don't become "the thing"

Moontower Munchies #60

Apr 17, 2024

Friends,

Today’s Munchie is my notes to an interview that has been ricocheting in my skull since I heard it last year.

Patrick O’Shaughnessy interviews John Fiorentino (transcript)

Patrick’s intro:

My guest today is John Fiorentino. John is a product inventor and entrepreneur who, in the space of a few years, has bootstrapped four products: Gravity Blanket, Moon Pod, Moon Pals and Birthdate Candles, which have collectively sold hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue.

Our conversation is quite different than normal. Alongside his successful brands, John has had a range of life experiences from starting as a Jazz musician to working for Justin Bieber that give him an original world view. I was especially interested in his points around product positioning, creating magic for consumers, not letting yourself become the product and how to build enduring brands.

Fio can see and harness to the extent possible methods where one might only see madness. You need to sit a bit with what this dude’s saying.

A general thought I had when listening to this and many other interviews:

business is heavily theorized but there seems to be little truth. So much competing information. In a way, the things I’m sharing are revealing my bias more than uncovering truth. But I suspect it’s more important to have a point of view and just get to work than hand-wringing about your theories in a wicked domain. It’s a parallel idea to why investing feels like astrology — everything that makes sense gets overbid and the only place to find an edge is where at first it doesn’t appear to make sense.

The following excerpts are notes I want to save.

[It’s important to note that Fio’s insights are derived from his work in consumer brands and he makes no warranty of them applying universally.]

All emphasis are mine:

When marketing can’t be disentangled from the product

One of my favorite brand stories of all time. Sorry, if I’m butchering the story, but something like this happened, where Coca-Cola had hundreds of thousands of taste testers and they put the same Coca-Cola formula in a bunch of different bottles and cans and cups. And the thing that they realized was that when someone drank the same Coca-Cola formula from a white cup and then they drank that same Coca-Cola formula in a can that had the Coca-Cola logo on it, not only did different parts of their brain lit up, different parts of their brain that was triggered by taste buds lit up.

So positioning that product around, it literally changed the way that your brain experienced the taste. When people say that ideas are not valuable, the idea of getting to this place where you are just flicking someone’s brain 10% to make them imagine something different while they engage with the thing is a completely different product.
And that is competitive. You can compete on that. And if you own that positioning in the consumer’s mind, that is what I would like to call a real moat. Do not underestimate the power of the positioning and the ideas that come around how to position something the right way because, in my opinion, that is the product.

[Kris: Rory Sutherland explains a neurological theory for why this effect: Prediction combined with Bayesian updating makes more sense as a data architecture than perceiving everything and then forging it into a whole. If this is true, it explains many oddities, like the fact that advertising changes the taste of a product.]

It’s no accident that Slow Productivity embedded is the chewy center of the woo

In history, I think if you look at these paradigm-shifting moments and ideas and creations, inventions and people, the through line is that there is a really fucking weird non-through line. You can’t get there by doing [their] morning routine, you got to go a little deeper than that. And if you look at Leonardo da Vinci, you read about how he used to spend his day, where I read his book, one of the craziest things that stood out to me was like he just spent six months taking notes on how the woodpecker’s tongue worked. I was like, “What? That is what got his attention?” And then the guy who invented Pokémon was just out collecting bugs. And James Cameron was just a truck driver that fell into taking over a movie that was about to fail. And then he just basically fucking invented Terminator. What are the things that are actually driving those people? It’s not some quantifiable thing. It is some undeniable spirit that they have this fearlessness where they are able and comfortable to just follow in a cheesy way. They’re following their heart. And they are so committed to that truth that it leads them down these windy insane paths that, that path actually ends up having these paradigmatic discoveries or inventions. What is the through line there? It is this unbelievable commitment, obsession, transcendent infatuation with, in my opinion, finding something that is true. And I think things that are true aren’t really quantifiable, which is why if you talk to most people and what they’re doing with their day, they’re trying to get money. They’re trying to make a lot of money. That doesn’t really stand the test of time. I don’t think money rules the world. I think this undeniable magic rules the world, and I think the people that are able to tap into that and shape that rule the world, and I think money follows that. Money is not the thing. Money is the measurement of the thing, and we’ve kind of forgotten about that. I call it money worship or number worship. We’ve become obsessed with this idea that truth is quantifiable. The point is not money. The point is to make incredible things for the world that then gets you money. That subtle difference is unbelievably important.

