This is a guest article written by Wolf Den Wolf Pup (WDWP) 912. Ever wonder how big companies like Facebook, Tesla, Amazon got that exponential growth and how you might be able to adopt some of these principles that they used to your own? Grab some coffee, DnD your phone and read on as WDWP #12 lays it out.
With time, comes great responsibility.
Is that how the saying goes? I dunno I just woke up. But it could be a saying.
Because a lot of power comes from plugging into “power ups” that are unlocked by having the amount of time they require…
Take the exploitation model.
You find a thing. Then exploitation is when you focus on the thing. You build the thing. And then you ride it out as long as possible. You exploit the opportunity for all it can give. After a period of time, you will run into what’s referred to as diminishing returns. Returns start to yield less and less and less and either take the same amount of effort to create as before or even more. From beginning to end could be years. I’m just sharing a very high level overview of the idea.
But what if we bring in our first power up: The explore model. How does it change our outcome?
Let’s explore.
Instead of taking all your time exploiting something you found, you take part of the time you were exploiting and move it into exploring to find other opportunities.
Let’s say we are a bookstore, but online. We sell books online. We build that and it starts working. It’s chugging along, and someone from the “Explore” department comes over and says
“Hey. Why don’t we try selling music and DVDs too? We’ve already got the systems, we’ve got the audience, and music and DVDs are still within the realm of entertainment. It’s not far off from books so we can probably make it work”.
This idea is passed off to the “exploit” department and they get started.
Now they’ve got music and DVDs selling. Now all of a sudden Amazon is no longer an online bookstore. It is an online entertainment store. Their position on the board has broadened, and the stability of their business has increased. What if book sales decide to dry out? No problem, they’ve got music and DVDs going. In addition, now the current customers can go to their friends and say “Hey you know how I’ve been ordering books online? Now they released music, and I know you’re a music fan so check it out”.
FLASH LESSON:
Aligning your product with broader adoption
That new person checks it out, and nowhere within this conversation was Amazon mentioned. This is referred to as diffusion. How do you think Facebook got popular?
“Hey. We’re all in a group online, you should join in.”
“Ok, what’s it called?”
“Facebook”.
They didn’t get popular by saying “We’re Facebook, and you should join because…”
No. No one cares about Facebook. They only care about what the different entities in the world can do for them.
If you would like to more broadly get whatever you do diffused, align your messaging with that wording. The wording where the solution, or the end result comes first, and the name of your company or service comes last as the answer to the question “How do I find it, I want it”. If you can get people talking about your product without mentioning the name of your company, where they only talk about “Hey do this thing, and use this to do it”, you’re better aligned with broader diffusion.
FLASH LESSON:
Aligning your product with broader adoption
In addition, now that Amazon is in three separate industries (Even though they are all bundled into entertainment), they have more knowledge (Knowledge from the book space, the music space, and the movie / DVD space). Then, you have a broader network. As you do business, you meet and collaborate with others. Perhaps an artist wants a front page feature of their new album. Now you’ve got that artist’s contact information. Each new contact brings new opportunity. With the feature of the artist, perhaps you explored, discovered, something else you can offer.
All this combined brings much more influx of information your way. Do you think you’d be more likely to be presented with an interesting opportunity having a greater influx of information? Do you think it would be easier to “explore” and run into new opportunities that work for you, having a wider cast net?
This is one of the dividends of this power up. As you explore further, and as you find more opportunities that bring you closer to what it is you are trying to accomplish, you will widen your overall position on the board, and you will be able to more efficiently explore for new opportunities.
Do you spend time exploring? Does your company have an “Exploring” department? Or are you focusing solely on exploiting and making the most of what you have? Keep in mind these are just general thoughts. If you just started building something, perhaps it’s not a good idea to divert part of your attention from launch to exploring right away.
Different circumstances for different situations.
Remember, from the beginning to the end of the exploitation curve can have years in between. I am just sharing a very high level overview of the idea.
This is the basis of the exploit / explore model. If you exploit too much, you’ll never get to discover new things, and possibly, may not be able to increase your position on the board. It also goes the other way, but for now, let’s just explore one side of the concept.
So turning our eyes to the Guardian Ecosystem, let’s explore a few aspects of how it is being built, and what power ups it uses.
We currently have The Wolf Den, The Guardian Academy, Wolf Pup NFTs, $WOLFIES, $GUARD, and Wolf Den Labs Publishing.
When an ecosystem is built in a non-linear fashion, it, in time, unlocks the possibility for exponential growth. Let’s dive into a little bit about how the Guardian Ecosystem is built, and how building it this way opens the door for exponential growth, which by itself is a huge powerup.
