Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 34

My Library

I have a post on ThoughtCatalog today about how and why keeping a physical library is important. It was fun to write–most of it all it was fun to look at pictures of my what looks now to be a paltry collection from 2008 (right when I started at American Apparel) and my collection today.

I definitely don’t look at “having lots of books” at the accomplishment. That would be a rather pathetic thing to take pride in…because no matter how many books I will have, it will probably never exceed the amount of books in some crappy small town library. I’m proud of the time and energy I put into reading the majority of the books. I’m humbled by how indebted I am to the authors. I also feel fortunate to have been able to create two (going on three) of my own books from it.

To answer some questions about my methods:

-I don’t read ebooks unless there is no other way to get content (or if I am researching something and need it right now).

-I don’t do audiobooks for a couple reasons. 1) I don’t spend that much time in the car and when I work out, I prefer not to be working. 2) I don’t speed read but I am faster than most narrator. 3) There is absolutely no way to take notes or mark passages. 4) Honestly I think the only full audio book I’ve ever made it all the way through was the reading of TMIL and that’s because they paid me.

-These are not all the books I’ve ever owned. Like I said, I cull the herd fairly often–particularly when faced with having to physically transport them.

-I used to also keep a library at my office but I don’t have one anymore which is nice.

-Yes, it drives my girlfriend nuts because they make moving a nightmare (Thanks 1-800-Pack-Rat. You saved me)

-Yes, I understand I am in the minority here or at least part of a dying breed. Whatever. Of all the “old” traditions to stick to, a three or four thousand year old one strictly observed by basically every smart and accomplished person ever seems like a good one to go down with.

-Yes, I get that it involves more work–especially the commonplace book system. Things are not supposed to be easy, and this is especially true when it comes to valuable things. It’s worth it many times over.

Some more high res pics can be seen here, here, here, here, and here. If anyone wants to send in photos of their own, I’ll see if we can’t do a post about that too.

My Resources for Growth Hacking

A week after release, Growth Hacker Marketing is not only a #1 business bestseller on Amazon, but I ended up writing a lot of articles in support of the book. I also did a fair amount of interviews and videos (some of which are still on their way).

Before I go any further, I wanted to everyone for their support and say that I hope you’ve enjoyed the book. If you did, please go review it on Amazon–it makes a difference.

Anyway, I thought I would collect them all the articles in one spot for people who wanted to read them or who are looking to get started with growth hacking. Of course there are also the bonuses in the back for the book for anyone who reads it and sends in their request to the email address.

What Is Growth Hacking? A Definition and a Call to Action (Huffington Post)

Don Draper Is Dead: Why Growth Hack Marketing Is Advertising’s Last Hope (NY Observer/Betabeat)

How to Growth Hack Anything–Lessons from a “Bittorrent Best Seller” (Fast Company)

Your Job In Marketing & PR Is Dead in the Water (Thought Catalog)

Growth Hacking Your Way to Viral Lift (Medium)

The 5 Phases of Growth Hacking (Mashable)

How Facebook, Twitter and other startups got big (Marketwatch)

An Introduction to Growth Hacking: 3 Quotes to Explain the Future of Marketing (Clarity.fm)

Ryan Holiday on Growth Hacking With Harlan Kilstein (Youtube)

Growth Hacking Hangout with Ramon Ray (Youtube/Infusionsoft)

& more to come…

19 Growth Hacker Quotes: Thoughts on the Future of Marketing from Ryan Holiday

The Growth Hacker Wake Up Call from Ryan Holiday

10 Classic Growth Hacks: Hints at the Future of Marketing from Ryan Holiday

My New Book *Growth Hacker Marketing* is Now Out–Why I Wrote It and How to Get It

So…the big day is here. My new book, Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising is available today. As a Penguin Single, it’s available as an ebook on all the major platforms first (B&N)(Kobo)(Amazon). The audiobook is coming and possibly an expanded print version depending on sales.

But it begs the question: Why did I write a book about growth hacking?

The answer is simple. Because this is the future. Run down the list of some of the biggest brands in the world, brands that are quickly becoming staples of our generation: Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Dropbox, Airbnb, Evernote. Who built them? How did they become so big, so fast?

The answer is growth hacking. It was responsible for building billions of dollars in value for essentially next to nothing–faster than its ever happened before.

