Two Basic Rules for Being Online without Losing Your Mind

"Trust doesn't look like attention."

In fact, the things that steal our attention, grab it out of the agorithmic haze are some of the most trust-breaking things we face. Just because something is good at dragging us into its orbit, doesn't mean its building trust.

In fact, often quite the opposite.

A lot of people are trying to spend less time online. And brand leaders have questions of what to even do with extractive social platforms (like this one) and whether to keep playing in these sands.

Well Nick has decried these platforms more than most, and yet—he's here. What's up with that?

In this brief episode, Nick explains why he broke his own rules, and what it cost him to figure out a better way. 

He offers two simple guidelines for founders, fractionals, coaches, and executives who need to be online but refuse to be owned by it

Nick walks through what the feed actually does to your brain (and your prospect's brain) and your business clarity, why LinkedIn is more aggressive than you think, why his most viral moment (2 million views) was also his most useless one.

Finally he offers the framework of a Trust-Made library of content: what it looks like, and why it works in ways the algorithm chasing and numbers boosting never will.

**Chapters:**

- 00:01 “I’m Breaking My Rules”
- 02:38 Two Rules for Social Media
- 06:15 Choosing Your Space
- 08:43 Why Nick Regrets the Word “Trust”
- 09:53 Building Your Library

Trust-Made Growth®

Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com

Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com 

Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Nick Richmeyer,

“I’m Breaking My Rules”

SPEAKER_00 0:01

and this is Dam's Given, a podcast where we explore how to free your venture from the extraction economy, realigning it to the timeless ways that humans build, collaborate, and buy. Okay, so I've been breaking my own rules. Not the big ones, not the ones I wrote a book about. Those are those are ironclad, we we we don't break those. But I've been breaking some of the rules that I have maybe have been ascribed to me by the internet, the rules that people think I follow. I've said a lot of things. 2024, I really got kind of hot under the collar about some stuff that was AI related, picked up a lot of followers. Maybe that was a good thing, right? And I've been very clear about this framing that I uh refer to as the artificial society. Uh, it's on the tagline of this podcast: Damn's given, live well in the artificial society. And um, the artificial society society is just a function of all these layers of distortion that our digital experience layers on us, and it has enormous consequences. I stand true to that belief. There are enormous consequences to all of this. But the reality is we don't get to like A-B test the universe. This is the universe we got. There, in theory, might be other versions of the multiverse out there where, you know, Robert Downey is Dr. Doom or whatever. But the bottom line is this is the one that we got. And so we have to learn how to live inside of it. And it is algorithmically run, right? And it is algorithmically driven to the point of sort of a techno-feudalism that is uh creates a hierarchy of power. And the people who join us here in this community at Dams Given and all of the places that are where this community manifests itself, all of you are leveraging influence in some way. You're a founder, you're a fractional, you're a consultant or high-level executive coach, right? You're actively in the business of leveraging influence. And the internet is a very difficult place to leverage influence, particularly if you want that influence to confer trust. You can leverage noisy influence, right? A certain well-named podcaster recently just endorsed a certain well-named reality star to be the governor of California. That's very noisy. And it's gonna create a lot of traffic to that particular episode. That's fine. That is noisy influence, and it looks like trust because we've assumed that trust looks like attention. Trust doesn't look like attention, it looks like something else. And then we'll have to cover that in another episode.

Two Rules for Social Media

SPEAKER_00 2:38

But the reality is if you want to be on the internet and you want to, if we're all gonna be on the internet and engage in ways that are meaningful, we have to figure out how to do it. So what I wanted to give you today is just some simple guidelines to help that I try to live by. I make mistakes, I break my own rules on this all the time. Like I said, I've been breaking my rules. Um, but guidelines to live by to simplify and de-stress and and kind of trustify. That's a terrible word, but trustify your way of being on the internet. Um, so there's rule number one is uh ignore the feed at all costs. So the feed is bad for you. We know this. The feed is the slot machine, gambling, addiction level. Uh, there was a news article that came out recently that the TikTok people know that if they can get you on TikTok for 35 minutes, they have you forever. Um, well, that sort of sounds like how you manage a gateway addiction drug. I'm just saying. Um, you know, it's not that dissimilar to how the executives in the 60s and 70s knew that they were killing people with cigarettes and they kept doing it anyway, right? These are fundamental truths. They're not ignorable. Um, the bottom line is what do we do? Right. And this is the question that a lot of particularly founders come to me and go, well, fine, Nick, but like I don't have the luxury of running an analog business. What do I do? Well, the more you can ignore the feed, the more you can stop the scroll, all of these taglines, the better off you are. Not just from a mental health standpoint. Legitimately, from a mental health standpoint, you'll be better off. Um, I I promise you I've lived this, but also from a business clarity standpoint, because one of the really toxic things about the feed is it creates an echo chamber of what seems like the most important thing. And so, you know, I'll use the LinkedIn feed as an example because a lot of business people sort of give themselves a free pass. Like, well, it's LinkedIn, you know, it's fine. How bad can LinkedIn be? Right. But the reality is LinkedIn is an aggressive algorithm. It's an aggressive system, much more than it was two, three, five, 10 years ago. An aggressive system designed to feed you what it thinks is important within a very limited range of options. You're not getting fed people in your network who are writing about the, you know, the presence of Weimar Germany and how that influences today's socioeconomic reality. The person that's writing about that isn't showing up in your feed, even though they're your best friend, right? It's just not showing up in your feed. Um, what you're getting is, you know, stuff like All Birds is an AI company now, or you know, anthropic did XYZ, right? You're getting all of this noise as if to say that's the only thing worth talking about. And what that happens after you do that over and over and over again is it starts to just the brain does what the brain does, it goes, oh, this must be what's real. This must be their most real thing. And so then you sit down in your executive team meeting and go, guys, what are we gonna do about Alberts? Well, of course, nothing, right? If you take a beaten step back, I don't do anything about Alberts. Like, who cares? This is a really silly story about a very complicated financial instrument that somebody's gamifying in the hopes of making easy money. It doesn't have anything to do with these big themes that people want to make it about. But at the end of the day, the brain sort of starts to get overwhelmed by that and we feel the need to comment on it, et cetera. So stay out of the feed, is number one. Now I want number two is I want to talk a little about content creation, right?

