[Advice] Building a Subscription Model for Content

Being the last person standing is an underrated tactic in the world of online content creation.

But for the peace builder looking to create a subscription model for content, this may be the best strategy possible.

Three things are working in the peace builder’s favor:

the speed of the Internet and the ways in which content consumers access content is increasing, even as the cost of acquiring the tools is decreasing;
the rise of ad blocking is causing many organizations to either double down on advertising, or to simply eliminate it altogether as a driver for content;
the cost in time, emotional energy, and personal effort (number of “touches”) to acquire a paying customer online is about the same as it is to acquire a paying customer offline.

More content—written, audio, and particularly video—is being consumed by audiences via mobile applications, nested on mobile devices, and accessed via the cloud. This is being seen most visibly in the overlap between subscription based product services (i.e. Harry’s Razor, Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox (for men and women) Trunk Club, Casper Mattresses, etc., etc.), and the ways in which applications, URLs, and even QR Codes are being integrated into the content consumption experience around advertising those services. Peace builders must be aware of these trends to keep their content delivery systems current and updated to get in front of as many audience members in their long-tail as possible.

The rise of ad blocking as a driver for developing a subscription based business model for content development is a key point for peace builders to take in to consideration. Yes, putting content behind a paywall and encouraging people to either give an email address (or pay a fee) to access that content may knock the peace builder in a Google ranking. But if there is an abundance of previously “free” content (audio, written, or video) that can be nested behind a paywall, advertising and ad blocking become less worrisome, in spite of whatever changes Google attempts to make to its search algorithm.

The offline content acquisition experience and the online content acquisition experience are beginning to hew closer and closer together. In the past, both on and off line, there was tremendous friction between the consumer of content and the creator of content. Now, both online and increasingly offline, all of that friction is either being automated, “app”-ed, or otherwise disappearing from interactions. Content consumers in the peace builders’ long tail are still eating, sleeping, buying clothes, and purchasing content from a variety of both on and offline resources. Peace builders must be aware of this friction reduction and move to a world where the frivolous parts of the experience (i.e. signing up, giving an email, taking a payment, etc.), are becoming more friction less so that the actual engagement with the peace builder can happen.

The peace builders that understand these three trends and incorporate the reality of them into their content business model will be the last peace builders standing (and getting paid) even as others drift away.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] 10 Year Overnight Success V

People tell themselves stories about success and failure.

Most of those stories overlap with cultural stories that may, or may not, be factual. Cultural stories overlap with success and failure stories carry an impact. Success stories range from stories about hard work to stories about perseverance, patience, and tenacity.

What often gets missed in these stories is a discussion (or even a curiosity) about the individual and corporate moments that lead to the successes: The moments of gossamer when someone made a decision—or didn’t—and the consequences that resulted from that decision. Very rarely is decision making viewed through this lens as a series of deliberate and coincidental acts, complete with a dizzying array of textures, and moments.

The other thing that is often missed in all of these stories is the acknowledgment of the presence of a moral component in decision making. It is a sign of how far our post-modern world has come, that stories of success are tied more to the presence or absence of psychological traits, than they are tied to the presence or absence of spiritual traits.

The change really shows its colors when we either express guilt at the perceived underserved outcomes of our success—no matter how hard we know we worked for them. And it cuts particularly deep when “so many other people around me didn’t have the same success.” We compound our problem when we lack the commensurate humility in attaining our successes and are arrogant around the impact of our failures, exhibiting both a lack of a higher moral code and even more, a lack of an understanding of the limits of our own individuality and freedom.

There are no overnight successes: Parent work to ensure that their children have advantages that they did not have in their experiences. Adults work, experiment, try and fail, and neither the rewards, nor the failures, are equally meted out. People tell themselves stories about themselves (or repeat the stories they have been told by others since birth) and in repeating the narratives of success, failure, ennui, or moral uprightness, they continue to perpetuate myths that harden into legends, and become lived truths, echoing on down through the generations.

Nothing “bad” and nothing “good” happens overnight. It takes years (some would say at least 10,000 hours) to get to the epicenter of mastery of success and it takes just as long to get to the center of failure.