What was not used? Traditional marketing. In fact, Facebook’s only stab at it–an ad with Weiden & Kennedy–was a total and embarrassing flop. Forget Don Draper and David Ogilvy. Start thinking about Andrew Chen, Sean Ellis, Jesse Farmer, Aaron Ginn, Noah Kagan and a new freshman class of marketing geniuses.

I wrote this book because it was a chance to document the future of marketing before anyone else. Growth Hacker Marketing is the first dedicated book to the topic from a major publisher. And since Penguin/Portfolio approached me to do the book, I was able to set certain terms–namely the price (only $2.99)–which I designed to open it up to a new audience.

As you’ll also see in the book, coming to understand what growth hacking was and how it worked was a personal awakening for me. It’s a scary thought to wake up one day and realize that much of your job and its skills have been made obsolete. But that’s exactly what growth hacking has done–not just for me, but for everyone who is trying to promote something.

The game has changed and it was growth hackers who changed it. I saw this myself on Tim Ferriss’s last book launch, where having thrown all the traditional techniques out the window, we were able to sell 250,000 copies and create a #1 bestseller by partnering with BitTorrent of all people.

I hope you read this book and begin to understand how and why and what this all means. Even if you’re not a marketer, you will at some point, launch a product, start your own business or publish your own book or music. This book is designed to brief you on the unconventional tactics used by the best in the business.

I hope you enjoy it.

Comparison

Nothing can make you reevaluate your life quite like attending a party where most of the people are much more successful than you.

Not because it’s humbling. Not because it inspires you to do more or make more money (which is what too many people focus on in these situations)

But because occasionally you will run into someone–a person who has objectively done more or has more successful than you will likely ever have–who, nevertheless….

-Has less swagger

-Talks less about themselves

-Is more interested in other people

-Is still willing to learn (has less emphatic opinions)

-Dominates the conversation less

-Undersells their accomplishments

You can’t run from or deny this–this implicit counterexample right there in front of you. It is a wordless indictment of you and the hubris and pride you’ve picked up over time.

And then you have to ask yourself, what’s my excuse? Where do I get off being such an asshole? It doesn’t look so good in comparison, does it?

Or I suppose you could miss all this or lie to yourself–giving yourself a bunch of disingenuous answers as to why you act like you do. But that’s another flaw on top of all the others.

The Question to Ask

Let’s stop and ask ourselves a question: What are we doing right now?

Does it fall under “doing what you love” or “being a good person?”

To categorize real quick: the first category is our passions, it’s the people we care about and whatever our life’s task happens to be. The second is our duties–moral, personal, civic. It’s our obligations to ourselves and others as talented and unique individuals who have something to offer the world.

Then of course there is the third category. The “I have no idea why I am actually doing this.” You don’t want to, you don’t actually need to (though someone may have told you “have to”) you’re just doing it. Maybe because everyone else is doing it. Or because it’s easier than saying no or doing nothing.

But then you wonder why you sometimes feel that your life is not your own. You wonder why other people have accomplished what you dream of, while it remains elusive to you. You complain about not having enough time or that you struggle with difficult decisions.

These things are not unrelated. They are no difficult to resolve either.

It begins with a question and standard from which to measure things. And then following it. That’s it.

Some New Writing

Here’s some of my stuff from around the web for the last few weeks.

Great Lessons From Bad People — Learning From History’s Most Hated

Exposing the Racket: A Simple Stunt Reveals How Blogs Will Print Anything for Pageviews

The Secret That Defines Marketing Now (Fast Company)

How to Travel: 21 Contrarian Rules (Tim Ferriss’s site)(a shorter, altered version of the piece also ran on ThoughtCatalog)

So, You Want To Be a Writer? That’s Mistake #1



You can comment here or on the articles, happy to take questions.

Seneca on Travel

“Then from this dislike of others’ success and despair of their own, their minds become enraged against fortune, complain about the times, retreat into obscurity and brood over their own sufferings until they become sick and tired of themselves. For the human mind is naturally mobile and enjoys activity. Every chance of stimulation and distraction is welcome to it–even more welcome to all those inferior characters who actually enjoy being worn out by busy activity…

For some things delight our bodies even when they cause some pain like turning over to change a side that is not yet tired and repeatedly shifting to keep it cool…like an invalid could endure nothing for long but used his restlessness as a cure. Hence men travel far and wide, wandering along foreign shores and making trial by land and sea of their restlessness, which always hates what is around it. ‘Let’s now go to Campania.’ Then when they get bored with luxury–‘Let’s visit uncultivated areas; let’s explore the woodlands of Bruttium and Lucania.’ And yet amid the wilds some delight is missing by which their pampered eyes can find relif from the tedious squalor of these unsightly regions. ‘Let’s go to Tarentum with its celebrated harbor and mild winters, an area prosperous enough for a large population even in antiquity.’ ‘Lets now make our way to the city’–too long have their ears missed the din of applause: now they long to enjoy even the sight of human blood.

