Leverage
Bargaining power in today’s world: What cards are you holding and how much will someone pay you to get them?
power message form Real Life Patrick Bateman: @killsyall
Cause I started out with one long dollar
Gambled with the man and I won me another
If you have something people want you’ll be rewarded handsomely for it.
You’ll be chased down the street while people hold money out in chubby little fingers waving it at you to be taken, to sign the dotted line, to put yourself on the trading block. This is a product of capitalism and by God,
I love it!
Yes! It’s a gift! The talented, genetically gifted, innovators get paid.
The most pure example of this is Tech Innovation and Athletes.
People bitch and moan that athletes get paid hundreds of millions but why? They’ve worked for decades in their craft.
They’re genetically gifted.
The entertain the masses.
They have all the leverage. Especially the ones at the top. And I’m not talking about washed up ‘ex athletes’ online. I mean the guys with real bargaining chips, still in the game, holding the cards.
Then shift to the intellectually leveraged:
The ones creating new products that Google is salivating to have, new SaaS that can get transferred over for a quick 9 million.
This is leverage. This is having something others want NEED.
SOULED IDEA STRAIGHT TO YOUR EMAIL:
Trickle down now. Trickle into the world of the everyday-man, the average human. It’s rare any of us are designing Steve Jobsesque products (that came in a dream from a demon… what? who is saying these RECKLESS things… really… forbidden fruit…the apple… Eve kissing a snake) or rare we have NFL superstar genes as bargaining power.
This isn’t pessimism. Simply, reality.
"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game."
Voltaire (1694 – 1778)
So what is your leverage? What is your unfair advantage? And this is real question. This is really something you need to sit on and look into because a common misconception is that
“everyone can do what I can do”
and that’s a faster route to mediocracy than any other.
The average person is unskilled. They have the personality of a slug. They have the drive and ambition of sloth. We’d be better off without them but it’s good to have some fillers out there. I’m long on the Human Spirit but short on the Human Mentality, which is caged.
They’re destined for The Armchair.
They have not an ounce of the skill you possess.
But what skill is that?
What is your craft?
If there were a utopian society where everyone needed to bring something to the table, what’s one thing that would be yours? It doesn’t even need to be practical. Maybe you’re the funniest guy. We all need to laugh.
But how can one leverage that?
And that’s where our society sits. That’s where you catch a check five days to Heaven: Your unfair advantage + leveraged, portrayed as something someone can get possession of.
Really I wish I could tell you yours but I’ve wasted too much time on the beginning part of my point. Luckily the coffee is attacking my nervous system and my eyes are starting to twitch and my teeth are beginning to jitter and I’m I’m I’m seeing a man in the corner with a wide smile and no nose and he’s mouthing, through pearly teeth something like “get to the point…”
Leverage. Ok. You have it. You have something others want.
Now the key and the trope I hear massacred on twitter daily
“take shots G”
“betting it all on the line G”
“lost my whole net worth G”
which, at the heart, is good. it’s screamed by 19 year old and 38 year old telling the 19 year old to do it. but overall it’s more good than bad because:
You’re conditioning yourself to rejection.
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If you hold all the cards, have all the leverage, but are afraid of failing, afraid of being told NO, you’ll never step into the arena.
We see this with women. A handsome man, oozing charisma and flavorful personality afraid to holler at fly honeys because in his head he’s told himself it’s not worth it, or she’ll say no, or something.
Trickle into business. Trickles into Art.
And really this is all just roaring it’s head at me because I spent yesterday reaching out to literary agents. Looking for representation for the new book and felt myself in a position not of desperation but of power.
They’d smooth the process. Navigate the logistics. Grunt work. Get paid 15% for it. But what if they slice away inflammatory words, add a LGBTQ protagonist, make it more ‘marketable.’
This is the gift you lose when you have no leverage, no bargaining power. You take what you can get. You go home from the bar with the 6 that in the morning may look like Shrek.
We’ve built something here. You, I.
We’ve built a new era for literature. Created something from scratch. We don’t need the audience an agent can provide. We have that. We are that.
We’re too out of control to be touched by wino’s in New York skyscrapers, to primal to be contained, we’re a niche and bloodthirsty group that speaks for itself.
The disenfranchised, The bad boys, The misfits. Unkept hair, cigarette ripping. Barefoot and sun kissed. Ivy league educated, criminal habits.
Do you get my point?
Do you see pure power of leverage.
You dont NEED anything from the old world!
We’re in The Age of Decentralization.
Build a computer program from home, sell it, or hide it until people beat down the door with bank checks.
Anything you create you OWN. FOREVER. You catch a royalty check until death then your kids catch it. Start from scratch. Put blood and sweat into it. Don’t let any pry it out of your hands until you’re ready to give it up.
MUCH LOVE,
WINSTON
SOULED IDEA
BURNING MAN
SOUL SPLITTER