And the tenacious, and the patient, are rewarded, each to their own ends.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Building an Arbitrage Machine for Entrepreneurship

In financial markets, in gambling, and even in entrepreneurship, there are two skills that are critical for success: making small bets consistently through developing a model (buying) and breaking an old model (selling), and building an anti-fragile machine that can withstand the shock of either of those small bets failing.

Arbitrage is the process of hedging bets (through the purchase and the sale of an asset) so that, no matter how much is spent, the buyer/seller can always either come out ahead, slightly behind (not enough to be far back, but enough to catch up), or slightly ahead (building a continuous lead). Hedge fund managers and stock traders with fancy algorithms understand arbitrage. So do insurance agents, financial advisors, professional gamblers, and even entrepreneurs.

Many people though, make bad large bets (thus financial collapses and the development of ‘flash’ trading via fancy computer programs) and take massive losses with little to no gains. This is due primarily to ego driven betting that has nothing to do with market conditions, and everything to do with personal psychological and emotional tics. The most successful people bet small, bet consistently—or they don’t bet at all.

Day by day, step by step, entrepreneurs should be building a machine in their unique niche that will arbitrage against their unique market. One that will allow them to see opportunities, take advantage of them, and not lose their livelihoods, their families, or their peace of mind. This does not have to be a stressful process, but it does have to be done.

When the entrepreneur makes those small bets they don’t become business people (business is about maintaining a consistent place in one spot with gradual upticks in growth, rather than about advancing a model) instead, they become evangelists for a new way of doing things. In whatever field they’re in, they begin to make bets that will fundamentally breakdown the model they saw as problematic (which lead them to entrepreneurship in the first place) and will replace it with a new model.

Customers, clients, and others don’t have to know what model the entrepreneur is building. As a matter of fact, they don’t really care. But the entrepreneur should care. Otherwise, freelance work is always an option.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled ‘HIT Piece’ To Ask A Question

In many parts of the United States, there are people who are addicted to drugs.

We could talk all day about the mechanics of addiction, but there is something that is almost never focused on in any discussion of addiction. We talk about the socioeconomic conditions, familial conditions, societal conditions that lead individuals to pursue the short-term rush of pleasure that come from addiction, rather than seeking the long-term work that comes with addressing any area of our lives.

Compulsion, bad habits, obsessions, addictions; we can all agree that moderation in the material world is best in all things, but when moderation—through individual decision making—begins to warp and change patterns of behaviors in the community of people around addicts, then we all begin to agree that there is a problem.

In the digital space—as in our real lives—brands and individuals are addicted to the short-term impact of paying for attention because of its seemingly immediate results. But once you pay digitally, just as in any addiction off-line, you’ll pay again, and again.

Thus FB can sell ads.

Thus Google and Twitter will have you pay-per-click or per Tweet.

The thing is though, in the digital world, the equity of attention is really expensive in the long-term while seeming deceptively cheap in the short-run, so brands are more than willing to pay, particularly when the cost comes down to a rounding error on their marketing balance sheets. While in the long-term, individuals become impatient, leaping from platform to platform hoping to be done, consistently peripatetic, never really satisfied, and finally abandoning the whole thing in frustration.

But the outcomes for both brands and individuals in the digital space is the same as in the real world. And as the outcomes of this digital addiction become more manifest, the social media commons are wrecked and destroyed (through cynicism over loss of privacy and data selling), messages become drowned out in the cacophony of noise (150 million channels on the Internet and rising), and the audience (always fickle) shifts its focus faster than a goldfish.

I’m not complaining though.

Putting in the work on the long game is the only way to outlast, outplay, and out endure the short-term addicts with deep pockets and little self-awareness. There are three things the smaller people (like myself and other corporate trainers) can do to ensure our survival and longevity (rather than giving up and going home) in this digital foaming red sea:

Share, share, share—someone told me the other day that the reason her company doesn’t do more work in the online space is because she’s worried that she won’t get paid for her content and that she won’t get proper attribution, credit, referrals and revenues. This is backward, Industrial Revolution based thinking where scarcity still ruled in information. I can’t believe I have to point this out, but after 25 years of Google and almost 40 years of the Internet, scarcity rules in attention. So share freely, because if you don’t your competitors will.

