The Impact Equation Read online

  THE

  IMPACT

  EQUATION

  THE

  IMPACT

  EQUATION

  Are You Making Things Happen

  or Just Making Noise?

  Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

  Portfolio / Penguin

  PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in 2012 by Portfolio / Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Christopher Brogan and Julien Smith, 2012

  All rights reserved

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Brogan, Chris.

  The impact equation : are you making things happen or just making noise? /

  Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57243-6

  1. New products. 2. Creative thinking. 3. Internet marketing.

  4. Entrepreneurship. 5. Social media. I. Smith, Julien. II. Title.

  HF5415.153.B75 2012

  658.8’72—dc23 2012027307

  Printed in the United States of America • Set in Sabon • Designed by

  Jaime Putorti

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  To Violette and Harold.

  You’re the best thing I was ever a part of, and

  I look forward to learning more from you.

  —Dad

  To Helen.

  —JS

  Contents

  This Book Is About More Than Social Networks

  PART 1 GOALS

  1. Working with the Impact Equation

  PART 2 IDEAS

  2. Contrast

  3. Articulation

  PART 3 PLATFORMS

  4. Reach

  5. Exposure

  PART 4 NETWORK

  6. Trust

  7. Echo, Echo

  Conclusion

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Ceci n’est pas un social networking book.

  This Book Is About

  More Than Social Networks

  The actor James Cagney appeared in well over fifty films, achieving numerous awards, including the Oscar for best actor. The American Film Institute put him in the top ten of its 50 Greatest Screen Legends.

  Cagney played tough guys, and if someone tries to imitate him, they will likely sneer, cock their head, and say, “Why, you dirty rat!” perhaps while erupting into fake machine-gun fire. If you’re old enough, you may even remember a reference in Home Alone, the 1990 film starring Macaulay Culkin as an eight-year-old fighting two bumbling burglars trying to enter his home on Christmas Eve. You can probably hear the Cagney sound bite now: “Keep the change, you filthy animal.”

  But here’s the thing. Cagney never actually said, “Mmmmm, you dirty rat” or “Why, you dirty rat” or even “You dirty rat, you killed my brother.” Near as anyone can tell, the closest Cagney ever got to the phrase was “Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I’ll give it to you through the door!”

  In a way, we feel like Cagney. We don’t feel that we focus on how amazing and wonderful social media are, but people often cite us when they talk about social media or list us as authorities on social networks. Well, you dirty rats, read on, because we’ve got more than that up our sleeve.

  You might have picked this book up thinking it’s about social media. That’s fair. We wrote a New York Times best-selling book that people also thought was about social media and social networks, until they read it. People may say the same about this one.

  The Impact Equation is actually about getting a larger audience to see and act upon your ideas and learning how to build a community around that experience to take it all to an even higher level.

  When we talk about this, we mention the tools we use to build our platform. Yes, these tools are often social networks. But looking at The Impact Equation as if it were a book about social media is like saying Moby-Dick is a book about boats. The tools do define some of the milieu. We do mention that it’s much easier to build a platform using social-network tools than it was when one had to rely on the attention of the mainstream media.

  But that’s not the topic. The topic is impact. This book will explain how to build ideas, how to move them through a platform so they will be seen and discussed, and then build a strong human element around those ideas so people actually know you care about their participation.

  It feels a bit strange to continue rehashing this point. Lance Armstrong said, “It’s not about the bike.” No one ever asked Hemingway what kind of typewriter he used to write his stories—well, they probably did, but you see our point.

  We’re not writing about Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and Pinterest and Path, because who cares? Those things are temporary, and they aren’t the things that matter. The people are what matters. Are you with us?

  PART 1

  Goals

  1 Working with the Impact Equation

  “There are two types of people in this world,” Brett Rogers said. “You’re either a head of lettuce or an apple tree.

  “Look, if you want to grow lettuce, you plant your seeds, give a little water, and two or three months later you can make yourself a salad. But that lettuce will spoil soon after it reaches maturity, and good luck trying to save it for the winter, let alone find another use for it other than your burger or Caesar salad.

