Leveraging Influence to Create Greater Influence

There’s two Noah’s in my life. I like them both a lot. They’re smart, ambitious, free-thinking guys. One is Noah Brier. The other is Noah Kagan. Yes, the author of this blog. I met them both because of my blog and my company.

Noah is the first guy - that I know about - who’s thrown open the gates on his personal blog to let other bastards - like me - publish to it. I’ve invited people to do the same on my blog and it didn’t work. Noone took me up on it. I don’t have 1500 subscribers. About 600. So, not bad. But, maybe I made the barrier to entry too high. I made them contact me first. Not sure.

I am not just rambling here. There’s a point. Why would someone let others post on their blog? For free?

Noah’s a smart guy. He knows that he’s giving away something that someone would pay say, atleast 60 bucks for. But, he’s giving it away for free.

Why? Noah knows about Giver’s Gain. Noah knows that if I post here and I connect w/ someone new; someone that I do business with; maybe the 3rd special Noah in my life… He knows that I’ll be grateful. He knows that it’ll come back around. I might introduce him to his next gig. I’ll probably link to his next event or to another post he publishes. Maybe he’ll even take me up on posting to my blog.

On the web, though, there’s even more benefit to Noah. I am not sure if has thought of this. And some people might think I am “outing” Noah as a selfish guy w/ ulterior motives. But, I don’t think that’s the case. I think Noah is just generally interested in connecting w/ people in meaningful ways. If someone paid Noah to talk to people and just help them out for free, it’d be his perfect job. Right Noah?

So, on the web… Noah benefits by having other people blog because it’ll create more content, which’ll drive more traffic from search engines to Noah. Most likely, I’ll link to this post too. Might even send it to a few people. So, Noah’s internet-social-capital increases every time he let’s someone post here; every time he lets someone make a connection through his blog.

So, that brings me to the title of the post: Noah is Leveraging his current influence to create greater influence. And it is currency he can print just by reaching out to people and connecting them with others. He’s a natural at it. He’s been searching for a career and how to make $ from his blog. I think he’s found it.