Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

by Shane Snow

“Most YouTubers just kind of drop off around a certain time; it’s hard to keep that momentum,” Phan says. “I [had] to strike while the iron’s hot.” AS WE’VE LEARNED FROM Michelle Phan’s story, the secret to harnessing momentum is to build up potential energy, so that unexpected opportunities can be amplified. On the playground, it’s like building a tower to stand on, so you can start your Olympic ring with more velocity. Phan’s tower was a backlog of quality content. This is how innovators like Sal Khan (who published 1,000 math lessons online before being discovered by Bill Gates, who thrust him into the spotlight and propelled him to build a groundbreaking digital school called Khan Academy), and musicians like Rodriguez (a folk singer whose amazing, but largely unrecognized music work from the 1970s was featured in a 2012 documentary, which then catapulted him to world fame) became “overnight” successes. None of them were overnight successes. But each of their backlogs became reservoirs, ready to become torrents as soon as the dam was removed.