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“Influence” is the most powerful and misunderstood force in society today. It’s often confused with power, fame, talent and even force. But real influence is far more graceful and subversive. Real influence is born out of conquest but wielded with grace. And real influencers have more in common with pioneers who settled the West, than Kanye West. But the recent rise of “influencers” is an insurgent attempt to rip influence from the source of its power.

This episode unravels the history of influence, its surprising relationship to technology, and a formula for how to tame its latest incarnation. You don’t want to miss it.

In this episode:

Context is everything
The Arc of Influence
The Quickening
Why & when of personal branding & influence
The Sustainable Influence Formula

Great companion episodes of The McFuture:

Why Bullshit Won
Why Even Musk Can’t Trump The Inevitable
The Future of Media (Part 1 & Part 2)

If you enjoy the show, support it on Patreon and get awesome bonus content like the full text write-up of this episode, share it with others, review it on iTunes.

Full Text:

The Rise & Fall of Influence…And Influencers [Full Text]

(Inspired by OF A TIME, OF A PLACE)

We like to think of ourselves as timeless, able to adapt, grow and shine at any age, in any environment.

Wow, do we love to tell ourselves bullshit stories…

Every person, every object, every technology has a time and a place. We are intertwined with the world that spawned us – our fashion, our music, our technology – everything in our environment. Without context, we have no value.

Do you think if Stephen Hawking was born in the Middle Ages, he’d be a great scholar? The best, the best he could hope for— is doorstop. More likely, they’d kill him off because he was a drag on finite resources and couldn’t contribute to keeping his dumb family alive with pelts and berries. What did I say 1300’s? OK, swords and salmon.

Or if you were born black on US territory 200 years ago, would anyone care that you’re Neil Degrasse Tyson? …Maybe Mike Tyson, but for all the wrong reasons.

Context matters. Timing matters. Place matters.

Even today, there might be a million Neil DeGrasse Tysons across Africa or Satya Nadellas in the slums of India. We’ll never hear from most of them. Sorry, wrong place.

Even in less dramatic everyday reality…

My wonderful, lovely, beautiful, caring mother still looks like she stepped off the set of Dynasty. She modeled her whole look after Linda Evans, the glamorous matriarch of a fictional clan that knew a woman in a gown with shoulder pads cannot be denied. So my mom sewed shoulder pads into every single outfit she owned and still wears it to this day, along with a belt over her jackets, as Cindi Lauper would definitely approve.

I fight irrelevance every day. For years, I wore a goatee looooong after it was fashionable. In fact, I’m not sure it was ever fashionable. Maybe on bouncers, baseball players and guys you meet at rest stops….truckers. I mean, truckers. I just needed something to break up all my extra face. It was way easier than the gym. I finally shaved that thing off. Who knows what kind of change I’m capable of…

I am still clinging to the sideburns…

Mullets and porkchop sideburns are products of a certain era. They made sense in context. Even using the word “porkchop” 100 years from now will sound insane because all of us will be considered barbarians for eating animals, when perfectly good lab meat is available. Porkchops are the confederate statues of the future.

To some extent, we’re all prisoners of our era.

Every construct we accept as truth is only “true” because of the myopic lens through which we view it. It’s a lens tied to a place and time, just like comedy routines. You won’t laugh at anything Lenny Bruce said without being seeped in the cultural, the context that created him or made him edgy. That sent him to jail for saying naughty words you regularly hear from Chelsea Handler in the shower…I’ve said too much.

Same goes for much of how we try to make sense of our world. When I listen to Jeremy Rifkin on my podcast talking about climate-related collapse or my own predictions and rationalizations, I’m painfully aware of how tied they are to this time, to a fleeting relevance, to my own limited experience and understanding of the world.

How Influence Expires…

Relevance is a close cousin of influence. You could be relevant. Where your looks, ideas, behaviors, and language make sense in context. But influence is your ability to change context. To change culture.

At a talk a few months ago, culture critic Bob Lefsetz was defiant that rock and roll – and music in general – will never be great again. Or, certainly never have the cultural impact it did in the 60’s or even 80’s. I agree. Bob was careful not to say there won’t be great artists. There are and will always be. But they can’t shape culture as they once did. Despite attempts by Eminem and Donald Glover, today’s protest songs barely generate a ripple. No tsunamis as with CSNY’s Ohio or Dylan’s Masters of War .

But Dylan will never produce another All Along the Watchtower. Neither will Jimi Hendrix. OK, Dylan has a slightly better shot at it.

