Friction (E)

0:00Every year in October, about 11 ,000 athletes travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, to compete in the head of the Charles Regatta, the largest boating regatta of its own. 1 ,900 boats piloted and powered by incredibly strong, hard-working men and women who are pushing themselves to the limits to make their boats go. And they all head in the same direction. So the question is, with 11 ,000 people all pushing water with their oars as hard as they can in the same direction, Where does the water go? Hey, this is Emily in the Bronx, and you're listening to a special archived episode of Akimbo.

0:58Well, if you've thought about it at all, which you probably haven't, you've realized the water doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't matter how strong an oars person is, he or she is not able to actually move the water in the Charles River much of anywhere. So why bother? What is the purpose of putting your oar in the water and leaning against it if the water itself isn't being pushed backwards? No giant waves are reaching the shore. Water weighs about eight pounds a gallon. It's too heavy to move. Plus, you can't just move the water you're touching. You have to move all the water that water is touching.

1:47You're not going to be able to push the Charles River around. What's actually happening is leverage. Get it back. Get it back. That's it. All right, starboard, start hitting, that's it. All right, girls, on that high 15, crushing the splits as low as they can go. That's the way. Good, ladies, good. The water doesn't move. The boat does. That by putting the oar in the water, we are levering the boat forward with the oar mostly staying still. This leverage depends on friction. And people talk about friction like it's a bad thing. That if you're making a set of drawers, your goal is to reduce friction as much as possible so the drawer will effortlessly slide back and forth.

2:40If you're making a pair of blades for some ice skates, you want them to be straight and sharp so the amount of friction you'll have on the ice is reduced. That the reason we have a Zamboni machine going around in circles on the ice rink is so that the puck will travel effortlessly from one player to another. We try to reduce friction. Think about Tinder. Tinder has reduced the friction of the singles bar. So instead of hours and hours of frustration, you can have minutes and minutes of frustration by swiping, swiping, done. Friction is the enemy of the Internet. Friction is the enemy of many sorts of engineers, particularly the ones who work in electricity and computers.

3:33It's the friction that heats up your computer. So if the goal is to remove friction, what's the problem? Well, I went ice skating last winter. It was a magical day.

3:57It had been freezing, freezing cold here in New York for 10 days in a row, but it hadn't snowed once, which meant that the lake at Roosevelt State Park was frozen a foot thick, and it was smooth on top. So I took my cross-country ski boots and I clamped on some blades and I went skating. It was fantastic. I was going 30 miles an hour across the lake. I could have done it all day. The next day, excited, I brought my dog along. Well, I thought the dog was going to have a great time. He couldn't run away because we were in the middle of a big lake. But what I discovered was he couldn't run away because he wasn't wearing skates.

4:42All he had was pause. And it didn't matter how hard he tried, he couldn't move. He hated it. So he waited in the car while I finished my skate. But the thing is, I realized in that moment, ice skates work partly because they don't have friction, but they work mostly because they do. It's the friction when we turn our ankle that gives us leverage, something to push off against. If we don't have something to push off against, while it may be possible to coast eventually, it won't be possible to change direction, to accelerate, to get from where we are to where we want to go. We need the friction that comes from the oar being in the water to move the boat forward.

5:36Like all analogies, this one has a point. It's relevant, and it's relevant to our culture. It goes like this. the gatekeepers, the ones who are gone, they gave us leverage because there was friction. If you got onto the lot at Paramount the way Steven Spielberg did, it made it more likely that you could get heard, that you could get a movie made because insiders have more leverage than outsiders. And if you got a movie made, it turns out there's friction and barriers because there's only 300 or 400 movies released a year designed for mainstream theaters. With only that many movies and only that many screens, you have leverage that someone who's making a movie in their backyard doesn't have because friction is keeping those people out and you are benefiting from being on the inside.

6:34Yet there is friction to get one of those scarce seats at MIT. And if you get one of those seats and you last all four years, you graduate with that ring on your finger and that diploma. And then there is friction to get a fancy job as an engineer at a fancy company. And most people can't get through because they don't have what you have, which gives you leverage. and what has shifted in our culture is we have asked the gatekeepers to leave the building. And so now there is almost zero friction to post a video on YouTube. In fact, if you install their app, that is the single greatest moment of friction between you and the world.

7:20Because once the app is installed, the video is in front of more than a billion possible viewers. No friction. and also no leverage. Since this podcast began a few minutes ago, more than 10 ,000 videos have been posted on YouTube and you haven't seen any of them. We have removed the friction from the book publishing industry. Now that anyone can write a book, anyone will. The number of steps from, there's something on my word processor to, here's a Kindle book for sale on Amazon, is going down, down to zero. Same thing's true with a podcast like this one. The amount of friction necessary to create a podcast keeps going down, which means, paradoxically, that the amount of leverage you have from making a podcast also goes down because scarcity has been removed when the friction was removed.

