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3c3da96
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Yet far too many people set out to produce something that, if they were really honest with themselves, is only marginally better or different from what already exists. Instead of being bold, brash, or brave, they are derivative, complementary, imitative, banal, or trivial. The problem with this is not only that it's boring, but that it subjects them to endless amounts of competition.
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Ryan Holiday |
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ec8277b
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social media isn't a set of tools to allow humans to communicate with humans. It is a set of embedding mechanisms to allow technologies to use humans to communicate with each other, in an orgy of self-organizing. . . . The Matrix had it wrong. You're not the battery power in a global, human-enslaving AI, you are slightly more valuable. You are part of the switching circuitry.1
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Ryan Holiday |
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7951024
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How can anyone maintain their sanity when everything you read, see, and hear is designed to make you stop whatever you're doing and consume because the world is supposedly ending?
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Ryan Holiday |
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58bac00
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Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that?" --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 12.19"
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Ryan Holiday |
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4ded57f
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When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn't wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?" --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.13.1"
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Ryan Holiday |
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e49c919
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There is clarity (and joy) in seeing what others can't see, in finding grace and harmony in places others overlook. Isn't that far better than seeing the world as some dark place?
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Ryan Holiday |
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2a592dd
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The more time kids spend online, studies show, the worse their grades are. According to Nielson, active social networkers are 26 percent more likely to give their opinion on politics and current events off-line, even though they are exactly the people whose opinions should matter the least.
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Ryan Holiday |
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cc6d7cd
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Talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness," Kierkegaard once said. Now you know why sharing, commenting, clicking, and participating are pushed so strongly by blogs and entertainment sites. They don't want silence. No wonder blogs auto refresh with new material every thirty seconds. Of course they want to send updates to your mobile phone and include you on e-mail alerts. If the users stops for even a second, they m..
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Ryan Holiday |
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d1449c9
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Free and cheap helps." So does making the entire process as easy and seamless as possible. The more you reduce the cost of consumption, the more people will be likely to try your product. Which means price, distribution, and other variables are not only essential business decisions, they are essential marketing decisions."
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Ryan Holiday |
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7597851
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IN THE INTRODUCTION I EXPLAINED A SCAM I CALL "trading up the chain." It's a strategy I developed that manipulates the media through recursion. I can turn nothing into something by placing a story with a small blog that has very low standards, which then becomes the source for a story by a larger blog, and that, in turn, for a story by larger media outlets. I create, to use the words of one media scholar, a "self-reinforcing news wave." Peo..
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Ryan Holiday |
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b3ec48f
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When we aim high, pressure and stress obligingly come along for the ride. Stuff is going to happen that catches us off guard, threatens or scares us. Surprises (unpleasant ones, mostly) are almost guaranteed. The risk of being overwhelmed is always there. In these situations, talent is not the most sought-after characteristic. Grace and poise are, because these two attributes precede the opportunity to deploy any other skill. We must posses..
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Ryan Holiday |
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4889f3e
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When attempting to turn things around for a particularly disliked or controversial client, Sitrick was fond of saying, "We need to find a lead steer!" The media, like any group of animals, gallops in a herd. It takes just one steer to start a stampede."
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pr
public-relations
the-media
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Ryan Holiday |
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6837140
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Publishers and advertisers can't differentiate between the types of impressions an ad does on a site. A perusing reader is no better than an accidental reader. An article that provides worthwhile advice is no more valuable than one instantly forgotten. So long as the page loads and the ads are seen, both sides are fulfilling their purpose. A click is a click.
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journalism
marketing
media
pr
public-relations
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Ryan Holiday |
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3fcbfdd
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It is one of many campaigns I have done in my career, and by no means an unusual one. But it illustrates a part of the media system that is hidden from your view: how the news is created and driven by marketers,
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Ryan Holiday |
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72bb8dd
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THE FOOL WHO FEEDS THE MONSTER. I knew I had to find this century-old drawing, though I wasn't sure why. As I rode the escalator through the glass canyon of the atrium and into the bowels of the central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library to search for it, it struck me that I wasn't just looking for some rare old newspaper. I was looking for myself. I knew who that fool was. He was me. In addiction circles, those in recovery also use t..
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Ryan Holiday |
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390421b
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To borrow from Budd Schulberg's description of a media manipulator in his classic novel The Harder They Fall, I was "indulging myself in the illusions that we can deal in filth without becoming the thing we touch." I no longer have those illusions."
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Ryan Holiday |
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c2ef894
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As a general rule, however, the more accessible you can make your product, the easier it will be to market. You can always raise the price later, after you've built an audience.
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Ryan Holiday |
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5bf2530
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No one said life was easy. No one said it would be fair.
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Ryan Holiday |
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29bd692
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The more you do, the harder you work, the luckier you seem to get.
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Ryan Holiday |
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d615553
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creating more work is one of the most effective marketing techniques of all.
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Ryan Holiday |
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ea9ace3
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Advertising can add fuel to a fire, but rarely is it sufficient to start one.