If you’ve been paying attention to Twitter and Instagram, something is going to happen with Chris Voss, and Joe Polish. We also know that Wolf Pups get whitelist spots for all projects Wolf Den Labs publish. If those two upcoming projects launch successfully, people will start to turn their heads to Wolf Den Labs as a publishing company. They will see that they create successful launches, and that as a result they bring great investment opportunities. They will then look for ways to get into the whitelist rounds. What’s the only way they will be able to attain a whitelist spot?
By holding a Wolf Pup.
Remember. People who are into NFTs do not care about Wolf Den Labs. People care about finding the best investment opportunities out there. If Wolf Den Labs positions themselves as the solution to what people who are into NFTs as investments are looking for, people will get interested in Wolf Den Labs. In taking part of the projects they publish, and as a result, get interested in Wolf Pups.
This will increase the value of each of our Wolf Pups throughout time, especially once the first 5000 are sold out. Wolf Pups were not linearly marketed. But their value increased via a non-linear means.
Now, how does this impact $GUARD?
$GUARD is sitting over there in the far left field. Where’s $GUARD come into this whole thing?
When Wolf Den Labs will create a successful track record of successful publishing actions, this will naturally add much more value to the Wolf Pups. Now people from the outside who know nothing about the Wolf Den will want one of the Wolf Pups just to be able to participate in the project launches. After enough interest is built, the currency with which all launches are purchased can be changed over.
Imagine what will happen if the only currency with which you can participate in launches and mints will be $GUARD.
Imagine a $2M NFT Launch.
That’s 2M worth of $GUARD buys. But they’re not normal $GUARD buys. They are $GUARD buys with much longer holds, and/or no sells, because people will buy $GUARD to take advantage of the mints. This creates a lot of buy pressure on $GUARD, without as much sell pressure. As a result, indirectly, $GUARD benefits much, much more than if the project would solely try to increase the price of $GUARD linearly.
No one cares about $GUARD.
But they want to be part of the products Wolf Den Labs publishes.
Thus $GUARD adoption grows. This is exactly how Elon Musk is working to introduce better batteries to the world. No one cares about batteries. But people care about cool, fast, techy cars. And what happens when they find out that these super cool futuristic cars use these same batteries that are now being sold in stores which can go into your everyday devices? Backdoor adoption happens, and a product that initially no one would have cared about would get adopted.
What this creates is a much broader adoption of a product, service or idea than would have otherwise happened. This is also how Elon drafted his entire plan for Tesla.
“Create a sick sportscar”.
Garner attention and funds from that. Roll it, funds and attention into something cheaper. On and on. Now we have the model 3.
This is why I originally referred to these powerups as “unlocked by having the amount of time required”. You can probably see that time had to pass to properly set up an ecosystem to accomplish this goal. Because instead of building the $GUARD currency linearly, time was spent to build an ecosystem around it, and only afterwards will growth, and much bigger growth than what would have otherwise happened, happen.
The macro adoption of $GUARD skyrockets, and naturally people become more longer term holders, or in other words, holders that benefit the ecosystem more than the holders would have otherwise had the goal just been to increase the price of guard. And this happens naturally, as a byproduct of $GUARD being plugged into an existing ecosystem. It’s powerful because people choose themselves to buy and hold $GUARD. No one’s gotta tell them. And that’s one less thing to focus on.
Now. Exponential growth.
$GUARD adoption skyrockets via naturally longer term holders.
What happens due to all this attention on $GUARD? $GUARD starts trending. And more people buy in creating… An exponential impact on $GUARD as an asset. Did the team have to market $GUARD for this to happen? Nope. That’s an additional one less thing to focus on.
Now you can start to see how strings can be pulled throughout the ecosystem to create impacts over in the far left field of the ecosystem. Furthermore, you can start to understand how by focusing on one thing, you can positively impact multiple things at once. This actually gives you the opportunity to multiply the impact of your resources, whether they be money, time, effort or something else you consider a resource yourself, if deployed correctly.
All this while increasing the stability of the asset because a majority of holders are longer term holders – People who want to hold $GUARD to participate in presales. This in turn will make $GUARD look more attractive to future investors, and the trend carries onwards.
You can probably feel how much more sturdy $GUARD will be as an asset over other projects who simply focus on raising the price of an asset via linear means.
