Lesson 5a Monetization Strategy

Another glorious day outside here. It's cold as heck, 25 degrees Fahrenheit maybe, but sunrise— greens, blues, pinks, browns, yellows, the whole thing. Pretty remarkable stuff. You know, we live on this closed ecosystem And we're all connected. One planet. COVID impacted all of us. Tides impact all of us. AI impacts all of us. Technology impacts all of us. Financial ups and downs and turmoil impacts all of us. Any sort of global conflict impacts all of us. So, you know, we are now living in one closed ecosystem, all plants, animals, humans, technology. Everything is one ecosystem working hopefully in harmony. So you try to move without one of them or improve one of them, something else is going to fail. It may not be immediate, but come for you. So we need to just be really intentionable— intentionable? Intentional about the things we do. These days in our lives. So today we're going to talk about monetization strategy with that intense backdrop, especially given what's happening with AI and the proliferation of it across our lives, our work lives, the technology, the products we use. It's running on top of the internet and electricity. It's a— for— it's a core foundational framework and dial tone of humanity at this of the planet. So, you know, if we've built something with strong core values, something unique, something different, something better, something that's missing, something that gives you new capabilities and superpowers, then there is the very real idea that people are willing to pay more for that capability. And oftentimes we've segmented markets and the world is segmented markets into consumers and professionals. So the old, like, here's a version for the consumers, here's the pro version. And the reason for the pro version was because while the consumer version just needed to be simple and usable for a mass market broad audience, the pro version needed to have very precise dials, switches, features, so you could do precise customizations exactly to your needs, to your ideas. to your requirements. And so oftentimes professional services was created. And so you would pay money in order to get something built, done, created to your exact specifications. And you would pay more for the— than the consumer version because it was personalized to your needs. And so enterprise products with enterprise customers, B2B, where you're selling to a company, not to a person, was built around this idea of extreme customization. What's interesting about AI products, however, is that it's given some of that extreme customization to consumers. And so for the first time, one of the few times you're actually seeing consumers pay higher subscription fees instead of something free on the internet like social media in order to get that customized, personalized experience because your chatbot knows, your AI knows everything about you. And we believe that the best AI product should be a guide for you, not a tool. The tool isn't right. A friend comes with its own caveats and concerns based on the state of the technology today, but almost a guide, right? And not this augmentation, but almost this helpful guide. I have to keep using that word. So the real question, both in a work environment and an everyday life environment, Because we don't just magically stop becoming humans the moment we step into work. But for some reason, we like build products that are crap to use, harder to use, and look and feel like garbage. And we just expect people to do it because we're paying you. But you lose sight of the fact that like humans actually make decisions, humans build, use, buy products. So, you know, people talk, maybe you should take take care of the people throughout their life, and not just because they're in a different context, like all of a sudden they don't buy and use things that they wouldn't want to as a consumer. Um, so when we make these things infused with values, give you new superpowers, and it's a helpful guide, are you willing to pay more for that? I think so. So this pricing and monetization strategy of the future, I think, will be a couple different things. And we're showing you an example of that through our products, services, and content. We think that that is a very real flywheel where not only do you educate and communicate your belief systems, your values, the reasoning, the whys, Um, the authentic truths about like who you actually are, what you believe, your frustrations, your joys, your pains, your struggles, your failures, the story, the history, the arc. Um, I think that is some of the Velcro that helps you connect with other folks, and, and that should probably be free. I mean, if you're actually delivering content, you feel called— one of our core values is if you're, if you're fortunate enough in life to get knowledge or wisdom, you have a responsibility in order to share that and pass that on. And some of the hard part of being called to service and delivering services, either as a like one-on-one service, as a personalized service, as a product in a way where you can scale that one-on-one time is our core values and mission is really to build things that help, help people, help animals, help nature, help the planet, help the ecosystem, the one world, right? Like we're on one blue marble. There's nowhere else to go. Like, this is it. This is the one. You want to help, but oftentimes people don't want the help and you see the need for help. And so we're in this place where it's Unstoppable force of wanting to help versus an immovable object. And so what do you do with that constraint? Do you get ripped in half? Probably. But I think it just comes back to this flywheel and having some trust or belief in something that's bigger than all of us and like wanting to help, you know. Provide guides. And so this series, this video series, is— its goal is to be a guide and a pathway and provide principles upon which, over long time horizons, we can come back to this, myself included. Because I'm not going to have these mental capacities and these ideas forever. And so to stitch these down into like some digital substrate such that I use them. I mean, I actually go back and use these as foundations, as the critic for the things that I'm building and saying, does this meet the measure, right? Does it meet the measure of the critic? Does it meet the bar of nature? And if not, then I got to go back to the drawing board. So I think the monetization strategy, the monetization, the pricing strategy comes in at the end and you can do cost plus and values based and the whole thing. But I think really it's, um, the old adage, you want to price it inexpensively and go for scale. Um, I, I also think that you need to price it such that you are compensated for the decades of struggle and richness that you've had to get in order to write that one sentence. In order for you to have that one insight that changes someone's perspective who's running a large mega ship corporation, and that one insight impacts then tens, hundreds of millions of people around the world, both directly and indirectly, that one insight, you should be paid for that. And just because it took you 5 seconds to say it out of your mouth, Doesn't mean it didn't take 33 years of struggle in order to get there. So sure, cost plus, but also backwards from value and the pain it took. Like, what is the cost of that pain, the opportunity cost of that pain? What did you have to give up in order to do that? How many swatches of paper, of rough drafts, of fashion samples, of iterations that got thrown away, and the cost of the models and the renders and the attempts and the time that is— you won't ever get back, and the relationships, right? And like the experiences that you could have had. What is all of that worth? It's almost priceless in some ways. And so really the question is then one of willingness to pay. And over long time horizons, I think the willingness to pay will be there given you are solving a foundational problem that may appear at first to weigh only 1 gram. It weighs only 1 gram, but when you multiply that 1 gram times 8 billion people times every second, Those grams start to add up and compound very rapidly, and that's the scale at which we think on a foundational substrate. So these videos are a free way to help you see into the temple of wisdom that we've had to go through the 36 chambers in order to figure out. And similarly for you, guaranteed you have a similar path on whatever vector that is or road you've gone through in your life that you know depth about something that I have zero clue about. Could be health-related, could be building-related, could be artistic-related, could be engineering-related, could be process-related, could be Feeling-related, family-oriented-related, mental-related, you name it, education-related, doesn't matter, right? Like plant a garden-related. And the real question is like, how deep have you gone and can you bring it back to the rest of the world and then distribute it through a number of channels and relays and influencer relays such that that ball ping-pongs and spreads, right? So maximize impact. So I think you got to stay true a bit to the value you create, the cost, both hard cost, time cost, and soft costs. And then also, like, don't discount yourself just because you're trying to, like, rip something into the market. Eventually, there's someone out there who has a ton of value. And the real question is then how you find your way to them and how you develop enough trust such that there's believability. Um, and you got to do it in such a way that you maybe can't give everything away at once because the buying process is also an experience and a journey. And, uh, if you could just get everything you want right now immediately and have the big impact, then You wouldn't value it as much. So, all right, I'm getting cold out here and, uh, I need to go inside. It's gonna be a long day today. Started calls at 6 AM. They won't get done until like midnight, after midnight. So 3 continents now talking about this AI stuff, this product stuff, um, investors, management teams, populations of consumers and enterprises. That's it. Uh, hope you have a good one. Let's try it. Let's chat. Give us a shout. I want to know who else is out there and listening to this stuff. Cool. Love y'all. Have a good one.