[Kris: This is reminiscent of so much of Cal Newport’s slow productivity ideas]

Products that are pulled not pushed

For 99% of consumer product businesses, if you need an investment, you don’t have a business because all of my businesses have been profitable on day one. On day one, there is enough of a demand for it, where if I show it to 1,000 people, 200 of them are buying it. If you don’t have that metric, you don’t have a business.

And if you can’t convince the consumer that the thing that you’re selling is so compelling that they should wait six months for you to deliver the thing that you are describing, you either don’t have a good product, you can’t describe it well enough or the market doesn’t give a shit. And I can tell that in 10 seconds. And that is something that makes people unbelievably uncomfortable and terrified because again, that’s scary. That is a path that you can’t tell me there is no step-by-step path to get you out of that

[Kris: again here’s Newport — If you feel like you have to rush to compete in something or race in some way, chances are you don’t have a great sustainable competitive advantage.]

The cardinal mistake — forgetting that your cult of personality serves the product not the other way around

Patrick: I want to dig a little bit more on this. Apparent fine line between genius, people able to create these elements of magic, let’s call — let’s stick with that word, and something opposite genius. I think five years ago, if you polled everyone is Kanye a genius, most people would probably say, yes. Now I think probably more people would say, he is a psychopath. He said awful and seems to deeply believe some really terrible things.

And then to invoke a name like P.T. Barnum, for example, who I’m sure was some form of a genius. But normally, if you hear that, it’s someone saying something negative about you, like you’re sort of a con artist. Even people like Elon, there just seems to be this fine line between these magic makers, having history write them one way or the other. Is Disney a con artist or a genius? In what ways is he different from P.T. Barnum, is he different from Elon?

There just seems to be this really delicate line. So maybe talk about that line.

John: There is a hierarchy and a formula that you spiritually have to stay within or you get crucified. My way of describing that is you need an idea, something bigger than yourself. And then you need to be the shepherd of that idea and then the way that you spread that message needs to have a product and then that product goes to an audience.

So this is a very real hierarchy in my mind where it makes a lot of sense where if you start to mess those things up, it either becomes extremely less valuable or it blows up. The cardinal sin where you can get really, really far really, really fast is if you turn yourself into the product, which then makes you the idea. And when you become your product and idea, you get crucified. It’s like a very causative effect formula for human psychology. You see the scapegoat thing. You see the story over and over and over again. The crowd turns against the hero and basically crucifies them, you see this. It’s the oldest story of all time.

You can really, really see that play out. And again, do these little tests. Around the world, do you think more people know Elon Musk or the word Tesla? There is a line where he’s crossing where it’s becoming Elon. That’s dangerous. Now you are the thing.

Look at what happened to Trump. If you break that order, you go quick. You can create insane momentum and you become this crazy passionate leader, but if you aren’t doing it for something bigger than yourself, you get sniffed out and you just get crushed. The audience is like, they don’t trust you and they throw you out. Trump got there really, really quick, unbelievably effectively, and then he’s done. Maybe that’s powers that be, maybe that’s the audience, maybe that’s people just got sick of him. My critique on someone that doesn’t get that formula right is like, remind me of the bigger thing. With Trump, it felt like he was for Trump. It didn’t really feel like he was ready to rebuild America and put heart and soul back into this country and unify us. It was like, no, no, no, I’m going to win. And you can see in his tweets, search query of how many times he says me or I or something, which by the way is a leading indicator of serious depression and suicide. If you start saying I and me, it is the highest leading indicator that you’re about to fall into depression.

You put yourself first, you go to hell. It’s just a law that I think exists where if you can use that as a guide of, like, it keeps everyone in check. No one wants to worship a guy. They want to worship a guy that is sacrificing himself for something bigger, and he is showing the world that it’s possible to commit himself to something bigger than yourself, which I think is a very human struggle. It’s a daily quest to find the ways in which to get outside of yourself and help someone else. For whatever reason, a lot of people are fearful of that. They don’t want to do it and they’re scared and it’s vulnerability or whatever, but when you do, you just automatically feel better. You don’t feel necessarily more powerful, which can be unbelievably addicting and intoxicating, but you definitely feel better.

