How to climb the content pyramid and become a legendary category creator
It’s possible to stop selling your time for money while building a portfolio of intellectual capital.
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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
This week’s Buried Treasure is about how to create demand.
Category Kings do this by creating what is suddenly urgent, important, and most useful in the world. They understand how to climb The Content Pyramid to create legendary Non-Obvious outcomes. And they develop new and different business models to create net-new opportunities for themselves and the customers they want to serve.
To uncover more gems (our mini-books are pure gold!), hop aboard The Pirate Ship and subscribe below:
The Content Pyramid: The 5 Levels Of Becoming A Legendary Writer, Creator, And Thought Leader
In The Content Pyramid, we share how most people who aspire to be a “thought leader” struggle to make it past Levels 2 or 3 on The Content Pyramid.
If you want to be a legendary writer, creator, entrepreneur, executive, or thought leader, you need to make a decision on which game to play.
Do you want to make a difference? Or, do you want to be accepted?
If you want to make a difference, then you need to divorce yourself from public approval. “Different” things don’t get accepted right away.
Think: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who creates top-of-the-pyramid, differentiated, non-obvious content in smaller topic categories (macroeconomics, mathematics, and statistics).
If you want to be accepted, then Tweet, post, and make videos catering to the lowest common denominator. Don’t threaten, don’t challenge, and optimize for confirmation bias.
Think: Gary Vee, who creates bottom-of-the-pyramid, undifferentiated, obvious content in larger topic categories (happiness, success, business motivation, content creation).
Consciously choosing which game you want to play is crucial to measuring your success as a writer, creator, entrepreneur, and thought leader. Once you choose, you’re ready to start climbing The Content Pyramid.
If you decide to make a difference (we’ll raise a pint to you!), you’ll need to master the Art of Fresh Thinking.
The Art Of Fresh Thinking: How To Create Obvious & Non-Obvious Content
Our mini-book The Art of Fresh Thinking shows why there’s a scarcity of fresh thinking in the world.
That’s because almost all thinking is reflexive (having an unconscious “reflex” in response) versus “reflective” (taking a moment to consciously reflect on how the past may have created a preexisting mental model keeping you from considering a new and different future).
In order to build the skill of coming up with fresh, new ideas, we have to first define what it means to “think.”
This is crucial because reflexive readers want Obvious content, and reflective readers want Non-Obvious content.
Obvious Content = The art of speaking to what people already think and believe (catering to the reader’s reflexive nature).
Non-Obvious Content = The art of educating people on what they haven’t thought about or decided they believe yet (requesting their reflective nature).
The most valuable part of the creation spectrum is when you can solve Non-Obvious problems in Obvious ways.