How to Build a Powerful Cult

Trump is genuinely funny, which is a powerful communication hack because humor gets and keeps attention; being funny makes people weirdly likable even if they disagree with everything you stand for, because humor bypasses rational objection.

“He is really funny. He is the funniest president. Trump is the funniest president... Being funny is an incredible communications hack... keeping attention is harder than getting attention... being funny makes you weirdly likable.”

Body language and bearing communicate confidence, ease, and comfort far more than words; White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany is effective not because of the content of her statements but because her body language and demeanor convey confidence that makes her statements seem credible.

“So much of communication is your body language and your bearing... For her, just showing confidence and ease and comfort and not showing anxiety or stress or anger or resentment is a big part of her persona. She comes off as a happy warrior... she delivers it is so comfortable and it's the bearing of somebody who has the facts on their side.”

First-mover advantage in narrative-setting is powerful: whoever frames the narrative and communicates it first gets a disproportionate advantage because the narrative becomes the default frame and rebuttals get less engagement than original framings.

“Whoever comes out first has an advantage. Um this is Winston Churchill says the a lie makes its way around around the world before the truth can get its pants on... someone will post something and then sometimes there's a great rebuttal and the rebuttal will get like onetenth as much engagement as the original thing.”

Attention span on social media is likely shorter than the often-cited 12 seconds; for video clips on social media, people decide whether to keep scrolling in less than 5 seconds, with 99% of people gone by 30 seconds, though text has different rules (first paragraph for emails, first sentence for tweets, first line for subject lines).

“If it's time through a clip on the internet, I would say like first 5 seconds they decide whether they're going to keep scrolling or not... after 30 seconds, like 99% of people are gone, right?”

The affect heuristic is a mental shortcut where if you like something, you perceive it as more likely to be real, competent, and smart; this is an evolutionary efficiency mechanism but can be leveraged through communication by building liking first.

“We have different decision-making heristics... if we like something and feel comfortable with something, it's more likely to be real. Someone we like is more likely to be competent. Someone we like is more likely to be smart. All these things just kind of go together. And so liking is at the center of that.”

Corporate communication has become hollow because people entering PR roles look at what other PR people do and copy it mechanically, creating a recursive process where everyone mimics everyone else's mediocre output; this parallels an experiment where new mice were added to a cage where trained mice ran a specific route, and all the new mice followed the same pattern for no reason after all original mice were replaced.

“It's like this experiment that I read about where they had mice in a cage and they were trained train to run a certain route and then they would put in a new mouse and take out the old mouse and they had fully replaced all of the mice like a ship of thesis with mice and all of the new mice were doing all of the behaviors of the old mice for literally no reason.”

Apologizing only when you've actually done something wrong, and never apologizing for things you haven't done, creates strong deterrence against future attacks; if apologies are decoupled from actual wrongdoing, attackers have incentive to keep attacking (lottery ticket for payout).

“If everybody just apologized when they did something wrong and resisted apologizing when they did nothing wrong, so many problems would be solved... It's when people mess up and refuse to take accountability and then get accused of something where they didn't do anything wrong and apologize for that just to make it go away that everything gets muddled. And by the way, you lose all deter effect and you become a really soft target because whether you apologize becomes arbitrary.”

The amygdala hijack (emotion overwhelming logic) can be overcome on a long-term scale by shifting someone's mental model of the world through narrative, so that the new vision becomes rational to them once they see it through your framing.

“It's like the amygdala hijack of the prefrontal cortex, but on a much bigger long-term scale where the thing that makes sense once you start to see the world through this new prism that I've convinced you to look at it through, the old thing actually doesn't make sense anymore. And in the new world that you can see that I painted for you, my thing makes sense. You have to join my thing.”

The physics equation Pressure = Force / Surface Area applies to reputation: the same force spread over wider surface area exerts less pressure; one person being attacked can reduce pressure by making it clear 'you're not just attacking me, you're attacking all of us,' thereby expanding the surface area and diffusing the pressure.