In what ways do you bolster up the sturdiness of what you are building? Do you only focus on raising the ceiling from one direction, or multiple, which in turn will have second and third level consequences from even more directions which further raise the ceiling? Furthermore, do you just focus on raising the ceiling, or simply bolstering up the overall floor your project sits on, plugging the holes, and building the project by raising the lows?
Two different things, with the latter being much more powerful. Highs will happen naturally. And highs are unsustainable. But lows are sustainable. And if you focus on raising the lows, your project, like $GUARD, will be much more sturdy, while still enjoying the upside that the non-linear building powerup brings.
This power comes only from having a longer time preference.
On top of this, we can deploy the authority loop power up. Authority loops are a way to greatly increase your personal rapport with an entity.
It works like this.
Let’s call the new entity (person, company, group of people) “Joe”.
Joe already has rapport and trust with you. They come to you. And you send them off to someone else. For example, you can say
“Well I don’t know if I know exactly how to solve your situation, but my friend x might be able to provide some valuable insight!”
It’s a very non-linear referral. You are not sending Joe to your friend’s podcast episode featuring you. You are just sending Joe to your friend with no strings attached. Now, that friend has to be doing something extraordinary enough so that Joe will think of them as someone quite amazing, and who has a lot of authority. Make sure you set up authority loops with the right people, because if you do not check this box, it won’t work.
Then, imagine if your friend talks nicely about you to Joe. Your personal authority skyrockets, and that person transforms into an extremely loyal customer of yours. The reason this is so powerful is because your referral was non-linear. Joe did not see how the strings were attached between you and your friend. It just so happened that they talked really nicely of you, too. Joe already thought of you as having lots of authority. You referred Joe to your friend. As a result of the personal referral, Joe thinks this person has authority too, but they feel this in a bit of a curious “Let me find out for myself way”. Once they find out, then Joe thinks your friend has a bunch of authority too. Maybe even more than you, since you might’ve said your friend can do
something you cannot. Why your personal authority skyrockets after your friend shares the invaluable impacts you’ve
had on their life / business is because the person who Joe thought had even more authority than you made you the hero of the story. Without you, your friend wouldn’t have been able to accomplish something or other. Thus, an exponential increase of authority lands on your back from the perspective of Joe. This can be done in different ways.
Another example is you can send people to a book which states the same things as you say. There is no obvious link between you and that book, but if that book holds extraordinary content, and that content mirrors what you’ve been saying, how do you think this would impact your prospects perception of your authority?
Do you have authority loops set up in your business? Who are your authority loop buddies? Do you feel comfortable temporarily delaying a sale to complete an authority loop, to gain that much more authority from the eyes of your prospect?
Let’s briefly go back to the Guardian Ecosystem.
Chris Voss, and Joe Polish are both very big names. Imagine this scenario:
A new person comes to The Wolf Den. The Wolf Den refers them over to Chris Voss, because they want to learn negotiation, for example. Chris Voss has exceptional content on negotiation. The new person learns a lot, and develops a high authority perception on Chris Voss. Chris is the man! Now imagine how the new person will feel if Chris turns around and talks about how
invaluable the Wolf Den was for helping him launch his new project, and how the entire launch was planned and published by the Wolf Den Team. All of a sudden, the authority of the Wolf Den skyrockets, and the perceived value of everything the Wolf Den touches, from the perspective of that one person, increases greatly.
You are probably starting to feel like there are a lot of things working, all together, for the Wolf Den. And as they increase together, they push the authority of the Wolf Den higher and higher and closer to that position of going exponential. But all of that is only accessible to those of us who are willing to put short term gains aside. This takes time to build, and you do not get rewards from it for a period of time longer than if you would build linearly.
- How can you implement exploring into your business?
- How can you implement non-linear building into your business?
- How can you implement backdoor adoption into your business?
- How can you better align your business with diffusion?
- How can you implement authority loops into your business?
Before we end off this article, I want to make a very important point that I hope everyone will take note of. In the Wolf Den, we do things that move us closer to what we want in life. Perhaps these strategies all sound good, but you probably shouldn’t do them just for the sake of doing them. Touch base with your goals and make sure that the strategies you implement will bring you closer to what it is you are trying to accomplish.
Because, as an analogy, if at the end of the day you are just launching a new product and you start focusing on exploration and less on the launch, maybe things won’t go as well for you as if they would had you been focusing on the launch.
So just keep that in mind.
Can you summarize your takeaway in 6 words? If you’re up for the challenge, post it here:
https://twitter.com/gregoryesman/status/1580412587149127687?s=20&t=2ZsnskT-Rx2D2T
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Wolf Den Wolf Pup #12 Greg Esman.