“I love Steve Pavlina. He is my dearest friend. If I had to spend the rest of my life on a desert island with only one other person, it would be Steve Pavlina, no doubt about it. I mean, you should see the way my face lights up when he walks into a room.
But at the same time, he’s also dangerously unbalanced. I mean let’s be frank, Steve Pavlina–and again, this is a man I would take a bullet for–is bad at his job, and mentally unstable. As my mother would say, God love him, but he’s a raging maniac. And a dear, dear friend.”
- Fake Joe Biden (paraphrased)
Steve Pavlina – now there’s a guy who polarizes people.
The National Debt Clock in New York ran out of digits on September 30, 2008, being unable to track the U.S. national debt once it passed $10 trillion. Since then, the clock has been used to track Steve Pavlina’s monthly visitors. He certainly gets a lot of them, and it seems that they all either love him or hate him. Sometimes both feelings occur in the same person.
I knew he had some critics, but until recently, I didn’t realize there were so many perfectly nice people who aren’t fans of Steve Pavlina. And while this puzzles me, it also offers a ray of hope for those who want to provide value.
About a year and a half ago, I had been reading ProBlogger for a while, and I was thinking about starting a blog. But what would the topic be? Darren said that while many people were starting blogs about blogging itself, most of them were failing because it was a severely overcrowded niche. He said there were niches like digital photography that paid much better, and didn’t have a lot of competition.
So I thought about starting a blog about digital photography. There were only two problems: (1) I didn’t know anything about digital photography, and (2) I didn’t intend to. Would that be a show stopper?
But when I came across Steve Pavlina, I saw that you don’t necessarily have to decide on a tightly focused niche. You could blog about “personal development,” which is basically anything that makes you a better person. Now that was interesting to me.
Still, I ran into a problem. Steve was already dominating that niche, and continuing to get better every day. He was an expert on some concepts I hadn’t even heard of before. How could I possibly compete with him?
I decided that I didn’t have to be better, just good enough. I wasn’t going to beat him at doing what he does, but maybe I could do things a little differently, and maybe there was room in the blogosphere for two blogs on personal development. (It now seems absurd to me that I was ever concerned about that.)
In her ebook How I Built A Profitable Freelance Business for Under $50 (And How You Can Too!), Christine O’Kelly said that there are people who are willing to pay for every level of expertise. Even if you’re not the best, you might be exactly what someone needs. You might not get the highest possible rate, but you could still be successful.
That was specifically about freelancing, but it’s also true in general. There’s room in this world for multiple skill levels. You don’t need to be the best parent to provide value as a parent, or the best comedian to provide value as a comedian. Most positions have multiple openings, so you don’t need to be the best. You don’t want to simply be a worse version of the best, but if you’re somehow different from the best, or cheaper than the best, then sometimes good enough is good enough.
So I figured that I could start a personal development blog, and while I wouldn’t be Steve Pavlina, maybe I could be good enough that I could provide value anyway. This is important, so I’ll put it in bold.
Major point #1: You don’t have to be the best, or even close to the best, in order to provide value.
That seems obvious to me now, and perhaps it seems obvious to you as well. But at the time, my thinking was clouded because I was projecting myself onto my potential readers. At the time, I was subscribed to maybe 5 blogs, and I thought that was plenty. I certainly had no interest in reading another blog that was remotely similar to those 5, especially if it wasn’t as good.
But that’s not how my readers were thinking. They were thinking “I want to be nice and support this new blogger,” or “I want to read as many blogs as I can,” or any of a number of other things that would make me “good enough” in their eyes.
There are lots of people devaluing themselves by saying “my idea has already been done” or “nobody would hire me when they could hire him instead.” But remember that your value is not judged by you, it’s judged by the people you’ll offer it to. What you see as being worse than the absolute best may very well be good enough to them.
But what really came as a shock to me is this:
Major point #2: People can have completely insane opinions about who the best is.
I’m not talking about matters like chocolate vs. vanilla, where there’s no right or wrong answer because it’s just a matter of preference. I’m talking about all the people who think Steve Pavlina is a bad blogger. It makes no sense.
