Vandal Jujitsu (The Power Of Irregular Content)

The height of your excitement with a new endeavor is at the very beginning.  This is when potential is unlimited and your level cap is unknown.  Although unlikely, you could magically have untapped world-class talent for “the thing”. Your newly discovered leisurely pursuit just might deliver you from your mundane existence and those worrisome bills. 

People in this emotional state will voraciously consume high production value “top of funnel” content.  No is immune from this.

(And by no one, I mean me.)

Case in point:  I am coming up on my one year anniversary of beginning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ).  I am a 2 stripe white belt, which is typical for that amount of time in the discipline.  However, I am atypical in size (6’4 215 lbs.) and age (52).  In October, I competed in a local tournament taking gold in the Absolute Division (any age, any weight) and silver in the masters division (30+ 215 lbs.).  You mix all of those things together and I am a beginner who is interested in competing.

Enter the Vandal Jujitsu YouTube channel.  There is a BJJ gym up in Canada somewhere (they say where but I don’t pay attention to Canadian geography because I am an American) that puts out content chronicling its students competition successes and failures.  

I can’t get enough of it.  The guy who edits it makes me laugh with his commentary and they do a great job of creating story arcs with the students.  I even like the grumbly head professor who sparingly dispenses wisdom like my wife gives out compliments.  The videos are long, usually over an hour, but I always watch them in their entirety.  

Here is the problem:  The channel does not have a discernible content schedule and sometimes they will go four or five weeks without doing anything at all.  This results in me constantly checking their channel every day, sometimes multiple times a day, cursing all the way.  When a new video is released, however, I stop what I am doing and consume the content.  There are tons of BJJ channels out there, but none of them compare in my mind to Vandal Jujitsu.  I am definitely a die hard fan.

(You can find the channel here: Vandal Jujitsu YouTube Channel)

Infrequency Stokes Demand

Supply and demand is an economic concept that most people avoid talking about, unless it involves a lemonade stand. At its fundamental core, it is the idea that if something is scarce, its value increases. This is true for great content, as well.

If you love what someone is doing but can’t get more of it, your perceived value of that thing goes up. When content does eventually get released there is all of this pent up demand, so the consumption rate is high. Also, any call to action (CTA) within the content has a high chance of succeeding because people are subconsciously saying to themselves “I’ll never know when I will get this chance again, so I better take it now!”.

The infrequency of the offering itself is what increases its value.

Am I saying that you should be inconsistent with your content? No. Consistency is the cornerstone of building a solid foundation.

I talk about volume relentlessly for building a writing as a service business and my current income was built on consistent reps. I did 365 podcasts in 365 days, which led to my first client acquisition asset. I wrote 3 articles a day, seven days a week, for six months which taught me about monthly recurring revenue. I have over 17k posts on my X/Twitter account @understorybard which has led to all sorts of projects, despite having less than 1k followers. There is no replacement for doing the work every day.

That said, there is a place for irregular content because it creates what I call “the infrequency funnel” once you have the foundation built.

The Infrequency Funnel

When someone is incessantly checking your channel to see if there is something new and there isn’t anything, one of two things will happen.  Either they say “I’m out” and give up on you, or they go on a hunt to see what else is out there of yours that they haven’t seen.

This means they will start to seek you out on other platforms.  They will go back and consume everything in your archives.  They will stumble across every thing you have ever sold, become a follower of yours on every platform, and click on CTAs months old.  During this process, they go deeper and deeper into your world.  This builds a very strong connection.  The type of connection that most businesses would kill for.

I am in the Vandal Jujitsu infrequency funnel, even though I highly doubt it is on purpose from their end.  Their channel has doubled in size to almost 20k in a couple of months though they rarely post and they only have 28 videos!  Your growth experts will struggle to explain why this is but now you know why.  It is the demand created by sporadically releasing awesome content and not slavishly adhering to a content schedule.

Remember that creativity by definition does not adhere to the rules.  Everything that is taught out there on the interweb is merely a suggestion.  Something that is known to work under a certain set of circumstances.  If you only play in the sandbox of suggestions, however, you will never discover NEW things.  And it is the new things that will give you true leverage in your life. 

Something to ruminate on.

More in a bit . . . Wade, The Understory Bard

Irregular Means Irregular

If you haven’t noticed, this newsletter comes out inconsistently.  This is by design.  I get to it when I get to it.  If you want to hear from me on these topics on a much more regular basis, you can opt-in to my email list here: Understory Bard Email List Opt-in.

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