Again, there’s a very real reason why our heart, brain and soul acts that way. And I think that when you tap into that and you understand that there is this real hierarchy of truth and value and you submit to that, now you can be trusted. And don’t get it wrong, consumers, people are unbelievably smart. Unbelievably smart. You cannot trick them.

So what is the role of the creator?

Patrick acknowledges “ it does seem like some of the most successful people have figured out that if the founder or the artist or something is a bit more a part of the story themselves, it’s like a force multiplier. Maybe say like if you’re advising, let’s say, your friends who are starting a company, how would you tell them to build and engage with an audience, if at all?

John: I think this is where we’re heading to a really interesting time, where it’s like the things that are going to be valuable are the things that you can’t really teach or copy. And that’s just going to be like, how do you teach someone how to be someone’s good, best friend that’s entertaining? I don’t know. Can you?

I would say, if you are an intelligent, personable, funny, charismatic person, that is an unbelievably unique asset that is more and more rare in the world that we are headed in, and you better figure out how to insert yourself into the organism of the company that you’re building because that can be a very valuable force multiplier to get you attention in very unique ways that did not really exist.

But I would say caution, because if you let that get out of whack, you’re going to get killed. I think it’s a very, very delicate balance. And I also think it’s going to be really obvious when people are doing this with the intention of coming up with a formula of how to maximize shareholder value. It’s so obvious when someone starts a podcast because they think it’s going to help them build their audience. It’s just so obvious.

You’re one of the only podcasts I listen to. Why? Because you’re the best interviewer ever. You have a very, very unique ability to interview and make me feel incredibly comfortable to explore these things in my head and ask these very, very poignant questions that’s super rare from an interviewer, which is why you have one of the best podcasts out there. If you try to teach me how to do that, you couldn’t do that.

But because you can do that, I would say, holy shit, quadruple down on that. That will give you — because no one else can do this — this will give you an advantage on being everyone’s best friend, that’s the best person at asking questions to the most interesting people. And oh, by the way, I want to meet X, Y and Z. Now you’re in that top 150 range that I was talking about, and you’re going to get that deal flow.

[John has an idea he calls Fio’s Number that is similar to Dunbar’s number where you want to be one of the first people think of when they think of X]

Notions of personality typing or a focus on one’s own identity as a unique thing to be cultivated and cherished in contrast to others

I think these archetypal frameworks are interesting to create. I don’t think that they’re interesting to try to put on yourself. I think this idea of self and identity and self-love is similar to practicing schizophrenia. It is not real. It is not healthy, and it does not help you become who you become. You become who you become through movement and motion and following a set of beliefs that puts you in motion. You don’t get to become great by saying, “I’m great. I identify as great.” That’s not for me to decide.

[Kris: McConaughey from an outstanding commencement speech: if we stay in the process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we aren’t thinking of the finish line, we’re not looking at the clock, we’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing the very act we are in the middle of. No, we’re in the process, the APPROACH IS THE DESTINATION… and we are NEVER finished. Bo Jackson ran over the goal line, through the end zone and up the tunnel — the greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it. We do our best when our destinations are beyond the “measurement,” when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, when we have immortal finish lines. When we do this, the race is never over. The journey has no port. The adventure never ends because we are always on our way. Do this, and let them tap us on the shoulder and say, “hey, you scored.” Let them tell you “You won.” Let them come tell you, “you can go home now.” Let them say “I love you too.” Let them say “thank you.” ]

All of this shit that I’m saying, we’ll look back on this in 20, 30 years, and it will be super clear if I am actually a creator or if I just was a fan boy.