  “I look at my life and my approach to business as that of the apple tree. It takes about six years for an apple to grow from a seed into an apple-producing tree. That’s a long time even in human years. You have to take care of that tree during those six years too, with no guarantee it will make it to maturity. But you know what? At around the six-year mark, that apple tree starts producing apples, and with a little ca
re and a bit of luck that tree could produce apples for well over a hundred years. And apples keep way better than lettuce. Plus, you can make apple juice, apple cider, apple pie, and all sorts of other foods.

  “So am I special? No. I just kinda think of myself as an apple farmer, and so I just gotta keep tending the trees until they provide the fruit.”

  #

  Brett Rogers is an adventurer with an amazing story. If you haven’t heard of him yet, don’t worry. You’ll be happy you did now.

  Most people who watch a bit of television know adventurers like Bear Grylls and Les Stroud. If they read some books, they might know Wade Davis, the great traveling anthropologist, or maybe David Suzuki. Most don’t yet know Brett Rogers, but one day they probably will.

  You could call Brett a riverboat captain. He’s a big guy, almost like a bear, and he’s surprisingly young for someone who’s gone on so many adventures. He traveled down the Mississippi and the Yukon rivers on boats free of any fossil fuels—basically epic, glorified rafts. These trips take months, and along the way he documents his process, creating films that help others understand the rivers he loves so much.

  How Brett created his career is fascinating, and hearing him talk about his trips is cool, but the most intriguing part is that, ten years ago, his career couldn’t have existed.

  Brett’s job is totally new. He isn’t actually paid to travel down these rivers. He isn’t paid by television executives, National Geographic, or the Discovery Channel—well, sometimes he is—but that’s not really what happens. What actually happens, the way it really works, is that he’s paid by people like you and me.

  Brett’s job isn’t like that of most documentary filmmakers or even adventurers. Most of these people need to win grant money or borrow from what they call the “3 Fs” (friends, family, and fools). Then, once a filmmaker has funding, he goes out, makes his movie, and then tries to sell it. But not Brett.

  He cares who watches his films, of course. He cares about the rivers he travels and about the executives who buy the rights to show his films on television, but his real audience, the people he really cares about, are more committed than that: They are the people who decide they want to go along with him. Here’s how he tells it.

  “When I was eighteen, a buddy and myself took a four-day bus trip from Toronto to the Yukon Territory. We ended up hiking an eighty-kilometer trail through Kluane National Park. We crossed raging rivers and hiked over mountains covered in snow. I had always been obsessed with the Yukon since I was a child, thanks to a National Geographic documentary, Yukon Passage, and the writings of Canadian author Pierre Berton. The Yukon was all I had imagined and more, but on the trip home we traveled by ferry through the panhandle of Alaska, and then we hitchhiked across British Columbia before ending up in Jasper. Having just experienced the wilds of the Yukon, I was deeply disturbed by the development of Jasper. Sure, Jasper was a beautiful town, but Jasper was a national park, not Alberta’s answer to Disneyland. I was disturbed.

  “I set off for university with the inclination that I knew I wanted to do something that could make the world a better place. The years rolled on by, and the effects of a lifetime of being institutionalized were beginning to dull my spirit; I knew I had to get back to the wilderness. Long story short, one weekend in October of 2003 I had my eureka moment—I was going to build a raft and travel the Mackenzie River.

  “I was a geography major at the University of Waterloo, and my facility had video cameras that students could rent out for a few days at a time for projects. I figured since I was going so far north I should make an effort to document the experience, so I ended up pulling some strings and got a brand-new video camera purchased through an endowment fund with permission to borrow the camera for the summer. I set off for the Northwest Territories with some friends, my sister, and a video camera in late June of 2004.”

  They ended up with forty-four hours of footage, and eight months later he sold the rights to Into the Midnight Sun to the Documentary Channel in Canada. It premiered in front of hundreds of people at the University of Waterloo.

  It was after this premiere that a surprising thing happened: Dozens of people began to approach Brett, asking him to go on his next expedition. He figured, why not build a raft and take it down the Yukon now? He fired off an e-mail making the offer to everyone who had said they wanted to come. He named his price, and eight people agreed. This funded his next documentary in its entirety, and in May 2006, they all headed for the Yukon Territory. His next adventure had begun. He hadn’t been anointed or given the golden touch by some TV station. He didn’t need them. He had picked himself.