They make one journey after another and change spectacle for spectacle. As Lucretius says ’Thus each man flees himself.’ But to what end if he does not escape himself? He pursues and dogs himself as his own most tedious companion And so we must realize that our difficulty is not the fault of the places but of ourselves. — Seneca (“On Tranquility of the Mind“)

Updates and RSS

As you know Google Reader is going away on July 1. The feed for this site will continue to work as it always has, and so will my email book recommendations. Personally, I’m using Feedly as my reader and I like it so far.

But as many of you have noticed, I am increasingly writing for other publications as well like the New York Observer and Thought Catalog. Those articles aren’t included in the feed and I think that it’s some of my best work.

Going forward, I am going to be reposting some of that stuff here, but also if you want to keep track of it, I ask you all to following me on Twitter (which you can do via RSS actually) to get the links to everything I write. This is probably the best way to get all my articles from all over the web.

Here are three recent pieces published elsewhere that were quite controversial. Hope you enjoy them:

25 Rules For Living From A (Semi-)Successful 26-Year-Old

How To Read More — A Lot More

The Jenna Marbles Paradox: Why Are YouTube Videos So Terrible?

Here’s Some Marketing Advice: Your Thing Sucks

For whatever reason, in my writing I seem to have assumed the role of the guy who says the things that no one else will say. But in my actual business life as a marketer, I’ve been struggling with that. Namely, I seem to get paid a lot of money to specifically not say this one thing.

Because of my successes in marketing working for bestselling authors like Tucker Max, Tim Ferriss and Robert Greene, in working on the marketing at American Apparel for a number of years, people see that success and they come to me and they ask me to work on their projects. They say, “I love the risks that you take and I love all the ridiculous media stunts that you’ve done/ I’ll do whatever you say, let’s just do something crazy.”

They say everything is on the table but really it isn’t. The one thing they don’t want to hear from me is that their product sucks. Like itreally sucks.

It’s not worth talking about, it’s not interesting, I can’t get excited about. I don’t think deep down they are even excited about it but they see the success other people have and they want it. And even though they’re paying thousands of dollars for my advice, they blow off the most important advice that I have.

See, if I contributed anything to the massive projects I’ve been a part of it was in adding velocity something that already had its own momentum or I concentrated an organic process that would have happened already into a smaller period of time.

It should go without saying that to have marketing success like that you need to have a truly remarkable amazing product. But doesn’t go without saying. Not at all. Like I say it over and over and over again and people still don’t hear me.

What happens is an author will come to me and they clearly phoned in this book or worse they went off into the writers cave for a year not thinking about who this book was for or how they were intending to reach them. They just think there is this mythical audience of smart people out there who buy books that marketers put in front of them.

Or people who have never done anything newsworthy in their life come to me and ask me to put them in the news like reporters are just sitting around trying to do favors or will just print whatever I say which of course is not the case either.

Or companies come to me and I’ll say “Hey what are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish with this launch?” And they’ll look me straight in the eye and say “Oh I want featured in Vanity Fair, I want to be profiled in Fast Company or the New York Times,” and of course why or what for has not crossed their mind. What is their angle here? Why is their thing worth talking about. This is a thing that they think they outsource to marketers and thats not how it works.

I’ve dealt with a few old school publicists and marketers myself and look occasionally they’ll surprise me with the ability to call up some old friend and place some story and I’ll think, “Wow I wish I had that power,” but I don’t. I don’t think many people do anymore.

That’s not how my clients have been successful, thats not how I’ve seen marketing evolve in my years of doing it now. Increasingly it is the product that does all the heavy lifting and it is the marketer’s job is simply, the communication or facilitation of the relationship of the idea to the influencers that spread messages. We are the accelerant, but rarely the cause of the fire.

The three variables my clients have in common they all did these three things.

They did something totally new.
They did something provocative and controversial in some way.
Finally they knew exactly who they were doing it for and where those people were located.

And I know you think you are probably doing these things and look, this audience is better than most, but I’ve done enough of these events that what inevitably happens is I get off stage (or check my email) and having a bunch of people come up to me and tell me about their project and I pretend to be interested and immediately forget about it. Because there is nothing there.

