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CHAPTER TWENTY

Organizing and Leading a Tribe

It’s not your tribe

That’s the first thing I say to people who talk about the folks they’re lucky

enough to work with and lead.

The tribe doesn’t belong to you, so you don’t get to tell the members what

to do or to use them for your own aims.

If you’re fortunate, there’s a tribe that will listen to you and consider what

you say.

If you’re lucky, they’ll interpret your words in a way that they believe will

help them move the mission of the tribe forward, and you’ll get a chance to

do it again.

And if you invest in them, they’ll show you what they want and what they

need. You can gain empathy for them, understand their narrative, and serve

them again.

The tribe would probably survive if you went away. The goal is for them to

miss you if you did.

The power of now, not later

Marshall Ganz is the brilliant Harvard professor who has worked both with

Cesar Chavez and Barack Obama. He has articulated a simple three-step

narrative for action: the story of self, the story of us, and the story of now.

The story of self gives you standing, a platform from which to speak.

When you talk about your transition—from who you used to be to who you

became—you are being generous with us.

It’s not about catastrophizing your situation or the faux empathy of online

vulnerability. Instead, the story of self is your chance to explain that you are

people like us. That you did things like this. That your actions led to a change,

one we can hear and see and understand.

The story of us is the kernel of a tribe. Why are we alike? Why should we

care? Can I find the empathy to imagine that I might be in your shoes?

The story of us is about together, not apart. It explains why your story of

self is relevant to us, and how we will benefit when we’re part of people like

us.

And the story of now is the critical pivot. The story of now enlists the

tribe on your journey. It’s the peer opportunity/peer pressure of the tribe that

will provide the tension for all of us to move forward, together.

I was like you. I was in the desert. Then I learned something and now I’m

here.

Of course, I am not alone. I did not do this alone and I see in you the very

pain I saw in myself. Together, we can make this better.

But if we hesitate, or if we leave the others behind, it won’t work. The

urgency of now requires that we do it together, without delay, without

remorse, without giving in to our fear.

Story of self.

Story of us.

Story of now.

Here’s a simple example: “I used to be fifty pounds overweight. My health

was in tatters and my relationships were worse. Then I discovered

competitive figure skating. It was tough at first, but thanks to my new friends

on the rink, I got to the point where it was fun. Within months, I had lost

dozens of pounds, but more important, I felt good about myself.

“The real win for me, though, was the friendships I made. I discovered that

not only did I feel terrific physically, but being out on the ice with people—

old friends like you, and the new ones I made at the rink—made me feel more

alive.

“I’m so glad you were willing to come to the rink today. I called ahead and

they’ve reserved some rental skates for you . . .”

In the first paragraph, we hear the story of our friend, a narrative of going

from here to there.

In the second, we hear about how it changes our friend’s relationships,

including to people like us.

And in the third, there’s a call to action, a reason to do something right

now.

Manipulation is the tribe killer

In Rules for Radicals, noted labor organizer Saul Alinsky laid out thirteen

principles that can be used in zero-sum game political settings to discourage

and defeat enemies:

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you

have.”

“Never go outside the expertise of your people.”

“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”

“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”

“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”

“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”

“Keep the pressure on.”

“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that

will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”

“If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through

into its counterside.”

“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

Alas, this approach is now often used by both sides on just about any issue,

and it tears away at civil discourse. When you’re so sure you’re right that

you’re willing to burn things down, it turns out that everyone is standing in a

burning building sooner or later.

What happens if we reverse the rules?

“Put people to work. It’s even more effective than money.”

“Challenge your people to explore, to learn, and to get comfortable

with uncertainty.”

“Find ways to help others on the path find firm footing.”

“Help others write rules that allow them to achieve their goals.”

“Treat the others the way you’d want to be treated.”

“Don’t criticize for fun. Do it when it helps educate, even if it’s not

entertaining.”

“Stick with your tactics long after everyone else is bored with them.

Only stop when they stop working.”

“It’s okay to let the pressure cease now and then. People will pay

attention to you and the change you seek when they are unable to

consistently ignore it.”

“Don’t make threats. Do or don’t do.”

“Build a team with the capacity and the patience to do the work that

needs doing.”

“If you bring your positive ideas to the fore, again and again, you’ll

raise the bar for everyone else.”

