The Impact Equation

by Chris Brogan

  Take a few moments and think about this. Don’t rush to the next segment. Pause and ask yourself what the TV station of you (or your business, or both!) looks like. Ask yourself whom it serves. Ask whether you can think of even ten story ideas that match thematically. Brainstorm just a bit. Let your right-brain juices flow on the next page, which we have intentionally left blank.

  Why This Book Isn’t About Facebook

  Okay, so congratulations, you now have a Twitter account. Unfortunately, we don’t care.

  Maybe you have a blog too. We don’t care about that either. In fact, we don’t give a damn that you have a Twitter, a Facebook, a blog, or a Google+. We don’t care that you have a Foursquare, a Groupon, or a whatever the hell else you’re going to have next.

  Congratulations, you now have the newest gadget the tech world has ever seen. Still, nobody cares. Even you, the owner, might not even care.

  You are not on our radar. You are not on our map. There is a big blank space where your name should be in the dictionary, and even if it were there, nobody would look it up. Nobody knows your name or has a reason to look for you, or even if they do, it doesn’t matter, because you’re boring.

  Yet we are in an age replete with stories of average guys and girls who have achieved massive success online even though they were regular schmucks. They fell into it. Their career biographies mirror the lives of the Olsen twins—they were just magically discovered one day and became famous. No serious work was done, and no suffering or sacrifice occurred. It just happened.

  The problem, such as it is, is that everyone has a whatever account. Everyone is using social media. At the time of this writing, over eight hundred million people use Facebook. That’s more than one in eleven humans on the planet. So just being there isn’t enough. If you build it, they won’t come. Definitely not right away, but in this day and age, possibly never.

  But even though we started this segment with a discouraging tone, all is not lost. All we want to point out is that it will take more than “being there” to deliver impact. What comes next is determining how to deliver information that’s useful to the people you hope to reach and how to build relationships that lead to value.

  That should be your goal for using these new channels. If you’re interested in social-media software, don’t pick it up because it’s free or because “it’s what the kids are using.” Time isn’t free, and the largest segment of people getting involved in social networks are people between the ages of thirty and sixty, so they’re big kids.

  The goal, instead, is to use these simple, low-friction technologies to reach people with similar interests. Logging in to Google+ and searching for people who want what you’re selling is a very good use of your time. Logging in to post pictures of your products and waiting for the cash register to ring might not work as well.

  Oh, and you have to be there with your ears as much as your mouth. Just shouting into these new channels isn’t effective. You’ll get some attention, but it’s limited. The real value comes when you listen to what others are saying and learn to comment in ways that embrace these new interactions, not simply sell your product. Yes, you can sell, but it’s a little deeper into the cycle.

  We’ll paraphrase Clay Shirky: Now that the tools have become technologically boring, they can become socially interesting. The tools aren’t cool because they’re new tools. They’re cool because they let you interact in new ways. Your first cell phone was cool for a few weeks, and then it was a tool that let you check with your spouse about whether or not there was enough milk for morning cereal. That same tool allows you to open deals and/or warm up prospects. Welcome to the new tools, same as the old. Only better, because you actually know what to do with them. It’s almost like puberty all over again.

  Leveling Up

  When you start out in any video game, you start at level one. You have the fewest tools, the fewest abilities, the fewest resources. No matter which game you play, the mechanics are that you learn new skills along the way, you acquire new tools, and your experience prepares you for more complicated and involved challenges. But there’s this little, less discussed aspect of all this.

  In almost every game with a narrative, there are ways to run around and acquire more resources and experience by doing busywork. (Pac-Man doesn’t exactly have this concept, but World of Warcraft does.) For instance, in the console game Skylanders (which is a lot of fun, even for grown-ups!), your characters gain abilities by earning experience points, which come from defeating foes. You can, should you wish, keep fighting smallish, low-power foes and thus slowly gain experience that still helps you meet your needs. You can also try to collect every piece of treasure along the way, to buy upgrades for your characters.

  This is usually the less fulfilling way to get to another level, but in many of these games, you have to get there somehow, and that’s one way to do it. You either do the grind of swatting little monsters and collecting every scrap of gold you can or you risk your character’s progress at every step of the game. Sounds like life, doesn’t it? (Related but not, there’s a great fiction-but-really-close-to-real-life-happenings book by Cory Doctorow called For the Win that covers some fascinating aspects of this.)

  A Mix of Two Strategies

  There’s grunt work required. You have to collect the gold and swat the little monsters every now and again, even if it’s boring and unfulfilling. In the “real” world, this means doing the grunt work at your job. It means filing your bills on time. It means practicing the day-to-day stuff that brings you success. That’s what we talked about above.

  But then, the good stuff happens when you leverage your practice and grunt work into calculated leaps. Smallish leaps at first, but we’re talking about taking what you’ve learned, extrapolating, and then taking a big swing at something that gets you there while bypassing some of the grunt levels.

