Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

by Shane Snow

Some of the most influential Digg and Reddit users fell in love with the Mint blog, which gave them content that would make them look good to their own fans. Those influential users shared these stories, sending millions of visitors to Mint.com. Thus Mint built relationships with an enormous number of people—by helping them. Over the next two years, 1.5 million people who discovered Mint through its blog posts ended up actually signing up for Mint’s service. In 2009 Patzer sold the business to Intuit for $170 million. Mystic energy isn’t the secret to the success of Grant’s givers; just as we learn from Mint, when we give and teach, we build up fan bases that become more likely to support us. And that, actually, was the key component of Che and Fidel’s revolution.