The example Bob (Lefsetz, not Dylan) used was art. There have been great painters and sculptors since the Renaissance or since the impressionists and surrealists in the early 1900’s, but none have had the cultural impact they once did. The best we have to offer is two-bit cynical prankster Banksy and that no-talent douche who stuck orange flags all over central park, then rightfully disappeared before we could shove a flag….. (my words, not Bob’s)

Art’s moment defining culture ended, just like Rock & Roll’s has. Even hop hop is a long way from NWA and Fuck the Police. Now, Ice-T plays cops on TV and Kanye wants to make $600 hats for them. Even though hip-hop is the last genre with mass-popularity, its powers are more style than substance.

The Binding Arc of Influence

After Bob’s talk, I couldn’t wait to put his ideas to the test with other cultural phenomena. When I did, I discovered something interesting. Not only do are artists or influencers tied to their historical context, but so is their whole art form. And all three are inseparable from inseparable from the technology or platform or medium they use. So all four – history, art form, artist and medium have this arc of influence – a clear birth, rise, maturity and decline. Same as startups and their industries.

This arc plays out in everything around us.

I mentioned comedy and Lenny Bruce earlier. Lenny was a startup in this new form of comedy, rising up in the 50’s and 60’s. Even though forms of standup or comedy teams went back to the 30’s, it was more slapstick and juvenile. no one tried confronting real issues. They’d book theaters or auditoriums, but there were no comedy clubs. Just a handful of bars, cabarets & speakeasies that had all sorts of performers. Jugglers, singers, and some nights, comics. No one was braced for Lenny. He created the form. He blazed the trail not only for the craft, but for the very existence of the medium.

Comedy had a long run of rule-breakers. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks. But by the time Eddie Murphy hit it big, you could clearly see shades of Pryor, just like Pryor showed shades of Redd Fox and Dick Gregory.

These were influencers. They defined their craft. They built the medium. They molded those who followed. But the medium itself starts to slow down. Innovation slows. even though you still have amazing practitioners like Chappelle, Bill Burr & Louie CK.

But comedy as a medium is pretty low tech. A club, a mic and a guy or gal talking. But the business is mature. There are clubs all over the country.

Books are a bit more interesting as a medium. The printing press brought a wave of cultural influence and influencers to the masses. Ideas, unleashed to the masses…at least the few who could read. For the first time, words were challenging, enlightening, and offending at SCALE. Explosions of imagination, like Homer’s Odyssey, blowing readers’ brains – ideas from a stranger from a distant land, who died centuries ago. It was invigorating. And it was…the only game in town.

And throughout their history, books were destroyed by conquering tribes. Demonized by the Church and Islam as a threats to their stranglehold on control. (Hold that thought.) Book burnings have been a fixture of human life since their invention. Even as recently as the 50’s books like Lolita caused controversies and were banned. In the 90’s Salmon Rushdie had a Fatwa against him for anti-Islamic ideas in his book Satanic Verses. Not only did he survive, but he got a hot model wife out, who went on to host Top Chef, and divorce him. Everyone knows the real action is on TV.

Over time, books melded into the tapestry of everyday life. They can still educate, enlighten and inspire, but rarely spark that cultural fire. Bestsellers barely sell. The greatest books maybe sell a million copies or so. For it to become a cultural phenomenon, we need to wait for Michael Bey to strap missiles to Crazy Rich Asians.

Similar cultural explosions and contractions happened with cities and architecture. We take for granted how much architects shape our society – and for how long. After WW2 the baby boom needed housing, but zoning restrictions pushed urban planning into the outskirts of cities. So urban planners and architects basically created car culture and the fossil fuel industry and obesity, where we not only don’t walk, but there’s no sidewalks and nowhere to walk. As people moved, so did companies creating factory towns, like Detroit, and exposing factory towns to downturns in single industries.

Whenever you find yourself walking in heals on cobblestone, as I often do, realize those stones weren’t put there by a colossal asshole who hates women, but by someone who’s been dead for hundreds of years before heals were invented and when stones were the best he could do, above actual dirt. That was the medium.

The first bridges and skyscrapers were marvels of human engineering. People died building the Empire State building and Brooklyn Bridge. And in their day, Stonehenge, the Roman Coliseum, Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, that big antenna or whatever it is. And there’s probably no architect that will ever define a city the way Gaudi did Barcelona. We still visit these places. We still appreciate, but in a time we can’t stop saying “awesome”, the awe is gone.