“Pressure equals force divided by surface area... the same amount of force if you spread it over a wide surface area doesn't exert a lot of pressure... if the surface area contracts then the same amount of force creates a lot of pressure... if you're trying to relieve pressure, you don't get to change how much force is coming at you. But you can change the surface area.”

The correct approach to determining what narrative to tell is not 'here's what I want to say' but rather finding the overlap in a Venn diagram between what you care about and what your audience cares about, then telling the story that lives in the center of that overlap as a gateway drug to pull them into your full circle of interests.

“The wrong way is here's what I want to say. Here it is... The real story to tell is what's in the center of that ven diagram. Don't tell the story that's in your circle because it's hard to get other people to care. Don't tell the story that's in the other person's circle because you don't get anything out of it... Tell the story that's in the ven diagram.”

The hook is the most overlooked part of communication in terms of its importance; people spend too much time thinking about where to say something (distribution channel, medium) and not enough about what makes it interesting enough that people tell others about it without being asked.

“The hook is probably the most overlooked part, I would say, in order of how much it matters. It's the hook, then how you tell your story, and then where you tell it. Most people get this reversed where they spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about where can I go talk?”

The way to break the cycle of mediocre corporate communication is for leaders to do something original and courageous that works, which then allows copers to improve incrementally; leaders who do A+ things set a new baseline for others to aspire to, while non-leaders get proportionally worse results even when copying.

“The way to break the cycle is every once in a while somebody just does something totally different and it works... the leaders will do something more interesting and then the copers will try to do something similar to that and the leader will get the A+ result and the copers will get the C plus result.”

Government and corporate communications are attacks on educated citizens because officials communicate in one dense page what should be 2-3 sentences max, forcing readers to spend hours deciphering jargon, which represents lost productivity summed across all citizens who must read this incomprehensible communication.

“Government communications... you have to spend your time deciphering it. It's almost like a race to see how much we can say without saying anything... If you spend an extra couple hours and then that adds up over the course of a lifetime, that is that much productivity added together from everyone.”

A CEO whose job is to consider and weigh different interests (legal, reputational, financial) should make decisions optimized for the net best outcome for the company; when this fails, it's because the CEO has let lawyers' interest (minimize legal liability) become supreme over other interests, abdicating the CEO's responsibility to weigh all interests.

“The CEO's job... is to consider different interests and weigh them against each other to reach the net optimal outcome... When this goes wrong... everybody gets scared of the lawyers and the CEO follows exactly what the lawyers say and dismisses every other interest. They are not doing their job as the CEO.”

To counter a false story with facts, you must fight story with story; finding better stories under the statistics is more powerful than citing the statistics themselves, especially if the opponent is lying and there's a story to tell about that deception.

“If someone is fighting you with stories, you have to fight with stories. Under the statistics will be more powerful stories... If your opponent is actually lying in their skull duggery, maybe there's a story about that.”

In response to attacks, the first decision is whether it actually matters by assessing (1) is it reaching people who matter and (2) is it something material, meaning it could cause actual damage; if both are no, ignore it and go for a walk; only if both are yes should you respond immediately and aggressively.

“The first thing is does it actually matter? Cuz like don't waste your one wild and precious life responding to every single thing... Number one, is it reaching people that matter?... Or let's say that you are a Republican politician and your audience is like right-wing Americans and AOC attacks you. Great. Congratulations.”

A hit piece (clear attack) is manageable, but the 'uncanny valley' of criticism is worse—when someone reports facts that aren't aggressive or hostile but make you look horrible, you can't defend because you're not being attacked, just factually exposed; this is harder to counter than explicit opposition.

“There's a kind of horseshoe where a great piece fine, a hit piece, fine... What you don't want is the uncanny valley where it's not a hit piece, but it has information about you that while it doesn't sound aggressive... makes you look horrible... That's the worst way of looking bad.”

For startups to recruit talent to do something that appears impossible (like 'we'll beat Google'), picking a fight or having a clear foil to oppose (a regulation, a market dynamic, an entrenched competitor) gives people something to believe in and fight for; without a cause and foil, recruiting believers is nearly impossible.

