The 3 Types

The Influencer, the Old Schooler, and the Social Builder are very different. Which one you choose to be will make all the difference.

There’s something about Pieter Levels, Marc Lou, Tibo “Maker,” Damon Chen, all the best Indie Makers. They’ve learned how to become the third type.

There’s nothing wrong with any of the choices, but I hope you learn to become the same.

The Influencer

The Influencer builds an audience while providing them little real value. Just quick, addictive dopamine hits.

The goal is views, clicks, eyeballs, whatever you want to call it.

The goal is never the value of the content they deliver. If quality comes to mind at all, it’s only in service of getting more clicks.

A recent example of this is MrBeast and his “leaked” onboarding document. If you haven’t read skimmed it, you should - How To Succeed in MrBeast Production

I’m not a MrBeast hater. The guy is incredible. He’s brilliant and might become the first Youtube billionaire. Plus, he’s done some awesome things. Like the time he built 100 clean drinking wells in Africa.

Is it great that he brought the infrastructure needed for clean water to some 500,000 people?

Yes.

Is it funny people got mad that it proved governments and NGOs were failing choosing not to do it?

Definitely, yes.

But here’s the takeaway. When creating content, he only cares about how many people click on the video and how long they watch it. Nothing else.

It’s about virality, not value.

They call it Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP). He’s obsessed with maximizing these three metrics. Do you notice what there’s no mention of?

The actual value of the content to the viewer.

He doesn’t care. He’s not paid to care.

He only cares how many people click on the video and how long they watch it. At one point he mentions a title for a viral video. Something like “I Spent 10 Hours Sitting in Ketchup.”

Imagine his team made two videos - “I Spent 10 Hours Sitting in Ketchup” and “Here’s the Actual Cure for Cancer.” Imagine the first video got more views than the second. Guess what?

We’re getting more ketchup videos.

Of course we are, the video got more views. And that’s all the matters to the Influencer. But why?

The goal is to grow an audience as large as possible and monetize it. Usually that means brand partnerships and ads. Selling products to their followers.

There’s nothing wrong with selling to your followers. I intend to do it.

But notice this person only cares about growing their reach. At any cost. There’s no desire to produce actual value. To bring benefit to the viewer. There’s only desire to sell. To get them to consume.

This is why the brand deals are usually with basic, superficial products. The audience is large and general, not niche or specific in any way. The way to monetize is to sell popular, useless stuff to them.

This is in stark contrast to…

The Old Schooler

The Old Schooler builds a product that brings people value, but fails to grow an audience from doing it. Usually he doesn’t even try.

Then he builds another product that brings value, but fails to build an audience from it again. Starting over every time.

The result? It never gets any easier for him.

He is always starting at zero. Always selling to no one.

His products bring real value, even joy. But he has no one to sell them to. He excels at building but fails at distribution.

Often he loathes social media and the Influencer. But he should hate to see his products fail even more.

What he misses is that the value your stuff brings depends on how many people get to use it. There’s no nobility in building incredible things that never get used by anyone. Useful things no one ever gets their hands on.

His aversion to building an audience limits the number of people he brings value to. It limits the amount of people who benefit from his work.

This is not my hope for you or me.

The Social Builder

This is where Levels, Lou, Tibo, and Chen succeed.

The Social Builder builds a product that brings people value AND grows an audience from doing it.

Then builds another product that brings value AND grows an even larger audience from it. Making it easier every time he does.

The goal is to ship fast AND get noticed by more people every time you do. Over time you grow an appreciative audience large enough to sell directly to.

They’ve done this, and their followers love them for it.

People want to be sold if it brings them value. Who wouldn’t want their life improved?

The goal is to provide true benefits, to improve their lives, to make their world better. You’re doing a disservice by not growing the number of people you impact.

Building and distributing. You grow your audience so that you have more people to distribute to. More lives to bring value to. More benefit in the world because of you.

My Hope for You and Me

…is that we choose to be the third type of builder.

There are many ways to grow an audience. There are many people who can help.

The best way is to build products people love and give them the opportunity to follow you. That’s what I hope to do.

It’s said that “you never lose. You either win or you learn something.” I would add that you never fail at shipping new products. You either win or you expand your reach.

Even failed projects can grow your following. Document everything. Release everything. Build free stuff that brings value and gives more people a reason to follow your journey.

One day you will build that product that delivers enormous benefit to the user. It hits the product-market fit holy grail. It makes their life better.

When you do, I hope you have people to sell to.

That’s my hope for you and me.