Every major city is immediately defined by its glory days and the people and technology that shaped that era. If Louie 16th loved gold trim, tacky, clashing multicolored patterns, and statues of boys peeing, guess what tubby tourists will be photographing 300 years later. As populations age, economies shrink, and people get comfortable, they freeze in time like giant outdoor museums. Like Detroit. Like my goatee or my mom’s shoulder pads. Hopefully, they’ll attract a few more visitors than my old beard.

Everything and everyone has a lifecycle. The recent fire at Notre Dame was a stark reminder of the fragility and possibly, sunsetting, of our civilization.

A handful of cities do make a comeback – by themselves or with the rise of a new technology or new ambitious empire. Or they meld old and new, like Istanbul or London. Or, Jerusalem, where my people once argued about God over sacred tablets and now they argue about startup shares over Apple tablets. At least we’re consistent.

Art and culture are like cities of the mind.

You need to arrive early to shape any new medium. Before suburbs occupy all that land. Before Louie 16th puts up his tacky castle. Before there’s a Richard Pryor.

Think of all the examples of people who arrived as each medium as it was taking off and became iconic.

TV had Charlie Chaplin, Uncle Milte, Lucille Ball, Walter Cronkite. We have no idea what kind of celebrity Clark Gable or Greta Garbo had. These were mysterious beings. You NEVER saw them. EVER. They wouldn’t even go on talk shows. They didn’t need to promote a movie, it was a MOTHERF**KING MOVIE. You were gonna go see it because it was in the theater and that’s it. No Rotten Tomatoes scores. Here’s the newspaper review: “We can’t believe it! Oh my god, oh my god! Another movie!! How did they do it??” No one on TV can ever have that kind of ubiquity (universal appeal) again.

Tied to the technology. When we go color, stereo sound, flat screens, internet connectivity. Each attracted artists and entrepreneurs to take advantage. They were intertwined. You couldn’t have a credible Game of Thrones series in the 70s or Bandersnatch before interactive TV (Netflix). It would look like me playing with toy soldiers.

While radio is on its last legs, I remember the tail end of its glory days. Nationally, anyone who was a star on TV like Abbot & Costello or Gene Kelly, started on radio. Then you had specialists like Wolfman Jack and Casey Kasem, who reliably counted down from 40, now it’s Ryan Seacrest (who basically waits for icons to die to take their jobs It’s like people who check obituaries for new apartments). And rebels like Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh. And all kinds of local talent, especially sports legends, like Harry Carey.

Social media, is no different. All the earlybirds got the followers early. Nobodies who knew something big was brewing. Gary V, any guy who has @theirfirstname, Putin. When these platforms had growth, excitement and limitless potential, every two-bit hack became a “social media expert” they started consulting firms, they wrote articles on how to get millions of followers (when they had 400). They’re all gone now. They moved on to become Bitcoin gurus then AR/VR, then became AIholes.

And if you have 10 or 20 thousand followers, go ahead and close your account. You will never ever recover those numbers. Why? Because those platforms are mature, stagnant pools, not wild untamed rivers. No one’s on there with any wide-eyed optimism, looking to discover.

Podcasts are the same. I’m trying to get in there before the door slams shut. If you’re still listening to this, you’re obviously enjoying it – drop me a review on iTunes and share this with some friends.

THE QUICKENING

There’s this wave of surprise and excitement – a joy of discovery – that comes with every new medium, as pioneers test the limits of what’s possible – or permissible.

– In the 70’s, might have been a new Zeppelin album, still testing and stretching the limits of rock and stereo equipment. Stairway to heaven harbored the capacity to explode in your face the way recent Metallica no longer does.

– Recently, things like serialized podcasts (Serial) or streaming murders on Facebook Live.

– In a few cases, the greatest influencers both defined or transcend their medium, especially if it had a short life & few entrants. Jazz is Miles Davis. Reggae is Bob Marley. Ska is No Doubt. Sex Pistols are Punk.

It’s those bursts of shock and awe that create outsized moments of popularity, influence and disruption.

But you need to catch that wave during the platform’s ascent. Miss it and it’s like surfing without a wave. You can’t generate the momentum and flail in vain.

Every medium gets invaded and conquered by talent, the way poorly defended territories once did. They stake their claim to a visual style, a format, a sound, a vibe. Then what? First, conquerors test the limits. Then, they must learn to live within them. Every conqueror must eventually become a manager. The chaos gets tamed. Art becomes business. Innovations become tropes. Transformations become formats. And all that was unexplored, unspoken and cathartic about the heyday starts to feel formulaic, expected, even manipulative.