8:21So what is going on in our culture is we have opened the doors to all sorts of mass communication. We have reduced the friction. And at the same time, we have removed the leverage. So since you don't need a gatekeeper, what could possibly make the journey worth it? because it turns out having a piece of media is no longer sufficient. It used to be that if you got picked by a fancy book editor, the publisher took care of all the other stuff. No longer. And that's why so many people who are trying to change the culture are so stressed out of their minds because we spend a little bit of our time inventing and most of our time seeking to gain leverage on the slippery ice, the ice that has no friction.

9:14So where can the friction come from? It comes from permission, the privilege of talking to people who want to be talked to, of engaging with people who want to be engaged with. That Kickstarter, Kickstarter is a little bit of a mess because people misunderstand it. It's not Kickstarter, it's Kickfinisher. that kick finisher works if you've spent months or years or maybe even a decade building up trust and authority and connection and a following that permission the ability to deliver anticipated personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get them that is scarce that gives you leverage because there is friction involved.

10:02Spam has no friction. For$50, you can spam a billion people. Frictionless, worthless, no leverage. But permission, the ability to talk to your followers, to whisper to people who actually want to hear from you, that makes you the new gatekeeper. If you read about what the influencers on Instagram are making, it's sort of stunning. A million dollars a month? A million dollars a year? Maybe$10 million a year? How could that possibly be? Because they're not making it in a month or a year. They're making it divided by the amount of time they've been showing up to lead a group of people who want to see the show they are putting on.

10:48They have re-earned leverage because there is a new friction, and it is the new friction that comes from voluntary connection. It wasn't voluntary when there were three TV networks. Each one of them, by default, got a third of the viewers every night. People were hooked on TV. They weren't hooked on ABC. They were hooked on TV. So the programmer at ABC, as part of her job, got a shot at a whole bunch of people who had few choices. She created leverage for the people she bought her shows from. But now, that leverage isn't worth very much. The new leverage comes from the friction of infinity. The friction is, there are too many things to watch on YouTube.

11:42I'll just watch the people I'm used to. There are too many things to search for in Google. I'll just look at the things on the front page of the Google results. We have no idea as consumers of culture how to deal with infinity. And so we willingly reduce the amount of noise that's coming into us. We eagerly make our lives more convenient by narrowing who we trust and who we listen to. And so the race is on. All we've done is moved the gatekeeping further down the chain. It used to be the gatekeeper said yes and gave you money and gave you a studio and gave you a deal and gave you an editor. So you could do it all at once.

12:29And now you've got to finish and ship and then finish and ship and finish and ship and finish and ship. And the sixth time, maybe you're starting to earn some friction. Friction because that will give you leverage. The privilege of making stuff for your listeners instead of finding listeners for your stuff, that changes everything. Everything is different in the creation of culture. Once we realize that it's the smallest viable audience, the smallest group of people who are eager to hear from us, connect with us, and spread the word, that is the asset of our future. That is the asset that we earn.

13:14That is the asset that gives us the ability to be our own gatekeeper. The gate is right in front of you, and you control the door to the gate and you get to decide if it's worth putting your name on to ship the next one. So you need the frictionless feeling of forward propulsion that happens when you set your oars just the right way and row in sync. You need that magnificent feeling of being on smooth ice when it's 25 degrees out and coasting. But you don't get there by default. You get there because you've created friction first, because you've paid for the Zamboni and you've sharpened your skates, because you have shown up again and again to earn attention.

14:06when everyone can yell, everyone will yell. And when everyone is yelling, it's the people who have earned the right to whisper who will be able to make the best work. And the leverage we've earned can compound because we can take our head start and whisper again and whisper again and continue to lead and educate people who are enrolled in our journey and want to follow us where we have said we are going to go. So all the time we used to spend pitching the gatekeepers, hoping to get picked, we have to stop spending that time. And instead, we have to invest the time for the people we seek to serve, to see them and hear them and understand them, and then to do something remarkable that they will choose to talk about, because that is how our culture changes.

15:04Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

15:33As always, we love to hear from you. To ask your own question about the previous episode or anything that came before, just visit akimbo.link, that's A-K-I-M-B-O dot L-I-N-K, and press the appropriate button. Hi, Seth. My name is Alex Albia, and I'm an actor. I'm very curious and interested, being a longtime fan of all of your material, how would or what's the best way to implement your marketing philosophy on the whole and maybe a couple of particular examples in the acting field if you want to progress in acting you want to continue and move forward and get to the top of the pile uh how can you do that with the stuff that you generally talk about thanks so much thank you for this question alex it is indeed juicy because it's not just about acting it's about so many careers so many ways to contribute and so much brainwashing.