Carve, carve, carve—finding a niche is huge in the digital landscape and then mining that niche in the way that it wants to be mined not the way that you think it should be mined, is the path toward long-term longevity. Carving a niche where you own the attention of a few thousand people is the most valuable, long-term form of scaling there is.

Unite, unite, unite—joining with others is the only way forward, whether you’re a digital publisher, or a corporate trainer, or a product person. The big brands in all spaces and niches have seemingly deep pockets. But there is so much white space in collaboration, connection, and growing your network to increase your net worth, that it’s amazing to me how great the level of contraction is that’s currently happening as fear of loss rules rather than anticipation of gain. Uniting together—and keeping that unity through using open source software and collaborative in-person methods—is the only way to combat the fear of loss.

The drug of “I can go it alone.” The drug of “I don’t need to share.” The drug of “I am for everybody.” These gateway drugs lead to other addictions (like gaming short-term attention through paying for it) that then lead to emotional exhaustion, disengagement, and cynicism.

The question you have to ask yourself—and that I’ve already clearly answered—is: How committed are you to the long-game?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] 3 Thoughts That May (Or May Not) Intersect…

Three thoughts that may (or may not) intersect with each other:

Thought #1: There’s a lot of high profile, persistent, whining going on in the space of web publishing, content creation, and even in the scrappy world of podcasting. This phenomenon of whining is also extending into commentary around entrepreneurship as the venture capital money that has been floating big bets for years begins to dry up. The thing is though, if you are a web publisher, or a podcaster, or a content creator, or a struggling entrepreneur, the whining has got to stop. The landscape of the Internet is infinite, no matter what the big digital brands are telling you through their marketing.

Thought #2: Attention and awareness are the coin of the realm right now in any digital space, and all you need to be successful (whatever that means) is 1,000 people willing to bet on your reputation, have a relationship with you, then give you revenue, and make a referral for your service or product. The idea that the digital system can be gamified through creating fake followers, fake awareness, and false hype is dying as fast as the money dries up.

Thought #3: In the digital space, and in our off line, real life interactions lately, the substance of truth is seen to not be as marketable as the illusion of symbolism. But this is a false paradigm. Substance based in truth has always grow more followers, attracted more awareness, and generated more revenues (in trust first and money last) for more people that anything else tried ever.

The problem comes when many people—from celebrities to the average man on the street—buy into the frothy hype of the short-term gain at the expense of the long-term relationship. As the bubbles pop all over the place and as web publishers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and others have to get back to the substance of building products, let’s hope they focus on communicating the truth—no matter how scary it is.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #10 – Cinnie Noble

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Three, Episode #10 – Cinnie Noble, Mediator, Conflict Coach, Social Worker, Entrepreneur, Lawyer, and Pioneering Conflict Coach

[powerpress]

Brand building is not easy, particularly in a world where peace building and brand building are not often associated with each other. But our guest today has figured out a way around that problem, by slowly and surely doing the things that matter.

I’ve been reading a lot of books about advertising, writing copy, and philosophies on how to embed a marketing message deep inside a consumer’s mind. But for the professional peace builder, brand building, advertising, and on and on seem overwhelming at best.

I even talked to a person last week who’s a corporate trainer in a different space, who when I mentioned my passion for marketing, she threw up her hands in disgust.

But one of the ways to overwhelm the advertising heebie-jeebies, is to build your peace business in the way that Cinnie did: with aplomb, intentionality, and care. She has been able to build a brand that has influenced many people: leaders, managers and clients.

But she has also managed to be industry facing and has challenged people in her industry to evolve tools and products that have helped mediators expand beyond just mediation and toward developing products that can serve as early stage interventions, instead of struggling to manage late stage interventions.

Co-creating a relationship around things that matter is part and parcel of the language of coaching. So is the CINERGY^® Model that Cinnie came up with.