“If you are starting from basically nothing and you need to gather steam... it's good to have something to fight for. You need to have a cause. And often with a cause, you need to have a foil... there's something you want to see in the world, but there's something that you want to change.”

When choosing mediums, match the audience, not the distribution size; if you're recruiting AI researchers, they're not reading NPR—they're reading Simon Williamson's newsletter, Less Wrong, and specific AI substacks; distribution is a vector (magnitude and direction) and you need direction fit, not magnitude alone.

“If you're trying to recruit researchers... why are you spending all this time on NPR?... the researchers are probably reading like the Simon Williamson newsletter... They're reading the less wrong... This is... a totally different ecosystem that you actually haven't penetrated whatsoever.”

The most effective communicator is the person leading the enterprise, not a hired communicator or PR professional, because the founder/leader has conviction, skin in the game, and can articulate vision in first-person in ways that hired intermediaries cannot replicate.

“the most effective person to speak is the person who's leading the enterprise... The best communicating companies are doing is having the cult leader having the leader of the enterprise speak directly about what their vision is.”

Effective argument-resolution depends on first establishing agreement on at least something trivial to prove that you and the other person CAN see things the same way, which breaks down the default assumption of fundamental disagreement.

“the better way to argue... is he'll have somebody who totally disagree with with him on a bunch of things, and he'll always make sure to start with agreeing with them on something, even if it's trivial. I agree with you that that thing was totally insane. And now we can have a productive conversation because we've established that it's even possible for you and me to see things the same way”

Sheltered leaders (surrounded by yes-men) become intellectually brittle and freeze when confronted with criticism in public, because they have never been forced to defend positions in a safe environment; this brittleness then shows publicly and undermines their credibility.

“if you don't even allow people close to you to disagree and spar with you, and if you penalize people who speak up against you, then what you're doing is you're making yourself incredibly intellectually brittle... that unpreparedness e shows either in live interviews. Sometimes you see people in live interviews just like lock up and they freeze.”

When lawyers advise 'Don't apologize' to minimize legal liability, they are typically wrong because human remorse and empathy in response to mistakes do not create legal liability in the real world, and avoiding apology costs more in reputational damage than it saves in legal risk.

“sometimes when a company screws up, a lot of times lawyers will say, 'Don't apologize.' Because if you're apologizing, you're admitting fault... In practice, I've never seen someone lose a case because the CEO expressed human remorse and empathy and that was the thing that made them lose in the courtroom.”

When a founder/leader speaks on behalf of technology that is unverifiable (highly classified, proprietary, or esoteric), people cannot independently verify claims and must use the founder's credibility as a proxy to assess trustworthiness; the halo effect becomes the primary trust signal.

“If you're building a technology that is so mindblowing and advanced and esoteric and confidential, you can't tell people, well, just go verify that it works... They can't verify what you're doing with their data... They just have to use as proxies other things whether they trust or not. So they'll look at you, the human, as the mascot of the company and use you as a proxy.”

Talented people will leave secure positions to join risky ventures when they believe in the founder because they're responding to a cognitive circuit deeper than rational risk-benefit analysis—an amygdala hijack of the prefrontal cortex where emotion overrides reason.

“It's irrational, but there's something like super rational, like something that supersedes rationality that actually takes another circuit in their brain... the amygdala hijack of the prefrontal cortex, but on a much bigger long-term scale where the thing that makes sense once you start to see the world through this new prism that I've convinced you to look at it through, the old thing actually doesn't make sense anymore.”

A material attack is one that threatens people who matter to you—like an accusation that affects future recruitment, customer trust, or partnership—and unlike a trivial personal jab, material damage must be addressed immediately and aggressively, because letting reputational wounds fester is like letting a broken nose heal crooked, requiring a much more painful fix later.

“If it's a material reputational damage, you can either handle it in that moment and break the nose back and just fix it then and there while things are already bad or you can kind of let it fester and then decide that you're not happy with it... you're stuck with do I have a crooked nose forever or do I have to break it from scratch?”