“Solve your own problems before you spend a lot of time finding

problems for the others.”

“Celebrate your people, free them to do even more, make it about the

cohort, and invite everyone along. Disagree with institutions, not

with people.”

All thirteen of these principles get to the mission of the marketer. To

engage with people and help them create the change they seek. To understand

their worldviews and talk and act in ways that align with who they are and

what they want. To connect people to one another in an infinite game of

possibility.

Shared interests, shared goals, shared language

A tribe doesn’t have to have a leader, but it often is populated with people

who share interests, goals, and language.

Your opportunity as a marketer is the chance to connect the members of the

tribe. They’re lonely and disconnected, they fear being unseen, and you, as

the agent of change, can make connection happen.

You can intentionally create cultural artifacts, to use status roles to elevate

a costume, a series of code words, or even the secret handshake. You can be

Betsy Ross and sew the flag (Betsy Ross herself, the very concept of Betsy

Ross, is a symbol).

Don’t say it all, and don’t make it obvious. It’s fine that there are secret

handshakes, Easter eggs, and unknown features. It’s fine that commitment and

longevity earn an extra edge.

You can challenge the tribe to go further, encourage them to adopt goals,

and push them forward. When Nike committed millions of dollars to

Breaking2, a moonshot to break the two-hour mark on the marathon, they

were engaging and challenging the tribe. Even if they don’t succeed, they

(and the tribe members who organize around them) will come out ahead.

Most of all, the tribe is waiting for you to commit.

They know that most marketers are fly-by-night operators, knocking on

doors and moving on. But some, some hunker down and commit. And in

return, the tribe commits to them.

Because once you’re part of a tribe, your success is their success.

It will fade if you let it

There’s the hope that you can spin up a movement and then get out of the way

as it takes on a life of its own.

A vision that once you cross the local chasm, you’ll become a permanent

part of the culture and can move on to the next challenge.

In fact, that rarely happens.

There are always new ideas beckoning the early adopters. They’re on the

prowl, and they’ll be the first to leave.

But those who admire the status quo might leave as well, once the tension

is gone. They might have embraced your restaurant, your software, or your

spiritual movement for a while, but the original status quo, the one they

walked away from, persists as well, and without persistent and consistent

inputs and new tension, they’ll show up a bit less for you.

There’s a half-life at work. For any tribal behavior that’s not energetically

maintained, half of the activity will disappear. Every day, every month, every

year—it’s not clear what the half-life for a given movement is, but you can

expect that it will fade.

The alternative is to reinvest. To have the guts to sit with those you have

instead of always being distracted to chase the next thing.

The best marketers are farmers, not hunters. Plant, tend, plow, fertilize,

weed, repeat. Let someone else race around after shiny objects.

Take a room in town

Zig Ziglar was a door-to-door salesman of pots and pans. In the 1960s, this

was a thing.

Most of the three thousand representatives in his company followed the

same plan. They filled their cars with samples and hit the road. They’d visit a

town, make all the easy sales, then get in the car and drive to the next town.

Early adopters, as we’ve seen, are easier to find and easier to sell to.

Zig had a different strategy.

He got in his car, found a new town, and moved in. He took a room for

weeks at a time. He showed up and kept showing up.

Sure, he made the same early adopter sales as everyone else. But then

people noticed he didn’t leave like all the other salespeople that they’d seen

before. He stayed.

By continuing to organize demonstration dinners, he got to know the

people in town. He might engage with someone in the middle of the curve

five or six or seven times over the course of a month.

Which is precisely what this sort of person wants before they make a

decision.

Zig did the math. He understood that while most salespeople would flee

when they hit the chasm, he could build a human bridge. There’d be days

with no sales at all, but that’s okay, because after crossing the local chasm, the

volume would more than make up for the time invested.

The easy sales aren’t always the important ones.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Some Case Studies Using the Method

“How do I get an agent?”

That’s the question that screenwriters, directors, and actors get asked all the

time. The industry has gatekeepers, and you don’t have the keys to the gate,

so an agent is the answer.

As Brian Koppelman has generously pointed out, it doesn’t work in this

direct a manner. Sure, the agent will field calls for you, but he’s not going to

become your full-time sales rep, making calls night and day and tirelessly

promoting you to the industry.