  If you’re feeling a little bit of “Whoa, this is way too much video-game chat there, cowboys. I don’t even play solitaire on my computer,” let us break it down with no video-game analogies for a moment. (Then we’ll switch back.)

  Two Ways to Achieve Your Goals

  1. Do the daily work and practice those tasks and skills that sustain your baseline.

  2. Make (semicalculated) bigger moves toward goals you can’t easily attain.

  Julien walked eight hundred kilometers in one big go (a massive and legendary pilgrimage). That’s not something you just do one day. But it’s also bigger than walking or running a few miles every day, which is necessary to build the baseline. Almost everything Chris does follows this pattern: Do the groundwork and then take big swings. Be willing to recorrect and adjust, and hold the goal and the practice together in the same loose handhold.

  Writing a book is like that. Both of us are bloggers. We’re good at getting a handful of words down into a post. But a book is not a series of blog posts (much to the grief of several book editors who have to deal with books that feel like a bunch of blog posts). A book is, one hopes, a cohesive big idea spread out into enough information to let you grasp the concepts and then make them your own. But this doesn’t just happen on its own. It takes a lot of concerted effort in both areas above: grinding out the time on the keyboard and taking wild swings at bigger goals/ideas.

  Back to Leveling Up

  As we write this, the video-game culture has silently (not really) shot past the U.S. movie culture in terms of revenue. Think about this: People take days off of work to play the latest version of Madden NFL or Call of Duty. No one sneaks out of work to watch a movie. And if they do, that’s two hours, versus entire weeks taken off to push through games like Skyrim.

  Study after study has shown that those who play video games have previously unnoticed skills that map wonderfully to business pursuits. Heck, look at the U.S. military. Predator pilots are playing the ultimate video game. (Okay, some of you might cringe at thinking of it that way. Yes, we realize that war is deadly and real. Technically, they are wobbling some
joysticks and playing a remote experience digitally. It’s not a game but it’s a similar experience.)

  Books like Reality Is Broken by Jane McGonigal, Game On by Jon Radoff, and several more point out how game culture is creeping into business culture and then some. You don’t have to take our word for it. But what to do with this as it applies to your goals and impact?

  ACTION: GET YOUR GAME FACE ON

  Want to start thinking about leveling up and games? What most real-world systems are missing is any kind of meaningful scoring and feedback system (among other traits). For instance, most employees get an annual review. Do you really have to wait a year to know how you’re doing? A month is probably too long, right? Make your own metrics.

  We’ll talk about it throughout the book in different ways, but it’s important to realize this: Your path is your path, and that has nothing to do with your current “job.” It has everything to do with your goals. So get your game face on.

  1. Pick a metric for everything you’re doing that matters. If you want to be a better marketer, make your metric the number of subscribers on your e-mail list (or whatever). If you want to be healthy, pick a metric like “consecutive days of thirty minutes or more of activity.” Simple. Pick simple metrics. Where everyone goes wrong in this is in looking for too many numbers.

  2. Level up. If your goal is to earn a million dollars next year, break that into monthly revenue (around $84,000) and make your daily grind include something to move that number. Even if you get to 10 percent of that by year-end, you’re doing great.

  3. Take a wild swing. This is variable. It might mean seeking an introduction to someone above your “pay grade.” It might mean applying for a job you’re not qualified for. Try something bigger than what should be next in a natural progression. There’s risk, but the rewards are big too.

  4. Play new games. Once you’re feeling fairly comfortable with the game you’re playing, look for a new way to mix it up. A few years back, Julien took on MovNat and CrossFit and many other fitness challenges to see just what he was capable of accomplishing. As we’re writing this book, Chris is relaunching his music studies for a project with Jacqueline Carly about blending ancient Indian chanting music with modern digital effects and tools. The moment you get too eased into the game you’re playing is the moment you’ll miss the chance to level up.

  Actors and Spectators

  The first definition of an actor is the one you think of when you hear the word: someone who performs in a play or movie or dramatization. The word comes from a Greek word meaning “to interpret.” The second definition is a lot less sexy to most people: a person who does something; a participant. That’s the one we find sexy. There’s a huge difference between actors and spectators, and if you want your ideas to have impact, you have to be a participant.

  Every activity or pursuit has its own little industry. For every professional basketball player on the court, there are people paid to hand out hot dogs, people paid to sweep up after everyone has gone home, people paid to write about the game, people paid to train those players, and so on. In their own little way, every one of those people is an actor.

  If you’re watching the game, either at home or from the stands, you’re a spectator. Thank you for your money. That earns you the privilege of being in the arena (provided you don’t angrily throw your beer on someone else). If you’re home, you pay by loaning your eyeballs to a TV channel that sells ads against the likelihood of your being there to watch (and maybe you pay the cable TV company, if that’s what it requires to gain access to a televised game). But you’re still a spectator.