When facing asymmetric power (like a small company vs. the New York Times), being the underdog is actually an advantage; people naturally sympathize with underdogs and are skeptical of bullies and big mainstream institutions, so if you're clearly being punched down on, you can use that to rally your base by reframing an attack on you as an attack on them.

“God smiles on underdogs... People are naturally very skeptical of big mainstream corporate media right now... if you're in the receiving position of that, I think you can actually use that... there's a a certain set of people you need to win over who are aligned with you... and an attack on you is an attack on them.”

Donald Trump is an effective communicator because he uses a third-grade vocabulary level (strong, great, bad, good) that everyone understands; a seven-year-old or immigrant could grasp his message; meanwhile most speeches fail because they use abstract language that obscures meaning.

“He speaks at like a third grade vocabulary level... he doesn't use words that nobody can understand... he uses words where everybody knows what the words mean. Strong, great, bad, good. Everybody knows what these mean. I could read my seven-year-old a Trump speech and they could kind of grasp what's going on.”

Both individual employees and founders should think of themselves as products being sold to consumers; depending on context (dating, job seeking, promotion seeking, fundraising), the consumer is different, but the principle is the same—you need to know your audience and what they need to believe about you to give you what you want.

“You are a product that you are selling to a certain consumer. I love that. So that's the macro. What about the micro... Everyone can and everyone should be strategic about the image of themselves that they're presenting to the world and the product that is themselves that they're selling to any given market.”

Success means open-sourcing the idea that you can control your destiny through communication; people don't need to hire consultants or communication agencies—they can bend reality to their favor by learning to communicate to people who matter in ways that strike their heart and mind.

“Success for me is to open source a lot of what we're talking about here. Specifically, the idea that you can control your destiny... You can bend it to your favor if you're able to communicate to people who matter... and open sourcing this means that people understand that they can just go and do this. They don't need to hire me.”

Most presentations and emails lack any clear goal; they're just brain dumps; the vast majority fail to achieve the goal of communicating something specific in the time allotted because the sender didn't start by being clear on the goal.

“The vast vast majority of presentations or emails that are sent are more like I need to check the box... there isn't a clear view of this thing that has taken up 5 seconds of someone's time had a goal and did you achieve that goal or not?”

A VP of Comms aspiring to be CEO should identify the three things the decision-makers need to believe (executive presence, company vision, employee leadership) and then be intentional about presenting proof points of each through messages, mediums, and partnerships with other executives.

“Think about the product yourself that you are portraying... The people who will decide that are current CEO via the succession plan, the board... you want them to believe that you have executive presence, that you have a vision for the company, and that employees love you... how do you convey that to them?”

Effective hooks typically leverage one of four mechanisms: humor, curiosity, strong emotion (wow, outrage, shock, surprise), or promise of new perspective on an already-followed topic—the choice depends on the target audience.

“The most common ones that I've just observed online are humor, curiosity, or some strong emotion. It can be a wow emotion. It can be a WTF emotion, or it could be here's a topic that I'm already thinking about, and this is going to give me some new angle on the topic.”

Intent matters in determining response to violation: if you know someone and trust them and they violate once, understanding their intent (accident vs. malice) allows you to either forgive or respond, but the key is knowing the person well enough to model their intent.

“intent depends on trust and if you know the person. So, trusting the person and knowing the person and whatever your view and the model of that person is is one of those things that can override the immediate short-term logic of something.”

Press releases as a communication tool are obsolete; they are a box-checking exercise that may be legally required for public companies but serve no real communication function.

“the press release as a means of communication I think is obsolete by like a decade.”

Investors will offer blank term sheets to founders they believe in (without specifying what company will be built) because they're investing in the person and their conviction, not in a specific business plan.

“there are people now who are thinking about starting a company and people are basically offering them blank term sheets. I don't know what I'm investing in. I'm investing in you. Whatever you do, here's here's some money. I'm sure it'll work out.”

Corporations and governments communicate poorly because when AI is asked to generate communications or PR, it produces the worst possible output despite being excellent at poetry and complex tasks, because the craft of persuasion and truth-telling in communication is fundamentally different from other writing tasks.