16:29The way that the brainwashers would tell you to make it as an actor would be to do the work, to show up at auditions, to become who they need you to become, to show up and show up and show up and to fit in all the way. We say this not just to people who want to make it on the stage, but to people who, for example, want to be a freelance writer or an illustrator or any other sort of freelancer where there's a system of people who are busy picking the winners. I would like to argue that there are actually four different but overlapping ways that you can do the work that you want to do. None of them are a clear, well-illuminated, easy path, but all of them are the way forward.

17:21The first one is to be distinct. This one is tricky because lots of people are trying to be as distinct as you are. But when you are distinct, the character actor who can do something that only you can do, the photographer who uses Photoshop in a way that only you can use it, that person who is distinct will not be picked every time. But if I need what you do, I will seek you out. Number two is to have a following. Having a following means that when you show up, your fans will follow you. Kevin Kelly's 1 ,000 true fans. If you have a following, that means that you can get a gig, for example, on the Broadway stage because the producer knows you can sell some tickets.

18:12Similar to having a following but totally different is to be famous. And of course, famous is no help whatsoever to the actor or the other person who's trying to make an impact until you're famous. But we all know that people who are famous get the benefit of the doubt. And the fourth one is to make your own gig. That the best way to make it as an actor is to make it as a screenwriter slash producer. That if you are the person who is writing the show, you get to cast yourself in the show. that learning how to write, how to be the impresario, the person who starts the gigs, whether that means you're organizing the local art show or putting on the play at the local theater, guarantees you a slot up front because that comes with the territory.

19:06Casting yourself isn't nepotism. It's the right thing to do. So there you go. four different ways to go at making it as someone who is going to give up on the system of getting picked for fitting in. And one more question that's got wide applicability. Hi Seth, I have a question regarding direct advertising versus brand advertising as it applies to the concept of smallest viable audience. Is one method better than the other? It feels as though you favor direct over brand. Is that right? I'm a musician and have found that highly targeted, thoughtfully made Facebook and Instagram video ads have been a great way to expand our reach and find more of the thousand true fans, as it were.

19:55It seems to me that in order to get the smallest viable audience, we have to first show our stuff to a lot of people that are likely to be into it. And then from there, the ones that are truly excited about it will show themselves. and give us a chance to earn their trust further. I'm not looking for more. I'm just looking for enough, just enough people to get peer-to-peer word of mouth going. And it would seem to me that this falls under brand advertising. Direct advertising feels disingenuous because I don't want to treat our listeners as though they just received the L.L. Bean catalog and we're going to funnel them through to buy a CD or something.

20:32Is there a better way to look at this? Thanks for all you do. Exactly. You're following a hybrid that makes a lot of sense. The problem with brand marketing, brand advertising, is that you can't measure it, and it takes a long time, and it's really expensive. Three pieces of one big problem. My first real job with a boss was working for a startup magazine called Harvest Journal in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which, if you said it fast, sounded like Harvard Journal, which was fine with them. And my job was to sell advertising. And so my freshman year of college, I didn't go to Harvard, but I was nearby.

21:11I visited almost every single stop on the entire subway line, the T, in Boston, making sales calls. I still remember the very last call at Buzzy's Sirloin Pit, a place that sounds as greasy as the name indicates, begging the owner to buy an eighth of a page ad for$125. And I was going to give back my commission to him, so it was only going to be$95. And he didn't want to buy it. And the reason, of course, is that Buzzy could either keep the$125 or the$95 or give it away to a magazine he'd never heard of that he wasn't going to be able to measure. That sort of brand advertising is really difficult, particularly for a small business.

21:56There are examples where it works. Big companies that want to run sponsorships that can figure out where they can show up over and over again. Brand advertising is genius. It's a magic trick. It's amazing. but for most of us doesn't make a lot of sense. Direct marketing, as we've mentioned, is marketing you can measure and measured marketing pays for itself. But as you've pointed out, when you seek to serve the smallest viable audience and there's a medium like Facebook that lets you address just those people, suddenly this sort of brand advertising can make a lot of sense as long as you don't try to measure it, as long as you are patient.

22:40If there are only 1 ,000 people in your corner of Nashville that need to know about you and trust you and like you and support you, the cost of showing them a new video every week is tiny. 50 bucks, 80 bucks, you're done. Do that week after week after week after week after week after week, and you'll become an overnight success. Thanks for your questions. We'll see you next time.