Brand
Why Use Mental Models? (Or, How To Live A Life You Always Enjoy)
Because our brains are wired for the natural world of 10,000 years ago.
Since then, we’ve discovered more effective ways to navigate the world.
Yet, we have to consciously choose to navigate the world in these more effective ways; hence, mental models.
For example.
Most people assume that being themselves and being liked by other people are opposing goals.
Consider integer thinking (-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3).
Western Europeans thought the idea was “absurd” until about 300 years ago.
Now, we use it everywhere.
But that means that it’s not “natural” to think in these terms (our wetware isn’t wired to perceive the world in these ways).
We see this in ratings: we give something a 1 to 10 rating, or 1 to 5 stars.
Consider that a 1-star rating is terrible, no good, wouldn’t visit again, while a 5-star rating is excellent, couldn’t have been better.
Often when we’re young, our brains note this interesting phenomenon: we can be ourselves, or we can “fit a mold” that doesn’t feel like who we are.
Our default model turns it into a star rating for authenticity vs. being fake.
Fitting the mold is 1 star, and being completely ourselves is 5 stars.
Our default model tells us we have to choose being ourself (5 stars), or being liked by others (1 star).
But consider integer thinking as a mental model.
If we use this mental model, it might look like this:
-5: Something everyone else likes and I hate. +5: Something only I like, but nobody else does.
But wait, what does that make zero?
Well, if the integer line represents “positive experience”, then: 0: Something both everyone else likes and I like.
Experientially, we know this. Ella Fitzgerald is considered, almost universally, a good singer. Being fit is considered, almost universally, a physically attractive trait. In every reality, people like pizza. jk.
In this mental model, something that is popular and that you dislike isn’t 1 star, it’s something like -4 stars.
Also in this model, 4 stars might be something I like, and only 100 other people in the world like it, too. While 1 star is something that I like that 80% of people also like.
So if we use our default model, we think we have to choose between pleasing others vs. living authentically ourselves.
If we use the integer model, another reality becomes possible: you can always live a life you enjoy.
How?
By never being in the negative.
If you want to get along with everybody (0), engage in things that everyone likes and you like.
If you want to find your tribe, engage in things that are +3 and +4 stars to you.
If you want to be a true artist and not care what anyone else thinks, go for +5 stars only.
But. You never need to engage in the negative stars.
Because the lowest you’ll go is the overlap between universally enjoyable and enjoyable to you.
Which means, you would live a life you always enjoy.
Asympathy
A word to describe a common experience of high level entrepreneurs (n > 200).
There is a kind of taking that is not greed and not even envy in the usual sense. People who have never had to protect a high-output life do not know what that life is made of. They experience their requests as ordinary: talk about my thing, sit in this mood, solve this tangle, be available in the way everyone else is. They do not see that an afternoon of being pulled off the work is not “an afternoon.” It is a break in the chain that produces books, businesses, championships, capital. It is cost-blind.
I call it asympathy.
It sounds like (a)sympathy, or being without sympathy.
But it’s actualy (asym)pathy, or asymmetric pathos.
Asympathy is the relational stance in which one person treats attention, access, and emotional labor as interchangeable across a large gap in operating cost. It is feeling and relating to another human being as if the costs (high, lows, and demands) are symmetric, when they are not. Which means the damage is disproportional to the intention.
Sometimes, we think that there may be solidarity in other “successful too” peer groups.
But consider Will and Jada Smith.
One could say that Jada, among other things, demonstrates asympathy towards Will.
“Just get a better peer group” doesn’t alleviate it.
The deciding factor is whether someone is a boon or a drain in the presence of someone else’s altitude.
Quaverity
Chris McCarthy, head of Paramount and Yellowstone pusher, said this about streaming services: “I think the misconception was the winners are always going to be the ones with the most amount of content, when in fact the winners are gonna be the ones with the most mass hits. And what breaks through that clutter for most people is franchises.”
A franchise is not the point.
Creating something that resonates with people is.
I think the progression can be summarized like this:
- Quantity
- Quality
- Quaverity
We spend a lot of time in pursuit of more. Get more out of your day. Hustle more. Produce more content on more platforms to reach more people.