  In many pursuits, there are spectators who believe (for whatever reason) that they too are actors. There are many people who feel that their love of watching movies should pay their bills. This is only exacerbated by people like Harry Knowles, who started a site to review films, who then wrote lots of negative reviews of an early screening of Batman & Robin (and as a Batman fan, Chris concurs that this movie deserves every angry review), and whom studio execs blamed for the movie’s poor performance (instead of blaming the fact that the Bat-people’s costumes had nipples and George Clooney gave one of his only clunker performances ever, and…well, we have to stop now).

  For every Harry who makes it, there are thousands of people who believe they will succeed by being a spectator and won’t. One of the first and most important dividers determining whether or not your ideas will have impact is whether they are the ideas of an actor or a spectator. This isn’t for us to decide. And by the way, we are always both. The point is, if the idea you’re looking to move through the Impact Equation is to be successful, it should be the idea of an actor.

  It’s Okay to Be a Spectator…Sometimes

  You’re not meant to be an actor in everything. To do so is to risk never mastering what it takes to succeed in those areas or pursuits that might best nourish you. We are all spectators. We like music but might never be in a “real” band. We love movies but probably won’t end up in a major motion picture (maybe Julien will). We’ve held jobs (Chris more than Julien) where the role handed to us was more a spectator’s role. But once you decide to be the actor on an idea of your own creation, then the rocket ship takes off.

  Never presume for a moment that being an actor is some kind of trumpet call that comes from others. And once you decide to be an actor on some idea in your life, it’s not like the world gets suddenly easier. In fact, it often gets more difficult.

  Actors Are Not Universally Hailed

  Chris wrote a somewhat controversial cover article for Success magazine about celebrity marketing, of which the lion’s share was about Kim Kardashian. If you have no idea who that is, either you’re to be celebrated or you might be visiting from another planet. She is best known for a popular reality TV show but also manages several product lines and several endorsement packages and produced a reality TV show around a New York–based PR firm.

  Readers and commenters complained that they didn’t feel Kardashian was the model of success they had come to associate with the magazine of the same name. However, reading more deeply into many of the comments and letters, what came up over and over were complaints that she had a famous stepfather or that she got a boost from having a sex tape. (Fancy that: She’s only famous because someone released a sex tape about her? Seems that would be detrimental to one’s success, not a win.) If she didn’t have a reality show, some said, she wouldn’t be successful.

  Everyone who chooses to launch ideas, build a platform, and navigate the human element will be met with criticism. Everyone who dares to “come up” from their beginnings will be challenged. Musician and businessman 50 Cent has said several times that many of the people who supported him when he first started in music were the same ones who said he was “getting too big for his britches” when he was invited to record his first mainstream album.

  Actors Have Just as Many Excuses as You, Maybe More

  Ryan Blair was a gang member with a horrible family life. He learned how to build a business, hit some bumps along the way, and is now a very successful multimillionaire. Sir Richard Branson has dyslexia. He’s doing okay, we hear. Glenda Watson Hyatt has very limited use of her motor skills and is difficult to understand when you speak with her. She wrote an entire book with her left thumb and continues to write long and meaty posts at her blog (doitmyselfblog.com) quite frequently. Julien has hearing problems as well as epilepsy. Chris has severe clinical depression.

  We all have excuses. There are obstacles in everyone’s way. But if you’re going to make your ideas happen and learn about impact, you’re going to have to accept your excuses and flaws and obstacles and do it anyway. That’s that dividing line we talked about earlier. Actors don’t let excuses get in the way. And again, we don’t mean Hollywood actors. We mean participants. We mean you.

  Build Before the Need

  So you may not know why you need a platform right now. You may not realize why a channel is important not just for those
on a mission—those who run a business or have a cause—but for everyone. You may think, I have a normal life. I don’t have a message to spread. I don’t have any new ideas. Why should I take part in this?

  If this is where you’re coming from, we get it. Not everyone feels the need to shoot their mouth off on the Internet, as we do. Understandable. But developing a channel is about more than expression. It’s about strategy, and it’s an important step for your personal life, your business, and your career. It’s something you need to be doing not when you are working on your new project, but much earlier than that. Otherwise, it will be too late.

  Imagine you move to a new town and you need a job. You go from place to place, from general store to barbershop to drive-in movie theater (this is clearly an old-fashioned town). You visit everyone and tell them your story. It is possible to get a job if you tell your story well; after all, if you’re a good salesman, you can sell yourself. But many people aren’t, and they come to the end of Main Street and realize they still haven’t found anything. No previous connection with these people means no one has any reason to trust you with their shop.

  Now imagine the opposite happens. You still need a job, but you’re in your hometown, and everyone knows you. You have a history with them. Your network is strong in this place, and as you go down Main Street, you know everyone. Now ask yourself how long it will take before you are offered work. It will be much quicker. Even if people don’t know you, they may know your parents or your grandparents. There is a history, and with those bonds come many more opportunities.