park:

I’m double vaxxed against the virus, it’s my birthday today, and the only thing I wanted was to get out of my house and see something other than the walls of my home office. (I’m acclimated to pandemic lockdown life by now, but did you know that there are 8,472 grains of rice in a bag of Basmati rice?)

I have a lot of amazing things to share with you this week. Great content I found on the internet that can help you in your business adventuring. Too much stuff, actually.

I think it’s time to start a Clarity Lab Twitter account so I can share the 10 or 15 other things that almost make the cut for each newsletter but that I don’t end up sharing with you because I’m trying to keep these newsletters shorter and faster to read.

1
Growy McGrowface.

First up, a fantastic conversation between Louis Grenier, who writes a fantastic newsletter called Everyone Hates Marketers, and one of my favorite humans on the planet, Seth Godin. The context of this conversation is what Seth would do if he had to start a new business and not use his existing fame to grow it. There are SO MANY gems in this conversation. And once again, I feel like getting a Seth Godin tattoo on my arm. Here are a few of the gems:

• Market with people, not at them.
• Go after the smallest possible audience with generosity and without interrupting them. Make people feel that they can’t believe they don’t have what you’re selling them: something they really need.
• To grow your audience and business, give the people who trust you a really good reason for them to tell their friends about your free content.
• If you have competition in your industry, you have to ask, “How can we make our product or service different from everyone else’s so that it’s remarkable enough for people to talk about to their friends?” Then, ask yourself, “How do we make this for the smallest possible audience?”
• On social media and the endless marketing tactics one can use: Being everywhere and being mediocre is not as good as being one place and being there really well. Pick one channel, like your blog or your newsletter, and show up there consistently to connect with people in the best way that only you can do on that one channel.

2
The hierarchy of bullshit.

I’ve written in the past on the trend in the online course space of running live, cohort-based courses. Wes Kao, the co-founder of the wildly popular Alt MBA course (the other co-founder is Seth Godin), recently wrote about why live, cohort-based courses are so powerful. In this post, she dives into “the hierarchy of bullshit” theory, which states that the various types of content we create to teach online have different degrees of bullshit in them.

Cohort-based courses, in Kao’s view, “have zero room for BS. If your content is basic or surface-level, you will be revealed and exposed.” She talks a lot about running cohort-based courses in this article, which comes down to focusing more on the how, and less on the what and the why. This runs precisely opposite to what I’ve learned is best in emotionally charged conversations with my wife, where it’s better to focus on the what and the why and not offer any solutions to fix anything (a.k.a, the how.) If you struggle with this yourself, omg, please watch this 2-minute video, entitled “It’s Not About The Nail.”

+ Related: In this Twitter thread, Kao explains why including community elements in your course is vital.

3
Moosletters.

Paid newsletters are having a moment right now. Email is the killer internet app from the ’90s that isn’t going anywhere. But here’s the deal: subscription fatigue is a thing. How many services like Netflix, Spotify, or HBO Go do you pay for each month? And with the hundreds of paid newsletters sprouting up, many of which people like you and me are creating, how many will people actually pay for? Richard MacManus dove into this question back in 2019 and unearthed a fascinating tranche of data (can I say “tranche” when we’re not watching election results come in?) The data is about how many newsletters people subscribe to and how much they’re willing to spend each month on paid newsletters. If paid newsletters are like mama cow udders, how many teats will people suckle on? More importantly, did I just break a moral law by comparing newsletters to cow teats?

4
​Crypto-nite.

Have you been following what’s going on in the NFT space? Creative works bought with cryptocurrency? People buying a digital blog post for $17,840? If not, don’t worry. I’ve been following it for you. First, it’s crazy, both in a “crazy cool” way and an “oh my gawd, this is so freaking complex” kind of crazy. Recently, Li Jin posted a blog post about the need for a creator economy middle class and someone bought it for $17,840 of Ethereum (a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.) That last sentence should make you pause.

Patrick Rivera has a great primer on ways we, as creators, can use cryptocurrency and NFT technology to monetize the things we create, like blog posts, newsletters, online courses, and many other digital creations. (That post itself is on a site that allows you to make blog posts into digital assets on the blockchain. It’s currently worth $857. And I sold this newsletter you’re reading for $42,020 to President Obama. What can I say? He’s a fan.)

5
​Breakin’ the flaw.

As marketers, it’s been drilled into us that we need to grow our email list because “the money is in the list.” And one of the best ways to grow our list, we’re told, is to offer free things on our site that people can get when they enter their email address. They get the free thing, and we get another person on our email list to create a relationship with over time, eventually presenting something they can buy from us. This is the backbone of “best practice” content marketing 101. But have you ever stopped to ask yourself if this best practice is best for you and your business? Everyone seems to do this method of using gated content, but…what would happen if you decided not to gate all of your free content? What?!?!?!? Wouldn’t that…like…break the internet or something? The folks at the software company Drift did exactly this a few years back. Erik Devaney has the story of what happened. The upshot: their business grew like crazy.

Okay. That’s all for this week! Okay, well, I mean, I have eight other fascinating things I found that I’m not sharing with you because shorter newsletters are better, right?

I hope you have an amazing week over there!

Cheers!

~Forest Linden

P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter, I’d be ever so appreciative if you could forward it to a friend or share it on social media: Share on Twitter | Share on Facebook