That may have worked 50 years ago. But we’re not in the industrial age anymore. The most successful people, teams, and brands don’t win on quantity.
We’ve learned that quality matters. When you google anything, if you’re not on the first page, you’re last. It’s the difference between being a New York Times bestseller and just another writer. In a world of (seemingly) unlimited quantity, quality makes you stand out.
Quality was the formula for success 20 years ago. Then ChatGPT came along. Now, anyone can produce quality. AI killed the information star.
So what’s next?
I think it’s quaverity.
What’s quaverity? It’s a word I made up that comes from quaver. Here’s my definition:
_Quaverity is the set of deep emotions, insights, commonalities, and metanarrative that, taken together, account for a consumer’s experience of content.
If a consumer (whether that’s an individual, a group, or a business) isn’t deeply affected by a product or service, then no quaverity exists for that consumer. _
Quaverity puts a value to how much an experience captures the heart and mind of a consumer.
Today, a franchise is a shadow of quaverity, something that signifies it’s existence. But just as it takes more than a great recording studio to make a hit song, it takes more than sequels and spinoffs to make something into a successful franchise. If it doesn’t move you emotionally, or spark epiphanies, or make your world make a little more sense, then there is no quaverity. At least not for you.
Franchises have quaverity. But so do viral videos. So does Eric Clapton’s Layla. It’s a quality we often ascribe to cult leaders and their followers: bizarre from the outside, but when you’re on the inside it grips you, if you’re the right person.
And here’s the thing: quality isn’t required. B-movies and William Hung have strong followings as well.
If the information age was ruled by quality, then the intelligence age is ruled by quaverity.
If you don’t have quaverity, then no amount of quality or quantity is going to help you.
The 4Cs of Success, Tredux (2 more questions to define success, from a social perspective)
Question 1: Do you want everyone to view you as successful, or just an exclusive few?
Only commercial success and credentialed success are universally valued, any and everywhere you go.
Critical and cultural success are, by definition, appealing to a smaller group of people who “get it”.
Question 2: Do you want to be the people’s champ, or the institution’s pearl?
Critical and credentialed success are conferred by a governing body, a membership panel, an acceptance letter, or passing a test.
Commercial and cultural success are created by giving the people what they want.
Maybe its easier to determine how you want to be successful by thinking about how you want people to respond to it.
The 4Cs of Success, Tredux (2 more questions to define success, from a social perspective)
Question 1: Do you want everyone to view you as successful, or just an exclusive few?
Only commercial success and credentialed success are universally valued, any and everywhere you go.
Critical and cultural success are, by definition, appealing to a smaller group of people who “get it”.
Question 2: Do you want to be the people’s champ, or the institution’s pearl?
Critical and credentialed success are conferred by a governing body, a membership panel, an acceptance letter, or passing a test.
Commercial and cultural success are created by giving the people what they want.
Maybe its easier to determine how you want to be successful by thinking about how you want people to respond to it.
...AND Profit.
A reader gave me feedback on the idea of [power and passion and profit. The connection wasn’t clear.
To clear things up:
- Power times passion times profit for success. They act as multipliers.
- Power times passion (without profit) doesn’t result in success.
Why and profit?
Over 60% of NBA players file for bankruptcy within 5 years after retiring.
That’s from 3 in 10,000 high school basketball players (that make it to the NBA).
In other words, they clearly have the power x passion for the game.
“Why do they go bankrupt? Why don’t they coach? Or run a summer camp for helping kids get into the NBA and charge $5k a pop?”
That’s what power x passion but without a pathway to profit looks like.
There are lots of ways to be profitable if you have the power x the passion.
But without x the profit, the formula doesn’t work.
And sometimes, you have to put in just as much energy into the “and profit” as you do into the power and the passion.
Be A Perfectionist (About A Few Small Things)
“You’ve got to make every single detail perfect. And you have to limit the number of details.” —Jack Dorsey
Every successful person is a perfectionist about a few small things.
It’s an artist’s way of being.
One could even say that what you’re a perfectionist about is your brand.
For example: Goggins? Willpower.
The key is to stop being a perfectionist about everything, and start being a perfectionist about a handful of things.
We know this in other words: “Be the best in the world at one thing.”
