What’s Next?

I was hustling every way I knew how: email hacking, targeted tweets, influencer reachouts, and a handful of other tactics. But none of them were yielding results, and both my patience and my sanity were wearing thin. All I could think was, How can I land a whale? How can I get this campaign in front of one person, just one person, with enough influence to make it tip?

Two hours later my face was plastered across the home page of Betabeat. Business Insider and BetaKit would follow that afternoon, and that was just the beginning.

How did I do it?

I’m Jordan Bishop, 22. And this is my July OnceaMonth.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know the story behind my mystery crowdfunding campaign. If so, you also know that there are still a lot of questions I’ve left unanswered, the most common one being How did you get so much press? For now, I’m going to leave that one under wraps; it’s a remarkable story that offers a unique insight into the core of the meaning of “luck”, but now isn’t the right time to tell it. Besides, I just released the secret behind my product — I don’t need to do the same for all of my methods too.

There’s still a lot to be said for July, though. Instead of trying to say it all, I’m going to dive into a single lesson I learned through this whirlwind two weeks.

I had some big ideas throughout my “campaign”; in fact, the concept for a blind pre-sale was probably the most tame of them all. One day I found myself IMing with a New York Times triple bestseller, sprinting through the halls of Toronto’s Pearson Airport, on calls with two of the biggest players in my industry, and sending strangers on literal manhunts in faraway cities. Needless to say, I was making every move I could think of to blow the top off.

And at every step along the way, I was in contact with friends. Friends are nice because they’re always there to say Great job! and offer their support. You can bet that Steve Jobs and Elon Musk had a lot of those sorts of friends when they were building companies early on.

But here’s the thing about Great job! friends: they don’t push you forward.

If Jobs listened to all of his Great job! friends when he created the first Apple computer, we might never have seen the MacBook, the iPod, or the iPhone.

And if Musk listened to all of his Great job! friends when he was building PayPal, we’d be idling in our energy crisis with no light at the end of the tunnel.

So why didn’t those men listen to their Great job! friends? Because either internally or externally, they also have What’s next? friends.

What’s next? friends recognize your achievements, but don’t let you bask in the glory. They understand your successes, but don’t let you sell yourself short. They see your potential, but don’t let you take it for granted.

And looking back on it, those What’s next? friends are the people that catalyze large-scale change. By pushing creators to do more, they too are adding immense value.

One What’s next? friend is worth 100 Great job! friends. And the world is too big to stop at Great job! and still make an impact.

This all leads me to what I learned in July about ideas and friends:

If your friends tell you your idea is crazy, you have the right idea. (Tweet)

If your friends tell you your idea isn’t crazy enough, you have the right friends. (Tweet)

If you know your idea is crazy, and your friends still tell you it’s not crazy enough, you've got the right idea and the right friends. (Tweet)

So now let me ask you…What’s next?

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