The joy of discover withers away when art forms or platforms stagnate.

So creators and audiences start to fragment, searching for novelty and attention. Each time, influence gets diluted. Each “star” looking less like the sun and more like a dot in a constellation. To the audience, they’re interchangeable, replaceable.

FASTER: With the internet, this happens faster than ever. New platforms get born and die like fruitflies. They explode in popularity quickly, then flame out. There are no barriers when everyone has a smartphone. No one has to drag a 100 pound tube TV to their house.

And if the platforms are fruit flies, what about the people who became a big deal on them? Periscope or Google+ or even TicToc today are in or headed for obscurity. And their imprint rarely enters popular culture. Look at PewDiePie. He has like 100M YouTube followers. No regular human knows who he is. Even after some bloggers tried to take him down for some questionable memes, the entire struggle remained a niche, online-only phenomenon. (An extremely profitable one.) The only one making a comeback is Dane Cook, Comedy King of Myspace. And he’s finally gained enough weight for me to be hotter than him…from a distance. OK, Google Earth.

SMALLER: Icons on most future mediums are smaller, too. Because influencers aren’t just fighting for a piece of YouTube or podcasting turf, but each medium still competes with all legacy mediums. And there are many still kicking around. Seen my 8-tracks?

SHALLOWER: That means the very nature of cultural impact changed. Just like no story can stay in the news for long, neither can profound ideas. How are you going to absorb, process or be swept away by a profound idea when everything is binged and the next thing is pounding on the door, desperate for you to let it in?

Depth Defeats Disposability

So what does this mean for the future?

· What will – or should – have the same power Bob Dylan or Public Enemy once did?
· Will there ever be another Dickens or Mona Lisa?
· Or George Carlin and a new seven dirty words we can’t say on IGTV?
· Or Bob Ross to paint a happy little tree?
· Or Howard Stern to change radio..and eventually his nose?
· Or Julia Child to teach us how to make Coco van?
· Or, Casablanca to sweep us off our feet?
· Or Steve Jobs to make us envy expensive white things?
· Or Seinfeld to make everyone laugh at the water cooler? Are there any water coolers? Everyone has their own bottle. Alone. At their desk. Their own special flavor.

Sort of…

We are fickle. And our new icons are minis, not maxis. And flushable.

When icons are plentiful, they’re also disposable, what lasts?

Let me read an excerpt from The Economics of Happiness

Just like our proliferation of friends, we have an orgy of choices. As Barry Schwartz proves in his terrific book and TED Talk, too much choice makes us miserable. We’re buried under hundreds of unimportant decisions. Which phone? What flight? Which of 250 cereals to choose?

I’ll take it a step further. The sheer abundance of some things breeds disposability in everything. When you had fifteen CD’s, you cherished each one like a family member. Now with 20,000 songs on your computer and millions on Spotify, you’d be fine if Rihanna got trampled by a herd of elephants. She probably wouldn’t come up on shuffle play for another decade. Beyonce better watch her back too.

So if music, books, TV shows, and gadgets are abundant and disposable, are the people who make them disposable too? I’d argue that disposability is contagious. When enough of the things in your life become cheap throwaways, things that shouldn’t be are just collateral damage. They become disposable too. Why work through a tough relationship when there are millions of singles on OKCupid? Why invest in a job, an employee, a friendship, or a home when another one is just a few clicks away?

Maybe if you were making all those decisions, this might actually feel empowering. But more often than not, you’re on the receiving end of other people’s decisions. You are their disposable object.

WHY INFLUENCE?

What does that mean for influence today and the future?

I think there is a formula that works. Before I get into it, let’s touch on psychology.

I think how to influence is the least important issue. It’s WHY? WHY should we? And When to do it – and when to walk away. It’s the psychology, not the mechanics that matter.

Forget about being influencers for a second. Let’s talk about what regular old social media. You don’t need me to list all the ways it’s bad or addictive. You probably had breakups over it. Over politics or because you got caught liking some hoochie mama’s post.

Then there’s the silent, daily pathetic shaming of 2 billion suckers refreshing, refreshing, refreshing to get one little red notification. Yes!

Believe me, I get the allure. I’m on there. I feel like a toddler with a 6-pack a day habit.

There are lots of reasons we’re attracted to this. These platforms are designed to prey on our weaknesses.