But for our field, co-creating a relationship with the incremental brand building practices that Cinnie has pioneered is about the future of the field.

And Cinnie, Tammy Lenski, and Pattie Porter, and Anne Sawyer, and many others are doing that co-creating right now…

Check out all the ways below to connect with Cinnie today:

Cinnie’s Websites:

Cinnie’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/cinergycoaching

Cinnie’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cinnie.noble

Cinnie on LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/cinnienoble

Cinnie’s Books on Amazon:

Conflict Management Coaching: http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Management-Coaching-CINERGY-Model/dp/0987739409
Conflict Mastery Questions: http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Mastery-Questions-Guide-You/dp/0987739417/

[Opinion] Podcasting to the Masses

A product has reached its peak in the early adopter stage on the classic distribution curve, and is ready to slide into the masses attention, when three phenomenon happen:

The product catches the attention of regulators, lawyers, and policy makers (Uber).

The product catches the attention of the mass industrialists who remain powerful at the top of the economic ladder (Tesla).

The product catches the attention of the mass of creators and they begin to give interviews and hold conferences about “What is to be done about this new thing we underestimated/ignored” (podcasting).

The lawyers haven’t shown up at the door of the “big” independent podcasters (read “the 65% or so of podcasts not produced, spun – off, or derivatives of NPR radio shows”) but the legalistic thinking employed by the corporate regulators and policy makers is already appearing in conferences and conversations–and the hand wringing has begun.

We haven’t yet hit peak podcasting. That won’t happen for about another decade, based on how quickly electric cars and integrated mobile phone devices have an impact on the market overall. But the signs are on the horizon that podcasting is about to reach its peak of the early adopter stage and begin the long-slow ride into public acceptance, and into the mass consciousness.

Will every niche podcast do well as this gradual swell of acceptance begins? No. If a podcaster (or podcast network) began two (or even five) years ago, the chances that the show will gain mass acceptance are still under 50%. But, if a large podcast content creator (such as a personality like Marc Maron or Adam Carolla) and distributor (such as NPR) can “port over” their audience from other channels (i.e. live comedy acts, other content on a network, etc.) there’s a better than 50% chance that those creators and distributors will survive and become dominant in the coming years.

Podcasting is riding the slow wave toward mass acceptance. For those creators who have waited for this moment, now is the time to begin sharing your digital voice.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Edges of the Universe

There is the edge and the long tail.

From the work of Chris Anderson, the idea of the long tail is that the world of “hits” (television shows, Top 40 music, etc.) is gone and the world of “niches” (Twitter users, YouTube video consumers, etc.) is here and is growing exponentially, year-on-year, as the cost of creating, developing, or doing, in general, drops to almost $0.

For peace builders looking to make money, get attention, gain credibility, or grow a practice, the “hits” are jobs in academia, working with NGO’s, or becoming lawyers who do peace building (i.e. mediation, negotiation, arbitration) on the side. The “niches” are where I am with this blog, launching a new podcast, or even trying to leap into live video streaming of mediation, negotiation, or arbitration sessions.

So why are peace builders chasing the chunky head (“hits), rather than heading out on the exponentially longer long tail (“niches”)?

There are two answers to this question:

The long tail is a lonely place. Peace builders by nature, temperament, and training are communal people, longing to connect clients with solutions and to resolve sticky problems. It’s lonely to go out to the long tail, because professional colleagues may tell you that you’re “wrong” in your approach. Or they may not let you into the world of conferences, associations, membership groups, or other places where business gets transacted. And when you’re a peace builder looking for work that matters, it’s easier to struggle to get into the chunky head and make noise there, than to take a professional risk to venture out on the long tail.

The edges of peace building are about the unknowable and unpredictable. Resolution is the reduction, or elimination, of tension between people. Engagement is about seeking out the tension, appreciating it, and not seeking to resolve it. At the edges of peace building lie technologies and technological developments, that have made the world of communication outside of peace building more striated, more differentiated (thus the long tail) and more separated. The tension has increased with social media saturation, 24/7/365 marketing messaging, and people increasingly choosing to opt-out rather than to opt-in. These changes are creating an atmosphere that is ripe for peace builders of all backgrounds to step in and show the way to reduce tension—or at the minimum get parties to engage with it in healthier ways—using stories that resonate with the language people in conflict at the edges are using right now.