And I won’t be able to convince you. We both will just know. It would just be so obvious. And to me, that is identity. These things that people try to put themselves into, to me, it’s so much pent-up energy in the wrong direction. Don’t look inwards. Look outwards. Serve something bigger than yourself. Do not try to make yourself happy. Try to make someone else happy. And paradoxically, that is what’s going to make you the happiest. [Kris: notice how self-effacing this is]

You’re not going to find love by figuring out what love language you are and who is going to give you that love language. It’s like, no, you find that by making a choice to love someone every single day. I spent the last 5 years or so, as I’m getting to this point in my life, spending tons and tons of time finding people like yourself who I really, really admire who, in my mind, have it all. They have the family, they have the wife, they have success and they’re on this path that doesn’t look like it’s going to end. And they all say very, very similar things. Every 75-year-old billionaire that has their family together just sounds like the exact same person. Which is a contrarian view that I have, which I design and create for is that we are all the exact same. Everyone is the exact same.

We’re all playing the same game. We’re all trying to find love. We’re all trying to eat, and we’re all trying to survive. And when those incentives are at the core of our daily life, everyone plays very, very similar games. Think about how different everyone could act. Everyone is doing the exact same thing. If you’re focusing on these differences, you’re splitting hairs that are just meaningless. And if you start to create, you try to work every day around the core assumption that we are way, way, way more similar, if not almost entirely identical than different, in my opinion, you’re going to have a lot more success.

[Kris: Some related quips about when therapy-talk bleeds into self-defeating snowflakism.

VGR’s take on the strong/weak meme cycle: a world talking itself to death where action would actually help
An exchange between the main characters in Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow:
Sam: “The knowledge and experience we have—it isn’t necessarily that helpful, in a way.”
Sadie: “It’s so funny you should say this, because if you were one of my students, you’d be wearing your pain like a badge of honor. This generation doesn’t hide anything from anyone. My class talks a lot about their traumas. And how their traumas inform their games. They, honest to God, think their traumas are the most interesting thing about them. I sound like I’m making fun, and I am a little, but I don’t mean to be. They’re so different from us, really. Their standards are higher; they call bullshit on so much of the sexism and racism that I, at least, just lived with. But that’s also made them kind of, well, humorless.
“If their traumas are the most interesting things about them, how do they get over any of it?” Sam asked. “I don’t think they do. Or maybe they don’t have to, I don’t know.”]

Fio continues:

You’re kind of breaking rule number one: don’t turn yourself into the product. You can’t craft yourself. You can submit to something and serve that, but you can’t craft yourself.

Being in the Hollywood world, there was a lot of these conversations where it was like, the product should be a blanket. When I would try to manage my artist, it was like, I don’t want to make you the product. This is weird. I don’t want to tell you how to do certain things. That’s a weird thing. Like you are becoming the product. And that’s a super, super dangerous thing. And what you’re talking about with these things is like you’re trying to craft yourself. And that is essentially what celebrities do. And just really pay attention to a celebrity. How many people go on these crazy runs where they are that thing for like a year? There’s 50, 60 new names that come up every year where you’re like, oh my God, and then they’re gone. It’s like what is that guy doing? Was that really worth it? Was that the game that he wanted to play? Was that the game he should have played? Or should he have tried to do something a little different, a little bigger?

All these artists that ride these fame waves, they all crash until they come out with a hit again. So if they lose sight of that, it really doesn’t matter what the personality game is they’re playing. If they make a hit, they’re back on top. So does it really matter what games? I think like Frank Ocean and Adele do this really well. They go into a hole for 10 years, and then they just emerge. They drop literally generational-defining music and then they disappear. [Kris: Slow productivity again — this is Newport’s description of Grisham]

It’s like, wow, that dude is a light maker. That dude is making magic. And he’s not the product. He’s cool. I want to hang out with him. I was in L.A. the other day and I had lunch next to him. There was not a bone in my body that would let me go up to him and be like, “Dude, can I get a picture?” Because he was not the thing. He did the honorable thing of making himself smaller to a larger thing he believed, which is the art. And when someone makes that humble decision, I trust them and I treat them like a real person. And if he’s sitting there crafting these archetypal things of what he’s going to do to make himself stand out as a personality, this and this and this, I don’t trust him.

He might get my attention for a year, but I’m not messing with that guy on a 10-year time line until he comes out with a generational-defining hit. And the second he’s capable of doing that, he’s going to realize that the other shit doesn’t matter at all.

☮️

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