It’s like saying Britney Spears is a better singer than Frank Sinatra, or Timothy Dalton was the best Bond. I guess these are technically valid opinions, because we can’t objectively disprove them. But how could anyone agree with them? And yet, plenty of people do.
In the same way that less is sometimes more, worse is sometimes better. Of course, no one would actually see it as worse being better. They’d just disagree about what “better” means. Value is highly subjective.
The good news: Putting both of these major points together, we see that anyone can provide tremendous value.
Even if you think lots of people are better than you, that really doesn’t mean anything. If you don’t need to be the best, and if people have all kinds of opinions about who the best is anyway, that means you always have a chance.
OK, but what is value? We’d all like to know what it is, so we can provide it. Here’s a definition:
Value is whatever people are willing to pay for.
That payment need not be in the form of money, though that’s an easy way to understand it. If you pay $3 for a hot dog, then clearly the hot dog is worth at least $3 to you, or you wouldn’t have bought it.
Maybe you’re really hungry, so you pay an outrageous $10 for a hot dog. Maybe you say the hot dog’s not really worth $10, but you’re just really hungry. Still, in your state at the time, the hot dog was worth $10 to you, or you wouldn’t have bought it. No one ever voluntarily buys something that doesn’t have greater value to them than the money it costs. (Well, at least expected value. Sometimes we make mistakes.)
Besides money, you can pay for something with your time. You don’t have to pay money to read this post, but you do have to pay with your time. Obviously you think this post will provide more value than the time it takes to read it. (If not, then why would you read it?)
You can pay for something with your attention. If you’re stuck in traffic, the time is lost anyway. But you can still decide what you do with your attention. If you turn on the radio, you expect it to provide more value than just sitting there and thinking. Whatever station you put it on, you expect it to provide more value than the stations you’re not listening to.
You can also pay for something with your reputation, security, self respect, or whatever it costs you to make that choice. Whatever the method of payment, the thing you’re buying always has greater expected value than what you’re paying for it, or you wouldn’t buy it.
So then, how do we create something that people are willing to pay for? How do we create value? I’ve thought about the rules for providing value before, and it’s tough to figure this out. For one thing, people don’t really know what they want.
On The Simpsons, when ratings for The Itchy and Scratchy Show were down, they ran a focus group to figure out how to make the show better. The guy asked the kids, “Okay, how many of you kids would like Itchy and Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?” The kids all cheered. The guy then asked, “And who would like to see them do just the opposite – getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?” Again, the kids all cheered. So what did they really want?
In January 2008, if you asked a bunch of people what kind of blog they wanted to read, I doubt any of them would have said they wanted to read a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. And yet, when Christian Lander launched his blog Stuff White People Like, it was an instant success, getting 20 million hits in the first couple of months. It’s been described as “more viral than the flu,” and Christian reportedly got a $300,000 advance for his book deal.
I was subscribed to it for a while, trying to figure out why it was so popular. Yes, it was funny, but it was a one trick pony. You would read one post and laugh, then read a few more posts and laugh less, because they’re all the same joke. And then it seems that you’d be done with it. I could see why some people might become loyal subscribers, but why did it take off so much faster than the automobile, or Google, or the cell phone? Even Christian Lander says he isn’t sure.
We know the value must be there, or people wouldn’t pay for it with their time. But it’s hard for me to see it. Maybe you can see it, but you can probably think of other extremely popular things where you can’t figure out what the value is. If we don’t know value when we see it, how can we create it?
In How to Create Real Value, Steve Pavlina says you know you’re creating value when you see tangible positive changes in the world as a result of what you’re doing. He gives these examples of changes his readers experienced because of his blog:
- One couple started a successful business selling inspirational t-shirts, because of a post about not having a job.
- Someone’s father lost 70 pounds, because of some posts about raw foods.
- A reader finally got a girlfriend, because of a post about soulful relationships.
- Another person moved to Las Vegas and loves it, because of a post about the city.
- And someone else had their first lucid dream, because of a podcast about that.