It hits different when we think about how to actually get to the becoming.
Seeking Alpha
We all want to do better than average. That’s the human condition. But each brand archetype approaches it differently.
I think it looks like this:
- Artists start with what resonates most with them
- Athletes start with what they can do best
- Entrepreneurs start with what can make money
- Investors start with what can reliably compound over time
- Engineers start with what problem can be solved
Here’s the thing: we all start from different places. But high success often ends in the same place.
Which is a combination of all of them.
Michael Jackson:
- did what resonated with him,
- in a way that he could do best,
- in a way that made money,
- that reliably compounded over time,
- and solved technical problems (at the time) to create the music that he wanted
So maybe finding Alpha isn’t just one thing.
Maybe it’s all of them.
The French Don't Have A Word For Entrepreneur
“The reason the French economy is struggling is because the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur.” — George W. Bush (allegedly)
Its funny because entrepreneur is a loanword from French.
Its also funny because its partly true.
We have more entrepreneurs (per capita) in America than in France.
Perhaps a better saying is “The reason the French economy is struggling is because the French don’t place a high cultural value on entrepreneurship.”
But that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
The Third Skate
A couple weeks ago, I went recreational skating with a speed skating coach.
I was curious about skating technique, so we started from the ground up.
Most of it was intuitive, he said. Starting. Stopping. The illusion of two skates on the ground when you’re dancing and grooving to the music.
But one idea stuck with me, unique to speed skating.
When you’re on rollerblades:
- put one foot forward and one foot back
- tip forward the back skate so (that only the front wheel is touching)
- tip backward the front skate (so that only the back wheel is touching)
When you do this, you create the third skate.
The third skate is controlled like regular rollerblading.
You can maneuver it, even accelerate with it depending upon your body position.
You maintain balance, because it keeps your center of gravity directly below you (between the first and second skate).
In vintage jazz dance, we have a similar concept: what is created between you and your partner and your relationship with the music.
I’m now tempted to call it “the third dancer”.
The pattern is pretty clear.
The third thing is the intangible thing that’s created as the outcome of the dynamic interplay between two tangible things.
Or, the “invisible” but very real relationship that comes from two parties.
In counseling, when they say both partners need to prioritize “the relationship”? That’s the third skate.
The relationship created between a business and customer, made up of either the warm feelings (or broken promises)? The third skate.
I’ve heard it said that a brand isn’t a logo, or typography, or a product. Or that a brand is the consistency you show in the marketplace.
Perhaps another way of looking at it: your brand is the third skate.
A Billion Wicked Thoughts (and Five Personal Brands)
In the book “A Billion Wicked Thoughts”, a couple engineers decided to analyze internet search data to discover what we really desire.
They came up with 5 archetypes that show up in feminine fantasies:
- Surgeon
- Pirate
- Billionaire
- Vampire
- Werewolf
The idea is that they all represent a form of untamed masculinity.
I think they also represent 5 brand archetypes.
Consider this quote from Sahil Lavingia (founder of Gumroad): “Every job will be automated until four remain: engineer, entrepreneur, investor, artist.”
Add in the athlete, and you’ve got the modern brand version of the fantasy:
- Surgeon = Engineer
- Pirate = Entrepreneur
- Billionaire = Investor
- Vampire = Artist
- Werewolf = Athlete
But what makes them brands? In my head, I picture Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “come with me if you want to live, but adapted to each of these as brand promises:
- Engineer: “come with me if you want solutions.”
- Entrepreneur: “come with me if you want freedom.”
- Investor: “come with me if you want compounding value.”
- Artist: “come with me if you want beauty.”
- Werewolf: “come with me if you want protection.”
Leaning in to your brand promise means less process, and more product.
- Engineer: less tech talk, more “my product/service solves X”
- Entrepreneur: less hype, more new possibilities available
- Investor: less percentages, more legacy
- Werewolf: less gym sessions, more bradley.thor chopping wood
(Artists don’t need this advice, because they already get it: go to a musician’s page, and you won’t see them posting practicing with a metronome or Zoom sessions with their coach or page 23 of their music theory book. Just clips of the beauty of their finished work.)
So, what’s your brand?