The method isn’t to go out and find an agent. The method is to do work so

impossibly magical that agents and producers come looking for you.

You, the one who cared enough to put it all on the table, who fell in love

with your viewers and your craft, and who made something that mattered.

It doesn’t have to be a feature film or a Pulitzer-winning play. In fact, the

approach works best if it’s not a fully polished and complete creation.

The best work will create an imbalance in the viewer, one that can only be

remedied by spreading the word, by experiencing this with someone else. The

tension this imbalance creates forces the word to spread. It means that asking,

“Have you seen . . . ?” raises the status of the asker, and the champions

multiply.

What matters is the connection you made. Everyone has ten friends, fifty

colleagues, a hundred acquaintances. And you can cajole them into seeing

your work . . . and then what happens?

If it’s electric, if it makes an impact, if the right sort of tension is created,

they’ll have to tell someone else.

Because telling someone else is what humans do. It’s particularly what we

do if we work with ideas. Telling others about how we’ve changed is the only

way to relieve our tension.

This is the hard work we discovered many pages ago. The hard work of

deciding that this is your calling, of showing up for those you seek to change.

Do that first.

Tesla broke the other cars first

When the Tesla Model S was launched, its primary function was to tell a story

that, for a lot of luxury car neophiliacs, would break their current car.

Break it in the sense that it wasn’t fun to own anymore.

Wasn’t worth bragging about.

Didn’t increase their status as a smart, wealthy person, who was clearly

smarter and wealthier than everyone else.

This luxury car owner went to sleep the night before, delighted that the car

in the garage was shiny, new, and state of the art. That it was safe, efficient,

and worthy.

And then he or she woke up to discover that the story was no longer true.

Tesla understood that no one who bought one of the first fifty thousand

Teslas actually needed a car. They all had perfectly fine cars.

So Elon Musk created a car that changed the story that a specific group

told themselves, a story that undid their status as early adopters and as tech

geeks and as environmentalists and as those that supported audacity.

All at once.

The existing car companies have always had a hard time turning concept

cars into real ones. They launch concept cars at auto shows to normalize

them, to socialize the innovations, to make it more likely that the real car,

years down the road, won’t bomb.

They couldn’t launch the Tesla. Not because they didn’t know how (they

did) and not because they didn’t have the resources (they did). No, Ford and

GM and Toyota didn’t launch the Tesla because car companies like us don’t

take risks like this. And their customers felt the same way.

Making a car that could have the impact the Tesla did on the story of

luxury cars wasn’t easy. Musk chose to go to difficult extremes in positioning

the car on behalf of his fans: it’s the fastest, the safest, and the most efficient

car of its size, ever. All three.

This audacity is available to more and more organizations as technology

shifts from “Could it be done?” to “Do we have the guts?”

The NRA as a role model

There are few groups more controversial than the National Rifle Association.

But as focused nonprofit/political marketers, they have no peer.

They have only five million members, less than 2 percent of the

population, but have used that base to change the attitude and focus of

thousands of lawmakers. They are regularly vilified by the masses but

continue to confound expectations in their impact, revenue, and profile.

When nonprofits talk about changing hearts and minds, when they target

“everyone” and seek to get bigger, they can learn critical strategic lessons

from the NRA instead. By focusing on the minimal viable audience (just five

million people), the NRA is very comfortable saying, “It’s not for you.”

By activating those members and making it easy for them to talk to their

friends, they’re able to create significant leverage. A Pew study shows that

gun owners are more than twice as likely to contact government officials

about their issues than nonowners are.

The NRA intentionally creates “people like us.” They’re comfortable with

insiders and outsiders, and often issue public statements that are, at their best,

viciously divisive. They have bent a corner of the culture in significant ways,

and they’ve done it not by changing worldviews but by embracing them.

The NRA isn’t my version of “better,” but it clearly resonates with those

that they seek to serve.

This persistent, disciplined approach to an issue is precisely how much of

the change has been made in our culture.

Getting the boss to say yes

It’s one thing to market to the world, but it feels quite different to market to

one person . . . like your boss.

Except it’s not. Not really.

Your boss is probably not eager to change her worldview. She wants what

she’s always wanted. She sees things through the lens of her experience, not

yours. She is aware of who the people like us are, and what they think. She

wants to do things that help her achieve her goals, which probably include

status, safety, and respect.

