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He’s rich because he can make choices and he can make an impact on his tribe. Not just choices about what to buy, but choices about how to live.
The epic battle of our generation is between the status quo of mass and the never-ceasing tide of weird.
That idea may make you uncomfortable. If your work revolves around finding the masses, creating for the masses, or selling to the masses, this change is very threatening. Some of us, though, view it as the opportunity of a lifetime. The end of mass is not the end of the world, but it is a massive change, and this manifesto will help you think through the opportunity it represents.
8th Street in Manhattan. Is there a more vibrant commercial corner in New York?
Both stores have lines of tourists waiting to enter. Both sell precisely the same stuff you can easily buy online.
So, if you’re between 5 feet 7 inches and 6 feet 1 inch tall, someone in stats class would say you’re within a standard deviation of the mean.
The average doesn’t always matter as much as the variation from that average.
Weird (not normal) means that you’ve made a choice, that you’ve stood up for what you believe in and done what you want, not what the marketer wants. More and more, that’s precisely what’s happening.
The key element of being weird is this: you insist on making a choice.
Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google estimates that every two days, Earthlings produce as much information as was produced by all of mankind for the 20,000 years leading up to 2003.
mankind today production
When people are truly poor, “Take it or leave it” is an appropriate marketing strategy. Poor means no choice, so the provider gets to choose.
When we give people choice, we make them richer.
If you persist in trying to be all things to all people, you will fail. The only alternative, then, is to be something important to a few people.
My proposed solution is simple: don’t waste a lot of time and money pushing kids in directions they don’t want to go. Instead, find out what weirdness they excel at and encourage them to do that. Then get out of the way.
The challenge of your future is to do productive and useful work for and by and with the tribe that cares about you. To find and assemble the tribe, to earn their trust, to take them where they want and need to go.