“When you ask AI for anything related to comms or PR, it turns into kind of a blabbering idiot. like even the most advanced models... You ask it to do anything related to comms or PR and it'll give you the worst thing you've seen.”

Toby Lütke of Shopify probably single-handedly changed the number of people speaking out in Canada on elections by starting to have an opinion and voice, which made it safe for others to have opinions and voices that counter the norm.

“He probably single-handedly changed the number of people speaking out in Canada on the election because he started having an opinion, having a voice, and that that sort of made it safe for other people to have an opinion, have a voice, and that might go counter to the norm.”

The Rippling vs Deel corporate competition illustrates that when one side accused the other of spying and the accused narrative was 'someone was found in a bathroom trying to flush a phone,' the vivid specific story became the narrative everyone remembered, overshadowing all the quantitative claims about revenue and performance.

“We're seeing a very interesting story play out between Ripling and Deal, which are these two payroll processors, and Deal planting a spy and the spy like running into the bathroom and then try to flush a phone... all of that fades into the noise and people are just picturing like the spy hiding into the bath in the bathroom trying to flash a phone.”

Blake Shaw of Boom Supersonic successfully leveraged fighting against a specific bad regulation (outdated sonic boom restrictions) rather than complaining about 'red tape' in general, showing that specificity and concreteness is what enables people to rally around a cause.

“Blake Shaw runs it. It's the first civilian privately created supersonic plane... he was able to actually help influence getting this legislation overturned... but he wasn't attacking anybody, wasn't being mean to anybody. He just said like pinpointing this is the thing that's holding back speed in America.”

Trump has strong deterrence because his behavior is predictably erratic—people know what to expect from him even if they don't like it; this clarity means his base knows what they're supporting and his detractors have limited room to damage him further because the attacks are already baked in.

“He has very strong deterrence. He behaves very predictably... like his behavior patterns are actually quite predictable... everybody who hates him already hates him. Some cost. It's baked in, but it doesn't continue to hurt him.”

Brian Armstrong of Coinbase handled the SEC crisis effectively by putting his face and words directly to his principles rather than hiding behind spokespeople; this transparency and ownership gave the company credibility and allowed them to prove their values through a costly action.

“Brian is willing to put his face to his words and his words to his principles... he was willing to say it from himself... he could have used his people as a human shield and he didn't. So that made a big difference.”

Palmer Luckey has strong deterrence ('perfect deterrence') because his behavior signals that he will reliably respond to attacks and continue responding, so people have stopped attacking him; this illustrates that deterrence can be signaled and established through consistent behavior.

“Palmer... has basically perfect deterrence which is that if you come after him in some material way he will come after you basically guaranteed 100% of the time... I actually haven't seen it for a very long time. I can't remember the last time that someone took a meaningful shot at Palmer.”

CrowdStrike's crisis response was drafted by lawyers (a 'bar of attorneys') rather than by the human CEO, which is why it sounded corporate and inhuman; when a committee of lawyers writes communication, it loses the personal conviction that would make it land.

“I think lawyers wrote it... I think probably a committee... a bar of attorneys wrote it... It doesn't sound human because it's not human. A committee is not a human being.”

Muting (not blocking) critics and disagreeing voices on social media is preferable to blocking them because muting allows you to see dissent without creating echo chambers, while blocking creates the appearance of censorship and removes learning opportunities.

“I'm a big muter where it's like, okay, if I've said something and you think it sucks, then feel free to dunk on it... I'm a big muter where it's like I just don't want to pollute my feed with your nonsense. Um, and it's different from disagreeing.”

When attacking (on offense), narrow your target to one specific person or issue rather than complaining about broad categories like 'the media' or 'the government,' because broad complaints sound like conspiracy thinking while specific accusations are credible and maximize pressure.

“if you narrow it to say this specific reporter has had a vendetta against my company because their cousin runs a competitor or whatever, that is actually a lot more effective and more credible and you're maximizing the pressure on that person.”