As opposed to comments like “great post,” these are tangible positive changes, and clear signs of strong value. However, what if the outcomes had been different?
- What if the t-shirt business failed, and the couple got divorced?
- What if that person’s father gained 70 pounds and became diabetic?
- What if the reader lost his girlfriend and started hating women?
- What if the person who moved to Las Vegas hated it?
- What if the person who had their first lucid dream went into a coma?
Some of these aren’t too likely, but my point is that things can go either way. If something doesn’t work out, are you responsible for creating a tangible negative change?
It wouldn’t be right to blame Steve for a negative outcome that was triggered by his blog, because the ultimate responsibility rests with the reader. So if he can’t be blamed for negative outcomes, how much credit can he get for positive outcomes?
Another thing is that strong value does not necessarily produce tangible positive changes. Stuff White People Like provides strong value, judging from its tremendous popularity. But what tangible positive changes does it create? Making millions of people laugh is strong value, but it’s not a tangible positive change.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t aspire to create tangible positive changes, just that it’s not a perfect judge of value.
I can’t say that I’ve experienced any tangible positive changes from Steve’s blog. But I’ve definitely experienced intangible positive changes. I’ve also experienced one tangible change (starting this blog), but its success or failure remains to be seen. Yet I know for sure I get strong value from his blog, which is why I continue to pay for it with my time.
In a comment on my post Being Emphatically Wishy-Washy, Akemi Gaines said:
“I was thinking about you, Hunter, when I was reading Steve’s recent posts on how to make money in recession by creating and delivering value and what it is to create strong value. In the latter article, he insists to make your point — in other words, to not to be wishy washy. Because wishy washy doesn’t deliver much value.
I mostly agree with Steve (yes, my blog will have a stronger edge!), but at the same time, I was thinking about your blog and why I like it.
You deliver different kind of value. I hope you don’t take offense about this, but I don’t read your blog to get another personal development tips. I know all the tips you discuss (except about SEO and tech stuff). But I like your blog because you have a way to lighten up my mood. I LOVE your sense of humor. That is value.
It doesn’t matter whether you take what you call a “strong tone” as you say in this post. You are still funny.
Now think about it. In this stressful time, is delivering a few moments of smile valuable? Absolutely. Steve doesn’t make me smile, and I don’t go there to smile. I go there to learn. Two different objectives.”
What I got from this (aside from the fact that I need to increase the difficulty level for Akemi) is that people are free to decide what value they get from something.
I didn’t start this blog with the intent of making people smile, but if that’s what someone gets from it, great. If someone gets something different, that’s great too. I’m not going to say that someone’s getting the wrong kind of value from me. If they get something, anything, that’s wonderful.
However, I wish I had a better handle on how to create value, so I could do more of it. Which brings me to another point.
Major point #3: You might not be sure how to create value, but let that be your goal anyway.
Christian Lander, creator of Stuff White People Like, said that if he were given a budget of $500 million and told to duplicate his success, he couldn’t do it. He just doesn’t know enough about what went right the first time.
He doesn’t know how to create major value, despite having done it before. So for those of us who haven’t created something like the pet rock, Pokémon, or Harry Potter, how can we possibly learn how to do it? How can we figure out a game where the rules seem so random?
We might not have a roadmap, but we can try stumbling in the right direction. Try doing something that you think people will like. If it doesn’t create tangible positive change, maybe it will still make them better off in some way. If something works, do more of it. If something doesn’t work, try to figure out why. Maybe you need to change something. Maybe you just need to try it again.
If you maintain the goal of creating value, you’re bound to keep getting better at it. Just remember that you’re not the one who decides what has value – it’s the other people. Unfortunately, they don’t know what they want.
The good news is that nobody starts off having any idea how to create value. Even people who create strong value once often can’t do it again, hence the term “one-hit wonder.” If there were a simple formula for creating value, everyone would do it. But since there’s not a formula, you can be one of the few who tries.
Homework for Akemi only:
Prove that there is no rational number r such that r2 = 2.
” I guess this can be considered the blogging version of the 
It’s a start.