Doing work at the edges that matters, requires going to the spot on the long-tail that matches your temperament as a peace builder and then to mine that spot ruthlessly. It also requires making peace with the tension of the unpredictable, and the unknowable.

But peace builders ask their clients to do this all the time, from the mediation table to the negotiation table.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Talent and Mechanics

What they really want to know when they ask “how do you do that?” is the mechanics of the show you are doing.

Putting on a show is about talent though (and hard work), but putting on a show only happens when the mechanics of doing the show are suborned to the talent preceding the show.

When the mechanics are confused with the talent (by the people watching the show–or buying it), then imitation becomes the worst form of flattery. The hard work is disentangling the talent from the mechanics (and the tools to accomplish putting on the show) and focusing on what you do well. Then determining if that other person’s mechanics will work for the show you want to put on.

The answer to “how do you do that?” is always in two parts (talent + hard work), but it’s easier–and more palatable for the audience–to just answer by talking about how nifty the #2 pencil is.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Storytelling for the Peace Builder

It’s hard to imagine a world without stories and storytelling; after all, human beings are narrative animals. And where peace builders are concerned, it’s even harder to imagine a world without conflict.

Conflict is a process of change driven by stories. Stories that, when repeated often enough—and with enough veracity—become capital “T” truth in conflict parties’ minds, hearts and psyches.

Peace builders are experienced in hearing stories of conflict and disruption. They tease apart those narratives to move parties past “who did what to whom” and toward, resolution, reconciliation or even forgiveness.

But, when peace builders have to switch and become brand builders, sometimes they struggle with stories about their business, their peace practices and their approaches to advocating for peace in the world. This has created a space where peace builders are sometimes defined by market forces, rather than acting to create narratives that will drive the market to their door.

Go back and look at that paragraph for a minute: That set of thoughts right there is a story, full of assumptions, truths and values.

All good story making revolves around a three act structure, focused around an epic journey of some type. Any reading this who has studied the books of Joseph Campbell—or seen Star Wars—will know what I’m talking about.

The peace builder as “hero” is a tough meme to construct for many peace builders. It smacks of violating client self-determination. A narrative where the client is the hero and the peace builder fades into the background, never to be seen or heard from again, is comfortable for many peace builders. Such a construct can be seductive, because it reinforces various themes and narratives baked into the structure of many peace building efforts, from education and training to certification and publishing.

But…

The marketplace (i.e. potential clients and customers) enjoys the journey of heroes and even anti-heroes. Acknowledging this fact is not approval of it, so when constructing the story of an approach, process or philosophy, many peace builders would do well to follow three basic rules:

The brand client is always the hero—All good, memorable branding stories begin by focusing on the hero first and identifying that person and their role clearly (see the Apple campaign from 1984). When building a brand and a business, the conflicting parties are the heroes; but, they can only be heroic with a little guidance.
The brand narrative winds through every piece of content a peace builder creates—When I work with corporate training clients, the second best moment I experience is the moment when they tell me that they recognize me from my “heroic” photo, splayed “Superman-like,” across my marketing (see this here). My best moment is when all that fades as they come to realize, through instruction, training and guidance, that they have the power to succeed or fail if they want to—and on their own terms. When building business brand, images that are selected for your blog posts, your business card, and even your website and print media should all integrate and express the same narrative.
The brand narrative you want to send to clients must be consistent—The professional peace builder can send one, two or multiple messages to clients through multiple channels (see the Chipotle campaign here). And in a world with fractured and shortened attention spans—and multiple marketing niches and channels—it may be beneficial to send out multiple messages. Or, telling one story, one time, in one way may work better. Either way, the professional, savvy peace builder must decide on what the message will be—and where and how hard to promote it.

-Peace Be With You All-