If you go to her with what you want, with a focus on price or features or

false urgency, it’s unlikely to lead to the answer you seek.

If you go to her asking for authority without offering responsibility, that

too is unlikely to get you very far.

But if you can dig deep and see the status roles, can decode dominion

versus affiliation, and can use trust to earn enrollment, the process can

change.

You can produce better by serving the people you market to. Turning them

from customers to students. Gaining enrollment. Teaching. Connecting. Step

by step, drip by drip.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Marketing Works, and Now It’s Your Turn

The tyranny of perfect

Perfect closes the door. It asserts that we’re done, that this is the best we can

do.

Worse, perfect forbids us to try. To seek perfection and not reach it is a

failure.

The possibility of better

Better opens the door. Better challenges us to see what’s there and begs us to

imagine how we could improve on that.

Better invites us in and gives us a chance to seek dramatic improvement on

behalf of those we seek to serve.

The magic of good enough

Good enough isn’t an excuse or a shortcut. Good enough leads to

engagement.

Engagement leads to trust.

Trust gives us a chance to see (if we choose to look).

And seeing allows us to learn.

Learning allows us to make a promise.

And a promise might earn enrollment.

And enrollment is precisely what we need to achieve better.

Ship your work. It’s good enough.

Then make it better.

Help!

When we offer it, we’re being generous.

When we ask for it, we’re trusting someone else to see us and care about

us.

On the other hand, when someone refuses to offer help or ask for it,

everyone is closed, on defense, afraid of the other.

If there’s no connection, we can’t make things better. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Marketing to the Most Important Person

Is marketing evil?

If you spend time and money (with skill) you can tell a story that spreads,

that influences people, that changes actions. Marketing can cause people to

buy something that they wouldn’t have bought without marketing, vote for

someone they might not have considered, and support an organization that

would have been invisible otherwise.

If marketing doesn’t work, then a lot of us are wasting a great deal of effort

(and cash). But it does.

So, does that make marketing evil? In a story about my blog published in

Time magazine, the author wrote, tongue in cheek, “Entry you’ll never see: Is

marketing evil? Based on a long career in the business, I’d have to answer

‘yes.’”

Actually, I need to amend what this pundit said. I’ll add this entry: Are

marketers evil? Based on a long career in the business, I’d have to answer,

“Some of them.”

I think it’s evil to persuade kids to start smoking, to cynically manipulate

the electoral or political process, to lie to people in ways that cause disastrous

side effects. I think it’s evil to sell an ineffective potion when an effective

medicine is available. I think it’s evil to come up with new ways to make

smoking acceptable so you can make a few more bucks.

Marketing is beautiful when it persuades people to get a polio vaccine or to

wash their hands before performing surgery. Marketing is powerful when it

sells a product to someone who discovers more joy or more productivity

because he bought it. Marketing is magic when it elects someone who

changes the community for the better. Ever since Josiah Wedgwood invented

marketing a few centuries ago, it has been used to increase productivity and

wealth.

I’ve got a lot of nerve telling you that what you do might be immoral. It’s

immoral to rob someone’s house and burn it to the ground, but is it immoral

to market them into foreclosure? Well, if marketing works, if it’s worth the

time and money we spend on it, then I don’t think it matters a bit if you’re

“just doing your job.” It’s still wrong.

Just like every powerful tool, the impact comes from the craftsman, not the

tool. Marketing has more reach, with more speed, than it has ever had before.

With less money, you can have more impact than anyone could have imagined

just ten years ago. The question, one I hope you’ll ask yourself, is What are

you going to do with that impact?

For me, marketing works for society when the marketer and consumer are

both aware of what’s happening and are both satisfied with the ultimate

outcome. I don’t think it’s evil to make someone happy by selling them

cosmetics, because beauty isn’t the goal—it’s the process that brings joy. On

the other hand, swindling someone out of their house in order to make a sales

commission . . .

Just because you can market something doesn’t mean you should. You’ve

got the power, so you’re responsible, regardless of what your boss tells you to

do.

The good news is that I’m not in charge of what’s evil and what’s not. You,

your customers, and their neighbors are. The even better news is that ethical,

public marketing will eventually defeat the kind that depends on the shadows.