We love Voyeurism – whether it’s gossiping about Boris, the village idiot, or commenting on “how she wear that dress?”. We crave it. I’m sure sociologists more qualified than me have explained why.

Boredom – we’ve got the time. Clearly. You’re not working. Think I don’t know what you’re up to. Daily screen time is over 5 hours. I KNOW that’s not all work emails. Because you haven’t returned mine in a week.

On the “Why Bullshit Won” episode, I talked a lot about how we’ve externalized validation. All validation has to come from others. It’s no longer intrinsic to the things we do. When the world doesn’t ask much of you – no houses to build, no villages to defend, no animals to hunt, there’s no tangible self-satisfaction with your work – or evidence of your contributions.

You can build the shittiest go-cart that your son tumbles off of and breaks his wrist, but no one will ever question whether or not you built a go-cart. A F%&KING go-CART! You did it! And your son should know better than to trust a Kraft Foods middle manager to build a f#$king vehicle.

But you don’t build anything. You’d rather blog…or make podcasts. Everything’s a document or code or some other virtual BS that barely leaves a trace. WE BARELY LEAVE a trace. This podcast will take up exactly zero space in the new time capsule I’m putting together. A MicroSD card for aliens to find. So it doesn’t get lost, I’m putting it in a series of nesting dolls shaped like a giant Beyonce. They better find this thing.

So online influence is us overcompensating, desperate for others to tell us we’re not useless meat sacks. That we’re valuable.

Combine that with the decline of community and religion and that sends us on a desperate search for answers & leaders. And every vacuum will be filled.

Part of that vacuum is filled with NARCISSISM. Narcissism is nourished by the absence of things to do and people to do it for. Maybe it’s a powerful enough force that can carry some people to the finish line. And by “finish line” I mean a never-ending treadmill of other people’s expectations – to create content in exchange for tiny droplets of dopamine to fill a bottomless validation void.

And the web is full of Alpha Narcissists doing just that. Kardashians, Jordan Peterson, Hanna Gadsby and other “influencers”. Often hard to tell which are influencing or simply capitalizing. And maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s all fluid. But all of them become stand-ins for gods and idols we’ve lost. The same way cults like bitcoin, veganism & meditation they are proxies for dying religions.

And there we are. Fans. Fanatics. Silently, irrationally demanding constant escalation from our idols. More absolutism, more polarization, more fleshy booty…under the looming threat of indifference, then obscurity.

But it’s not an innocent affair. These “influencers” don’t just trigger worship. They and the platforms their on also trigger envy. For the first time in history, we can see the lavish comforts, not just of a neighbor with a new Honda Accord, but Billionaire strangers with Jets, yachts, hot spouses and instagrammable children. (Not the tubby, misshapen bucktooth monsters we’ve spawned.) The aggregate effect of their carefully curated online personas and seemingly-perfect lives makes us feel like losers.

With the envy comes a strange, misguided feeling that we can have what they have. Anyone can do it! All they did was open an Instagram account! “Hey, I have an Instagram account! I have clothes! I have what could technically be considered a pool. I can do this!”

Of course, what we can’t see is the advantages they started with or the unimaginable effort it takes to make something that looks effortless, sort of like hipster hair. Your odds can’t match the envy.

So what we’ve done is decoupled fame from achievement. Survey after survey shows kids, more than anything, want to grow up to be famous, not masterful at something where the byproduct is fame. They just want the byproduct.

THE DREAM CATCHERS

Whenever you have so many eager beavers thirsting for fame. A cottage industry of opportunists & charlatans pops up. They all call it something different. Most of it ends up under the insidious umbrella of “personal branding”. The reason it makes me nauseous is it’s like “content strategy”. It means you’re pumping low grade crap to sell some product or get a few clicks to web site, not because you have anything meaningful to say. It’s litter. Same with all these “personal brands”

I’ve seen all flavors of it

· Then there are people who’ve gotten some followers looking to cash in, selling courses

· Others who write books about writing books or make podcasts about making podcasts.

· The other day I heard about a mommy blogger forum, MOMFLUENCERS – moms being milked…for cash. Literally. Figuratively. Like literally.

At best, it’s a person preaching a shallow form of “empowerment” to people who’d be much better off in a resume prep class. At worst, they prey on people’s worst impulses for fame and validation.

