Or an insider's guide to making any idea into a killer...
How It All Started
I started stopping by The Countdown on the way home. It's a small bar with a great jukebox.
Push in a quarter. Sinatra tunes curl out.
Sam Cooke. Dean Martin. Tony Bennett.
There's only one table. But a long, cigarette scarred bar runs the entire length of the wall. It's half-filled with regulars, sitting, or standing, drinking their beers and shots.
Whiskey shots.
They all seem to have just one syllable to their names.
Nick. Ted, Pete. John. Never Johnnie.
Barb.
I plopped down, got my Lone Star draft, Jack Daniel’s neat, and stared into my mug.
Nick and Ted were talking.
Apparently our leaders suck.
“Remember when a 10¢ candy bar was a meal? Gas was 50¢ a gallon. Hell, when I was a kid I went outside and played ‘til dark. We drank water out of the hose. Kids today are soft.”
“I blame it on TV remote controls. I had to get up to change the channel.”
It was Nick or Ted.
I leaned over.
“Guys, what we need is a fresh start. An apocalypse. Wipe everything out and start over. But this time, we’ll have guys like us in charge. It’ll be different,” I said.
I grabbed a pile of napkins and started sketching out the plan.
And soon, as I began to talk, the whole bar crowded round.
Develop a Doomsday Theory
First, we’ll need to develop our Doomsday Theory. The theory isn’t that important. If we shout it loud enough, and believe it, we’ll get followers.
If we believe it, it’s not a lie.
But we must be consistent. Build the chorus. We can use an alien invasion or asteroids or a second coming of someone, anyone.
How about a magnetic pole shift? It’s scienciee. No one will really know what we’re talking about except for college professors. And we’ll just make fun of them.
They’ve been living in their ivory towers studying and researching. They don’t know anything about the real world.
It’ll be an us-against-them scenario.
Perfect.
Plus, with a magnetic pole shift, we can set up an end-of-world scenario. We’ll give it 3–5 years. That’s enough time to get a large following. We don’t want to kill everything and everyone off too fast.
We need some time to push the theory.
Craft a Compelling Backstory
Now, if I’m going to be the de-facto leader of this group and the savior of the world, I’ll need the best people and the best backstory.
Everyone here is going to be our brain trust. This means we already got the best people.
But the best story? Well, I have a secret. One I haven’t told anyone yet.
I see magnetic waves. I have since I was a child. They ripple and roll across everything. When I was a kid, they were orderly, like waves in the ocean. But now, they’re erratic. They go in every direction imaginable.
It confuses people.
We don’t know who we are. It escalates our DNA (Don’t ask. It’s more scienciee stuff). Waves make us sick and we don’t even know it.
It affects everyone in a different way.
But if we can stop the wave chaos. And bring order to the disorder, everything will be just like it was before.
And since I can see the magnetic waves, and no one else can, only I can fix this. But it’s going to take some time.
Relax guys. We don’t need a wave solution yet. We have 3–5 years to come up with a fix. We just need to tell everyone that everything is horrible.
We’ll tear everything down for now and worry about a plan to re-build later.
And remember, it’s because of the waves. We’re just the messengers.
They’ll believe us.
Branding Your Cult — Catch Phrase, Merch, Fund Raising, NFT’s
If we’re going to get followers, we’re going to need to brand this baby.
Let’s start with a catch phrase and a logo. Something that’s simple but sophisticated. Something that’s smart but stupid.
Something that can be pinned on our social media profiles; don’t worry, I’ll explain about those later.
Let’s try a few and see how they feel:
Shift Happens
Making Apocalypses Grand Again
Magnetizing America’s Great Apocalypse
Pole Party — Let’s Flip Off the World
We can work with one of these. We’ll do some A/B testing to see which one works best.
Nick slides a cocktail napkin across the bar.
“How about this for a logo? I always wanted to be a draw-er,” he says.
The napkin is colored with wavy lines but in a nice square.
“Perfect. It’ll look good on a hat,” I say.
We’ll trademark our logo and catch phrase so every time someone says it, they’ll have to pay us a nickel.
Everyone agrees this is good idea.
Catch phrase. Check.
Logo. Check.
Now we need some merch.
We’re American, so we’ll outsource. China will be happy to make us some t-shirts and hats and ties. Hoodies are cool. We can get some of those as well.
Underwear? Bullshit, men wear skivvies. We’ll get some skivvies.
Maybe a crystal necklace that aligns the waves around you. It’ll stop headaches and migraines and hair loss. No more toenail fungus.
We can create a Pole Action Committee (PAC). It’ll cost $50 a month to join. But you get a free t-shirt, a sippy-cup, and our weekly newsletter that we can use AI to write.
If we get a million followers, that’s like, $50 million dollars a month.
We can do that NFT thing. Not exactly sure what they are but I know we can do them on the computer, and they sell for millions.
And crypto. I believe all other crypto’s will eventually be wiped out by the magnetic waves. But not ours. We’ll put in a special piece of code that will reflect all magnetic waves and ensure our crypto keeps on running.
That should get us plenty of money.
Start recruiting
We need a celebrity. Maybe not a real one. Sure, it would be nice to get a Tom Cruise but he already does an -ology. A Pitt? Got his hands full. A Clooney? Too busy with tequila. DiCaprio? Maybe. He likes causes.
We might have a shot with these celebs though:
Nicholas Cage — He stays busy and is always looking for a payday. A Nic Cage NFT in mid-face-pull-off might be the thing to give us some flair.
Elon Musk — He’s already getting pounded by waves causing erratic behaviors. He’s our poster boy. He might as well start fighting back. Plus, he’s scienciee and stuff.
Gwyneth Paltrow — Perfect for some joint marketing efforts. Magnetic Wave decorated candles or De-Aging Wave Bombarded Elixirs would sell great for her Goop-i-ness.
Bill Murray — Magnetic waves could potentially be the cause of a glitch-in-time causing us all to be stuck in a loop. We could work that in.
Keanu Reeves — Just because I’d like to hang out with him.
Or a sports person.
Regardless, once we have our celebrity, we hit the circuit.
We do podcasts. The bigger the better. A Joe Rogan. A Howard Stern. They’ll have us and our celebrity on. Doesn’t matter what we say.
It’s free speech. Can’t stop us.
We’ll wear our hats.
And since we are saying it loudly, with a celebrity, on a big show, and we have merch, we’ll get all the social proof we need.
Big shows equal legitimacy.
We’ll get sign ups.
Once we have our celebrity and our social proof it’s just a matter of rinse and repeat. We can grow our following from zero-to-a-million in 60 days.
People do it all the time. I’ve seen the courses.
And to add to our Vie-rality, we’ll level up with these advanced marketing techniques:
We can do the Pole Shift Diet.
Write a book.
Challenge everyone, hell anyone, to a debate.
We can create a Wave Distorted Dance (WDD) and TikTok the shit out of it.
People will sign up.
Our followers are our currency.
Get enough and we can run for President.
Plan the end of times
We’ll want everyone to feel some urgency. We need an end-of-the-world date.
I propose 02.29.2028.
Why? It looks good on a t-shirt. It’s weird and we need a big final act.
On 02.29.2028 the world comes to an end. Magnetic waves will kill us all.
Everyone at the bar agrees. People are slapping me on the back. Calling me a genius. I hand out assignments to my people. We get to work. Can’t end the world without a lot of hustle.
Finally, a way to make a difference in the world.
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