Novels, movies, even consulting, are based on a knock knock business model.
Tom Cruise made a movie, and you need to buy a ticket to see it. Jane Collins is an engineering professional and you need to pay to get their insight about how to fix your bridge. This 300-page autobiography is worth your time to read.
The publication or offering creates tension (there’s something here, you might want it) and the way to relieve the tension is for the person you’re reaching to buy access to it.
Huge swaths of our culture are based on this simple approach to intellectual property. The idea comes in a wrapper, the wrapper costs money, the money pays the bills.
Mass media was the way creators could spread the tension and announce their work. You’re waiting for “who’s there!”
It’s worth distinguishing these knock knock offerings from cultural organizations, communities, and tools. In these cases, you can tell the whole story, give away the entire idea, and the IP is worth more, not less.
When people around you are all talking about using the tools in Atomic Habits or This is Strategy, the book becomes a foundation for what happens next. If you’re open to signing up for the blog after you read the book, that’s a hint. That’s not true for The Power Broker.
Rocky Horror Picture Show isn’t like Mission: Impossible. At Rocky Horror, the ticket buys you a chance to see a movie you know by heart–with other people. Being in the club is where the real value is.
Music succeeds when it becomes an anthem. And anthems spread, are played on the radio and become part of our culture. So it doesn’t make sense to say, “I have a new song but you can’t hear it.”
Yes, you need to start with a great piece of music, but the real work is in creating community and ubiquity, Grateful Dead style, not to put your secret recipe behind the doors of a vault.
You can see where the tension for creators comes in.
If you create a knock knock situation, you have to alert people to what’s on offer, but not actually give them what’s on offer. You need ‘who’s there’. That means that your online posts and videos are about the thing, they’re aren’t the thing itself.
And the opportunity for tool builders and community organizers is to give away the punchline, often. To focus on abundance (of connection and utility and trust) not scarcity.
Many of the creators I’ve worked with over the years feel this tension and then fall into a gap. They have a fine knock knock on offer, but promotion is grating, endless and feels demeaning. Hustle isn’t the solution, not any longer. The best way for this sort of work to become popular is for people who have engaged with it to tell their friends (see the Blair Witch Project for an example). But “getting the word out” has never been more frustrating or difficult than it is now. The web is not TV.
We need this sort of thoughtful, long-form scholarship, but the business model for it is shaky indeed. The breakthroughs happen via peer-to-peer promotion, not hustle.
At the same time, it’s never been more productive to build tools and communities. And it helps to do it with intent.