To the right person some of this might be useful, but it’s not in their interest to filter. It’s like a university that accepts D-students with 850 SATs. They’d be better off in trade school, but as long as they can pay…

And the social networks aren’t gonna stop you. They need billions of wannabes TRYING, HOPING, DREAMING. Filling up feeds, like dropping chum into the ocean,to attract fish to eat up what billion-dollar advertisers have to offer.

Here’s some simple truths…an intervention

You don’t need a personal brand, most shouldn’t try to be an influencer – or be on social media at all.

If you expect to get noticed, know that you’re diving into a massive, bloody pool, packed with floating corpses.

No such thing as a Personal Brand

It’s very rare someone reads your article, gets a stiffy and decides to hire you to consult with them. Or watches your video and decides, hey, this should be our next speaker! You will not get business without relationships, a network & grinding like crazy to sell, sell sell.

That doesn’t leave much time to “be a brand”.

And that’s the paradox.

And few can produce the quality and quantity you need to stand out doing content as a side hustle, but realistically, it might take 5 years of grinding before you can make any money off content.

Content is the absolute worst way to make money. Longshoremen do better. Gap salesmen do better. Way better.

You have to commit HARD then toil in obscurity for years.

Even if you’re phenomenal. I mean, amazing. There’s a limit to what you can achieve on your own.

You need to either be employed by someone who’s not going to fire you for your dick jokes. Or, partner with others who make money so you can focus on “influencing”. Or have FU money – or F-myself money. Otherwise, you’re a front end with no backend. You’re not a brand. You’re a broke freelancer, drowning in work that doesn’t pay. solo practitioners, spinning the hamster wheel, “branding” themselves silly.

Now you do your own taxes, book your own travel, do your own checkout, chase your own customers, write your own posts. Pushing “branding” and everything else things down to individual level is actually a reduction of freedom.

I’ve been trying to have it both ways and paying the price. You end up doing two things poorly. Trying to create awesome content. Trying to run my innovation business. This shit is way harder than it looks. Don’t be me.

I’ve decided to commit. Gotten enough good feedback. Doing an episode a week every Thursday. I am insane. Head over to Patreon now!.

I plan to to sell out! I’m inching closer to 10,000 downloads an episode. Honestly, have no clue how I’m gonna keep the regularity up without dropping quality or quitting everything else. I’d do more interviews or live shows.

But don’t worry. Most people are too mediocre or lazy to build a personal brand. It’s too hard to stand out. The ones I worry about subsist on a trickle of likes. They can’t generate escape velocity into fame and are set up for maybe a lifetime of disappointment.

And If you don’t make it… You get all the downsides of having your thoughts be public with zero upside. No money, exposing data to hacks/leaks, snooping by employers/ companies/strangers, time wasted debating nonsense, losing dates for dumb political opinions. All the shit you don’t get that you don’t even know about. Can still get deplatformed if you’re too controversial. Conformity will be enforced, even if you don’t have a boss. Edgy opinions and platforms don’t mix these days.

And if your already famous…get the hell off social media. Twitter is an infirmary for the damaged. Victimhood, rage mobs, firings of people you don’t know…are externalized & weaponized self-resentment. It’s why no one can ‘win’ on these platforms. It’s a superficial tool, flailing against deep internal problems.

Real Influence

Real influence still happens in the real world, not online. With actions, not words. The people with real influence don’t Tweet. Many don’t even have social media accounts (like ) or own phones like Jack White of the White Stripes. Real influence is the difference between constantly spewing your opinion and others asking you for it.

Usually, real influence is having done something that improved someone’s life. Help them live longer, be more comfortable, visit a loved one, stimulate their taste buds, stimulated any of their 5 senses. A sex worker, yes a common everyday prostitute, does infinitely more good in this world than any podcaster. Definitely more than every Instagram influencer combined, COMBINED. All of them. A short rush of dopamine is nothing compared the rush of blood to the tip….ah, forget it! You know what I mean.

I struggle with this. Not with prostitution. It just takes so much time to create content, but content helps nobody. Not really. It might entertain, inform or instruct, but it’s the rawest of raw material. It leaves soooooo much real work to be done in meatspace.

If you’re capable of real work, doing something that physically, meaningfully improves people’s lives, DO IT. I should do it more.

IF YOU MUST – What it takes to succeed

On any sane level, no person would choose this.