  #

  We first heard the story of Brett Rogers at a local event where he spoke about his adventures. We were inspired—what he was doing was different. He wasn’t asking permission from anyone before he went out, and he didn’t need any major organization to do it. Brett just decided to leave on his own, figuring it out as he went along. This is something any entrepreneur can get behind, no matter what adventure they’re on. The leap out into the unknown is understood by anyone who takes a chance.

  In a way, all those who take that risk are brothers and sisters. We’re all part of the same tribe. We understand that ventures mean you have to put yourself out there, into the unknown. Whether it’s big or small, your project needs attention, and it needs supporters, and it needs help. Adventurers of all stripes understand this.

  But the interesting part is this: Though Brett may be trying to make movies to impress a larger audience, the expedition mates who go along with him are his real clients. Only after the fact do the products of his efforts go on to impress people in the production and film industries, as well as “interesting, powerful people in general,” as Brett would say. He has done something interesting, something most never even think of doing, so as he connects to the larger public, his exploits precede him and his ability to have an impact expands.

  But the real point isn’t about Brett at all. In a sense, Brett’s story is also your story. Brett loves rivers. He writes about them, travels them, and documents their changes. But we want you to think about your unique contribution and how it belongs in the world of the twenty-first century, where everything is worldwide and instantaneous—a world of YouTube and Twitter and a billion other channels. We want you to think about how your tribe can come from anywhere. We want you to think about how to leave an impression on those who matter and help them gather around you. We want their passion and yours to come together so that you can leave your mark on the world.

  In short, we want you to have an impact.

  #

  Look, we’re in a time of change. One hundred years ago, fifty years ago, even twenty-five years ago, the world of media was nothing like it is today. This is a unique time.

  It’s a time when ideas can spread, maybe for the first time ever, based not on who created them and how important or rich that person is but instead on how good the idea is. A quote, a meme, or a strong emotion can pass through a network of people faster, effecting political change, creating art, or even making people feel closer than ever before. Ideas can help people change the world, and now anyone can become powerful enough to be a catalyst for what matters to them.

  There are fewer restrictions on connecting with the ones who matter and speaking to them directly. This is one reason (of many) that we personally feel lucky to be alive. In another world, a long time ago, people just like us talked about their ideas at parties, in their homes, with their friends, but those ideas got nowhere. The ideas died before they had a chance to reach the people who mattered. Today, we talk about them online, where they can change people and, hopefully, help make their lives better.

  So what’s unique about this book isn’t that it exists but that two people like us wrote it. We aren’t special. In another time period we would have had nine-to-five jobs with great benefits and no upward mobility. The infrastructure of that time period would have restricted us—now the infrastructu
re sets us free. We were given opportunity simply because of when we were born and where we happened to be.

  But this doesn’t apply only to us. There are fewer excuses than ever. So if you’ve delayed making something of your own or bringing a long-lost idea to life for the first time, congratulations, now is the time to do it. It is perhaps the best time possible, because the barriers are lower than they ever have been.

  A good idea now gets less resistance from media, because there are no longer five channels but five billion. Good ideas don’t have to pass through ABC, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, or anything else you recognize before they get to you. An idea may, in fact, go through no outlet you recognize whatsoever, until it suddenly connects with you on Facebook, on Google+, or elsewhere.

  We are more platform agnostic than ever. Coming to a new Web site, you may trust it or you may not, but you care much less about where an idea originates and much more about who shared it with you. Our media world is a far cry from listening exclusively to Dan Rather on CBS Evening News, and this is largely because we all get to be a part of it.

  In a sense, this is a book about how to be the best medium you can be, whether you are an individual, a small group of upstarts, or a giant organization. It was created in bits and pieces from knowledge we have picked up about what works and what doesn’t, what’s significant and what can be forgotten. It comes from our successes and our failures.

  It needs to exist because most people have not been to journalism school or studied to be writers or marketers, and yet everyone must be all of those things. We have all these hats by necessity, not by talent. So more than ever, we need a highly diverse set of competencies that will help us get out there, help us brand ourselves, and help our businesses succeed.