What will you build now?

What do we do about the noise in our heads?

Where do we find the strength to bring our better to the world?

Why is it so hard to develop a point of view? Why do we hesitate when we

say to the world, “Here, I made this”? And what’s the alternative to

hesitating?

These don’t sound like marketing questions, but in fact, if you let them sit

unanswered, they’re getting in the way of your marketing. People who aren’t

as gifted or generous as you are running circles around you, because they are

showing up as professionals. And yet, too many people with something to

offer are holding themselves back.

There’s a difference between being good at what you do, being good at

making a thing, and being good at marketing. We need your craft, without a

doubt. But we need your change even more.

It’s a leap to choose to make change. It feels risky, fraught with

responsibility. And it might not work.

If you bring your best self to the world, your best work, and the world

doesn’t receive it, it’s entirely possible that your marketing sucked.

It’s entirely possible that you have empathy for what people were feeling.

It’s entirely possible that you chose the wrong axes, and that you failed to

go to the edges.

It’s entirely possible you were telling the wrong story to the wrong person

in the wrong way on the right day, or even on the wrong day.

Fine, but that’s not about you.

That’s about your work as a marketer.

And you can get better at that craft.

This thing that we do—whether it’s surgery or gardening or marketing—

it’s not us, it’s the work that we do.

We’re humans. Our work isn’t us. As humans, we can choose to do the

work, and we can choose to improve our work.

If we’re going to take it personally every time someone doesn’t click on a

link, every time someone doesn’t renew, we can’t possibly do our work as

professionals. And thus we get stuck in search of perfect. Stuck without

empathy. Stuck in a corner, bleeding and in pain, because we’ve been

personally maligned.

One way to avoid that is to realize that marketing is a process and a craft.

Just because the pot you made on the wheel broke in the kiln doesn’t mean

you’re not a good person. It simply means your pot broke and that maybe

some lessons in pottery will help you go forward. You’re capable of doing

better.

Realize that as a marketer, the better you are trying to teach or sell to the

right person is worth far more than what you are charging.

If you are seeking to raise money for a charity, someone who donates a

hundred or a thousand or a million dollars is only going to do it if they get

more value than it costs them to donate. If you’re selling a widget for a

thousand dollars, the only people who buy it will buy it because they believe

it’s worth more than a thousand dollars.

We bring value to the world when we market. That’s why people engage

with us.

If you don’t market the change you’d like to contribute, then you’re

stealing.

Here you are offering more value than you’re charging. It’s a bargain. A

gift.

If you hesitate to market your offering properly, it’s not that you’re being

shy. It’s not that you’re being circumspect. It’s that you’re stealing, because

there’s someone who needs to learn from you, engage with you, or buy from

you.

Someone will benefit from your better if you get out of your way and

market it.

There’s a student who’s ready to sign up. There’s somebody who wants a

guide, who wants to go somewhere. If you hesitate to extend yourself with

empathy, to hear them, you’re letting us down.

The marketer’s contribution is willingness to see and be seen.

To do that, we need to be able to market to ourselves, to sell ourselves

every day. To sell ourselves on the difference we’re able to make, if we persist

with generosity and care.

You’re already telling yourself a story. Every day.

We may market to ourselves that we are struggling. We may tell ourselves

that we are unknown and deserve to be unknown. We may tell ourselves that

we’re a fake, a fraud, a manipulator. We may tell ourselves that we are

unjustly ignored.

They’re as true as we want them to be. And if you tell yourself a story

enough times, you will make it true.

Make things better. It’s entirely possible that the thing you are marketing

satisfies no real demand, there is no good strategy behind it, and that you are

being selfish in thinking that just because you built it you should stick with it.

Blow it up. Start over. Make something you’re proud of. Market something

you’re proud of. But once you’ve done that, once you’ve looked someone in

the eye and they have asked, “Will you do that again for me?,” once you have

brought value to a student because you taught them and helped them get to

the next step, do it again, and then do it again. Because we need your

contribution. And if you’re having trouble making your contribution, realize

your challenge is a story you are marketing to yourself.

It is the marketing we do for ourselves, to ourselves, by ourselves, the

story we tell ourselves, that can change everything. It’s what’s going to enable

you to create value, to be missed if you were gone.

I can’t wait to see what you build next.