Meditations on defeating obscurity

 What does Seth Godin say?

1. Stand out - be the Purple Cow
2. Be generous
3. Find the smallest viable audience
4. Use the network effect to your advantage - make the thing you do or sell work better if people invite others to do it also

What do others say?

• You need 1000 true fans (not 1 million)
• Do things or sell things that people want to share with others (Jeremy Salem)
• Sell your thing to an existing group that talks to each other
• Keep showing up day after day after day until you break through the plateau where nothing seems to happen, and you emerge on the other side where things are moving really fast (Atomic Habits)
• The best product is not the one that wins. It's the one that communicates more clearly and compellingly what and who it's for and how it can benefit them

It's not enough to be seen, although that in itself is quite difficult. You must have first understood your audience well enough that you can communicate with them in a way that they will understand. You must speak to them in a way that they understand easily, perhaps even subliminally, what you're trying to convey. This is the power of "story" and "archetypes" - they communicate in ways that we understand by nature. Few calories are burned.