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Ryan Holiday |
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8f96c14
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Working on improving your product until it screams "Share me with everyone you know"--that's less fun than buying a back-page ad that everyone (who still reads newspapers) will see."
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Ryan Holiday |
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0f109f5
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Principles are better than instructions and "hacks." We can figure out the specifics later--but only if we learn the right way to approach them."
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Ryan Holiday |
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20ad2f8
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Knowing what your goal is--having that crystal clear--allows you to know when to follow conventional wisdom and when to say "Screw it."
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Ryan Holiday |
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907c35f
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Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen and it's harder than it looks. --Peter Thiel
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Ryan Holiday |
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a47841f
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Phil Libin, the cofounder of Evernote, has a quote I like to share with clients: "People [who are] thinking about things other than making the best product never make the best product."
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Ryan Holiday |
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ccd8a13
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As infuriating as it may be, we must be rational and fair about our own work. This is difficult considering our conflict of interest--which is to say, the ultimate conflict of interest: We made it. The way to balance that conflict of interest is to bring in people who are objective.
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Ryan Holiday |
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96dc153
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Every project needs to go through this process. Whether it's with an editor or a producer or a partner or a group of beta users or just through your own relentless perfectionism--whatever form it takes is up to you. But getting outside voices is crucial. The fact is, most people are so terrified of what an outside voice might say that they forgo opportunities to improve what they are making. Remember: Getting feedback requires humility. It ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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ef07049
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Not only should you be testing your project as you create it, you must most seriously test your creation as it begins to resemble a final product. So you know what you have--so you can improve it. So you know what you have--so that you might figure out what to do with it. So you know what you have--so you can adjust your expectations.
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Ryan Holiday |
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576957b
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So we ask ourselves: Why are things the way they are? What practices should be questioned and which should remain sound? This allows us to be both exotic and accessible, shocking but not gratuitous, fresh without sacrificing timelessness.
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Ryan Holiday |
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77004e4
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Ignore what other people are doing. Ignore what's going on around you. There is no competition. There is no objective benchmark to hit. There is simply the best that you can do--that's all that matters.
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Ryan Holiday |
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2af82b3
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social media isn't a set of tools to allow humans to communicate with humans. It is a set of embedding mechanisms to allow technologies to use humans to communicate with each other, in an orgy of self-organizing.... The
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Ryan Holiday |
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4140677
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In the way that a good wine must be aged, or that we let meat marinate for hours in spices and sauce, an idea must be given space to develop. Rushing into things eliminates that space. Another
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Ryan Holiday |
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e8dd691
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Creating is often a solitary experience. Yet work made entirely in isolation is usually doomed to remain lonely.
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Ryan Holiday |
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7dd8461
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No one is entitled to relationships only because their work is genius. Relationships have to be earned, and maintained.
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Ryan Holiday |
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a98b092
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You can pay for influence the way you can pay for sex, but from what I understand neither is quite the same as when you get it the old-fashioned way. Just as earned media is always better than paid media, cultivating real influence and relationships is far better than paying for eyeballs and fake friends.
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Ryan Holiday |
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1047fb6
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Especially when the leaders in your supposed community make it clear that that is exactly how they feel about you when it comes down to the crunch. But no, ignore that. It is in this moment that we must show the true strength of will within us. A few years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, the artist and musician Henry Rollins managed to express this deeply human obligation better than millennia of religious doctrine ever have:
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Ryan Holiday |
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a38d8ee
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People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don't, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds.
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Ryan Holiday |
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1e807c3
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don't just want fuel. You need it. You can't go
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Ryan Holiday |
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69da5f7
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slowly building muscle and strengthening his upper body against his weak lungs and for the future. By his early twenties the battle against asthma was essentially over, he'd worked--almost literally--that weakness out of his body.
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Ryan Holiday |
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14d0a49
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Michael Arrington, the loudmouth founder and former editor in chief of TechCrunch, is famous for investing in the start-ups that his blogs would then cover. Although he no longer runs TechCrunch, he was a partner in two investment funds during his tenure and now manages his own, CrunchFund. In other words, even when he is not a direct investor he has connections or interests in dozens of companies on his beat, and his insider knowledge help..
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Ryan Holiday |
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2a5ca5b
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he was willing to risk great personal harm and expend massive amounts of energy to develop that hardiness. You'll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is--at best--indifferent to your existence. Whether we were born weak like Roosevelt
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Ryan Holiday |
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b97edd3
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Today blogs are our representatives in these degradation ceremonies. They level the accusations on the behalf of the "outraged public." How dare you hold yourself up in front of us as a human being instead of as a caricature, they seem to say. If you don't feel shame, then we will make you feel shame. The onlookers delight in the destruction and pain."
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Ryan Holiday |
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0051288
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The reason subscription (and RSS) was abandoned was because in a subscription economy the users are in control. In the on-off model, the competition might be more vicious, but its on the terms of the publisher. Having followers instead of subscribers - where readers have to check back on sites often are barraged with a stream of refreshing content laden with ads - is much better for their bottom line.
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Ryan Holiday |