There are some who actually need a personal brand. Celebrities with outsized talent and success like Rihanna or The Rock or even Kanye. Come on, white people, I can’t even name one of you. Where’s all that white privilege? If you’ve got millions of downloads or streams and sneakers selling off the rack, then you do it,

And you’re up against deranged psychopaths like Kevin Hart. They all are. And I mean that as a compliment. Look at his Twitter profile:

“My name is Kevin Hart and I WORK HARD!!! That pretty much sums me up!!! Everybody Wants To Be Famous But Nobody Wants To Do The Work”

He will outwork you. They all will. They have a deranged entitlement and drive and self-worth few of us can muster. I can’t. I’m crippled with self-doubt putting out every episode.

But if you must… if you think there’s no other way you can be fulfilled, here’s a formula

The Formula for Sustainable Influence

There is a lasting influence longevity formula:

1. MINDSET

a. Be brain damaged.

i. If you’re a fame whore. Nothing I say here is going to stop you

1. How Bachelor Contestants Cash In After the Show Is Over

ii. You have a demon inside you you’re trying to exorcise.

iii. You value self-expression over money or food. A calling

iv. I am damaged. I value self-expression way more than any reasonable human should.

v. You must be driven by the very act of creation, of self-expression and the idea of building a body of creative work.

vi. would die regretting not doing it

b. Talent is irrelevant.

c. Have DEMONIC work ethic & passion for a subject

i. Organized: Need to be capable of building something great. And no, it’s not like when your mom tells you you’re the most beautiful baby in the world.

ii. Have you done it before?

d. Like the Kardashians – have a thick skin. Part of their Faustian bargain is surrendering all privacy. (Perhaps their ability to withstand crushing criticism from millions of detractors *is* their talent. It’s a Darwinian mutation that might someday rival the first fish that breathed air and crawled onshore.)

e. There is a type I don’t get that have nothing to say, love money, but still pursue media.

i. They’re reasonably smart and could make way more doing anything else.

ii. I went to a podcast event where guests pay $4K to be on! I don’t get it. Why do content at all? To end up shilling advertorials?? If you have nothing to say, any corporate job would pay more. Maybe it’s better to shill working for yourself than others? To me it seems like a slightly different prison.

2. Depth:

a. People who can sustain the depths of scrutiny…

b. After the first hour, professional troll Milo Yiannoupolous wilted on the 3-hour Joe Rogan podcast. He kept repeating the same tired punchlines over and over.

c. You need to be on mediums that convey depth, like podcasts, YouTube, newsletters.

d. Be prepared to jump mediums and bring your fans from shallow to deeper ones.

3. Persistence/Consistency

a. Play the long game

b. The uncreative and the focused are far better off than artisanal perfectionists. You’ll get more done with volume, brute force and average material than a trickle of quality stuff. I realize I live in polar opposition of that. But remember, I am deranged.

c. Michelle Phan & Jordan Peterson had years of content and depth before they seized their moment.

d. A couple I know do just this. Each sticks to a topic. They manufactured an expertise, consistently put out content, defined their niches, speak regularly at events, grind it out.

4. Peer amplification

a. Let others say it for you. Others with followings, who are respected, must amplify you

b. Comedians, authors, Jordan Peterson do this regularly on each others podcasts and youtube shows.

5. Discoverability –

a. Be on deep platforms, not shallow ones

b. If you’re not go trans…transition as many of your fans as you can

c. No platforms have any discovery. Maybe Instagram & YouTube. The others, don’t bother. That should be their slogan.

6. Focus:

a. I have trouble with this. Requires compromise – making hard choices. I’m too stubborn. I have too many interests.

b. Tactical influence

i. Target a category

1. Have or develop highly specialized knowledge

2. Contribute to respected industry media outlets

3. Speak at specialized conferences

4. Deep knowledge niches, like AI

5. Not broad functional ones like marketing, though the intersection of the two works even better.

a. Friend has an AI Marketing podcast, which is a good example

6. Those who succeed at this can get leverage

ii. Having a podcast or blog is a good way to interview/meet people you actually want to affiliate with.

1. In industry niches, like Chris Skinner in Financial Services, they become standalone influencers. In other words, making money from writing, speaking and content. Not having a day job. And definitely not peddling the delusion of influence.