I’m not saying their project will have no success, it might even have a decent amount of success but it’s not going to spread and it doesn’t matter how much work or effort I put behind it when people read it they’re disappointed or see it they’re disappointed or try it they are disappointed.

Those of you who understand the online marketing space know this concept as “bounce rate.” Most of the projects people pitch me are destined for a high bounce rate. You can get people to it and they don’t stick and so it doesn’t matter how good a marketer you are. It doesn’t matter what relationships I bring to the table, how hard I go to bat for you or how hard any publicist goes to bat for you.

Part of the problem with marketing, of course, is that publicists don’t care because their job is to bring media to you but not ultimately results. We are not usually partners in the outcome of your product so we don’t really care.

One of the best pieces of marketing advice I’ve ever heard actually came from Paul Graham who is the founder of Y Combinator (the angel investor behind AirBnB, Looped, Reddit, many of the web services that have become integral to our lives). Startups come in and they are like how “Ok how can we get people to talk about our product?” And he just says, “Make stuff that people want.”

And it seems simple and we nod and think, “ Oh yeah people want this,” but we don’t actually want to hear if they want it or not and we are deaf to that feedback. We will not let anyone tell us otherwise.

The process of creation goes something like: I’m going to make this thing, then it’s done and now I’m going to talk to a marketer and start marketing as though these are two distinct phases when they are not.

I’m seeing marketing become this sort of fluid spectrum. In this Silicon Valley they’ve started to describe this concept as “Growth Hacking.” The term is not all that important, but the results are. To see people with no experience or no traditional background in marketing turn an unknown web service into something with a million or 100 million users really rapidly.

And how do they do that? It’s a set of distinct phases, the first of which is Product-Market fit, which I’m sure you’ve all heard of, which is you make something that people actually want or need and the marketing can happen on a much smaller scale. You only need to reach a few 100 or 1000 people because they actually want this, and when you build in features to help spread the product, you watch 1 user become 2 users become 3 users become 4 users the product spreads itself and you don’t need marketing.

And finally there is this process of optimization, improvements and iterative refinements of the product itself. All of that is made possible by the simple understanding that I started with which is, chances are the first version of your idea sucks and it’s not that interesting and it’s not worth marketing. We put the cart before the horse and then we wonder why our efforts don’t build the kind of products, or the kind of successes, or ground swell support that we were hoping for, that we saw in other people.

I think if I could close with one thought it would be, don’t spend your money on marketing, don’t give it to me even though obviously I would be glad to take it, but spend it on going back to the lab and making something that’s really special, that’s provocative and interesting and unlike other things out there and it’s actually meant for a specific person that you can almost reach out and touch rather than for this vague idea of success and massive appeal that far too many people aim at and never end up hitting.

The above material is adapted out of a short talk I gave at Mastermind Toronto with Tim Ferriss, James Altucher, Marc Ecko and Derek Halpern. It was a little more awkward to deliver this message in person to a room full of the people I was in some ways criticizing. But the upside was I got pitched a lot less afterwards. In the last 24 hours, already emailed the post to a handful of people who wrote me to pitch their products. 

Help Me With My Next Book

I’ve talked a little bit about my next two projects in my reading newsletter and in the occasional interview, but for those of you who don’t know, I am working a two new books: one will be a Kindle Single and the other, a full length book. As many of you have inquired and requested, the full length book will be about stoicism. I’m really excited about it and am nearing the light at the end of the tunnel on it.

I’m also working on another project which will come out first that I could use your help on. A few months ago, an article I wrote for Fast Company about growth hacking was optioned into an ebook for Portfolio/Penguin. Since many of my readers are involved in marketing, looking for jobs in marketing, or trying to launch or sell a product, I have a simple question: What are you having trouble with? What are you looking to learn about marketing and promoting? What would you like to hear from me?*

A word of warning before you answer. This is going to be a short ebook (less than 15,000 words) and it is about a specific approach to marketing, so I only have so much room. I am exploring how startup methodology has changed the marketing game forever. Within that framework, however, I want to address the practical needs or problems you are having. My main aim is to prevent people from picking up a lot of the bad habits and bad assumptions of traditional marketing, so this book will be much more about mindset rather than tactics.

Anyway, very curious to hear from all of you.

*This is itself a growth hacking trick. You don’t get to product market fit without asking questions from prospective customers.