2. But careful. Never take the job driving the van if you want to work for a radio station. They’ll always think of you as the driver. Same here. I remember one time I was walking with a friend, an old colleague from MasterCard and we bumped into some senior exec he knew on the street. At the time I had just left Amex and doing a lot of writing. My friend introduced me as a blogger. You should have seen the look on this guy’s face. It was like the elephant Man

7. Connection

a. In person: In the 90’s people laughed at country music stars for being so close to their fans at fairs and events. Now, it’s the only way.

b. Now you need to perform live, do meet and greets, do facebook live streams, reply to tweets and emails and message boards, do special content for superfans on Patreon.

c. Get their f&%^ng emails or you don’t own squat

8. Integrity

a. Don’t shill

b. Because of the pace of social media, everyone feels like they’re in a race against time. So they start selling out. But shilling has a limited shelf life, unless you’re:

i. Transparent with audiences

ii. Believe in the product

c. draw clear lines between their persona and their sponsor’s message. Once the two get intertwined, only one entity limps away tainted – the messenger.

d. Just like women can sniff out un-confident suitors, readers eventually sniff out a disingenuous shill.

9. Test & Learn: Dip a toe in, gauge interest, try different things, see what resonates, test and learn, test different formats (video writing, pics), try different tones, different platforms.

10. Have a Plan B: Now that social media is maturing and there are fewer waves to ride, influencers or aspiring ones, can take those same skills and impulses and apply them in more lucrative, scalable ways.

a. (From THE JOURNALIST’S LAST LAUGH: THE LIBERATION OF DIGITAL MEDIA TALENT)

i. Use media experience and footprint as leverage

ii. Start Competing Media Ventures

iii. Corporate Advocacy: Corporations love smart people who can attract an audience, enhance their brand, and keep lawyers off of speed dial. After all, talent is talent. Clear thinkers, visionaries, and good communicators are always in demand.

iv. Non-Media Ventures Michael Arrington started TechCrunch and recently sold the popular blog to AOL. Since leaving AOL (notice a trend?), Mike will put those freshly printed corporate dollars to use in his own hedge fund, CrunchFund. Some of his popular TechCrunch writers are coming along for the ride. Media coverage and fame can sure help make a case for a fledgling Crunchfund portfolio company. This model is not unprecedented. In 2006, popular finance writer Scott Burns co-founded money management firm Assetbuilder.

b. Get a sucker to do it after you’ve made millions elsewhere. Vanity after money. Almost every single executive with a book or public speaking tour had a ghost writer and people develop all their methodologies and content. Good deal if you can get it.

c. Get a machine to do it. These Influencers Aren’t Flesh and Blood, Yet Millions Follow Them

Who’s making it these days as influencers

1. Academics (Peterson, Jonathan Heidt, Sam Harris, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox)

2. Startup entrepreneurs (Gary V, Grant Cardone)

3. Handful of corporate media people (Bari Weiss, ), most no one cares about because they have to tow the line and cannot get real influence from the middle.

4. Corporate people – no one cares about

5. Tiny fraction of gamers

6. Still some youtubers, but its slowed down

7. Self-made political partisans, latching onto and exacerbating hyper-politicization

8. Entertainers who had some sort of notoriety before like Corolla Maron and Joe Rogan.

Goddammit, I think I made a content strategy!

So what now?

Both consumers and creators must embrace the fleeting

The next great medium will have a more finite life than the ones before, unless it can establish a dependency or codependency (like Facebook with family and friends) It may not be healthy, but it will endure.

Even if it’s not culture-defining, greatness is already here. It’s all around us. Art, music, comedy, TV, podcasts, all of it. But we can’t hear or see its influence or experience its nascent power. And maybe never will. A drowning man can’t appreciate the majesty of the sea, for he is submerged and overpowered by it. We are drowning in beauty and brilliance that we’ll never see.

Our life preserver won’t come in the form of a great man or woman or art form or technology.

From now on, greatness itself is a fine mirepoix, tiny bits mixed into every platform, genre and art form. It must forever compete with all the lesser ingredients, so it’s up to us to discern its flavor, to get into life’s kitchen and cook. We need to know when it’s perfectly seasoned. Just don’t expect everyone to eat the same dish. That was another time.

And if you’re a creator or aspiring influencer?

Make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Otherwise, even if you achieve it, it won’t do for you any of the things you thought it would.

Influence is like happiness, it shouldn’t be a destination, but the byproduct of an arduous and satisfying journey.

Don’t optimize (waste?) a real life for a fake world.

When we look through the lens of media, we see ourselves as vital. Important voices. Truth seekers & sayers. Sometimes, long after the world no longer does. Relevance is fleeting, my friends. Maybe it went poof. Or, slowly, the world just drifted away, never looking back. Enjoy relevance while you have it. Because we could have been discarded geniuses shoveling shit in any other era.

– Steve Faktor