Choosing Your Space

SPEAKER_00 6:15

So we all have our preferences in terms of content creation. I would first prefer that we never use the phrase content creation again, but it is the phrase that we have for what we're all doing. So let's talk about it. Again, my if my had my preferences, I'd be an audio guy and a written guy. I learned to like doing audio podcasts. I like uh the recording part, I like the production part. But the reality is, I gotta be on video. It just works better. Most of you are probably watching it by our data, most of you are probably watching this on YouTube. Uh, YouTube is just almost impossible to ignore. I'm already actively ignoring other feeds that I just simply will not do. I will not be on meta platforms under any circumstances. Um, is Google better than meta? I don't know. I just you gotta draw your lines somewhere. And so we we do video, right? Well, there's a lot of ways to do YouTube, and I'm just using YouTube as a case study because I think it will help us understand what we mean here. Like, major influencer just dropped, like, I don't know, 300 or something new posts onto his feed all at one time. Um, just to be like, hey, this is how the algorithm works now. In the age of AI, you got to just dump and you have to have shorts and you have to do this, and you have to. And that level of chaotic energy is a thing you could do if you expect or are trying to sort of ride that algorithm and get it to spit things out for you in its own way, and you live and die by its rules. Now, we should probably pay attention to all the people who have been interviewed and written extensively about their life living and dying by the YouTube rules. Mr. Beast, who has more successfully ridden the YouTube algorithm better than anybody else, has very publicly said it's not fun. He's not having a good time, right? It's hazardous to his mental health, but it is his economic advantage, so he keeps doing it. Right. So maybe let's not fully go all in on ways of doing things that, you know, damage us, decrease our mental acuity, make us a slave to someone else's algorithmic system. But what YouTube is also good for, if you want to do it this way, this is the way that I'm doing it, is it's a really good place to build a coherent library of valuable information. What I'm calling the trust library. I want one place where you can pick from a menu of things and go, I'd like to learn a little bit about that. Like learn a little bit about that. Because here's the thing:

Why Nick Regrets the Word “Trust”

SPEAKER_00 8:43

talking about trust as a way of reshaping the economy was a really dangerous choice on my part. Because one, everybody thinks they already understand it. They're like, I'm trustworthy, I get it. I don't need a lesson on trust, right? Um, except for the fact that we live in systems that are by definition trust breaking. So it doesn't matter how good of a person you are. It doesn't matter your in when I talk about trust making, it has nothing to do with your internal moral ethic. Has nothing to do with that. In the rare exception of probably there's some like really dark, shady people that you know are excluded. But for the average person, for the for the large bell-of-the-bell curve, it really doesn't have anything to do with your moral ethic. It has everything to do with how you engage with the systems and the roles that the systems are offering you. And that's why this conversation about how to be on the internet is so important, because unless you're gonna go analog, and that's fine. If you have a business that can go analog, do it. I you'll probably be happier. I that's awesome. The majority of you can't do that. And that means we got to figure out how to do this. And so for the YouTube example, again,

Building Your Library

SPEAKER_00 9:53

I like the idea of a library, a trust-made library where you can go and try to explore these ideas of how to intentionally use trust to undermine the rules of a system that's uh that is not working on your behalf, right? And it's not working on your customers' behalf, and it's not working on your client's behalf. So, how do we work around that? How do we work within that? And a lot of those things are very situational, right? One of the things that people have said to me over the years that I've been doing trust made is, well, what's how does how do you do X? What's the what's the tip for X? Or what's the strategy for this? Or what's the strategy? I'm like, well, it depends, right? And it depends, is the worst answer. But because we're in the business of generating trust, trust happens in a relational context. And relational contexts have rules. So what I have to do, what I realized, what I learned, and why I started breaking my own rules about I don't want to do video on the internet and many other things. I don't want to be on YouTube. I swore I'd never be on YouTube. Here we are. Um is we have to find ways to live inside that and to for me to basically communicate how does trust work in these different contexts. So that's what these videos are okay, Nick, take this context, then what do we do? Great. Here's an example. Take this context, then what do we do? Here's an example. Because these principles live inside me, and for people who have been through our training, they live inside them, and for our leaders who are uh working with us uh through culture craft, it's live if they're a part of it every day, right? But for the majority of you, this is an experiment to go. Do I want these ideas to live inside me? And so giving these contextual samples in a giant library, lovely buffet, for you to, you know, sort of Las Vegas buffet of everything that you could possibly imagine without the gambling. The gambling's over there, we're gonna be at the buffet, um, is I think the right thing to do for us for right now. And it might be the right thing for you to do. So when I'm posting on LinkedIn, when I'm putting things on YouTube, I don't have any expectation that I'm gonna catch the wave of the algorithm and get 25,000 views and all of that kind of stuff. The biggest viewed thing I ever did, the most viral thing I ever did, was ranting about uh an AI device that would spy on people uh wherever the per the wearer took it. And I just said you have to take it off if you if you can to my house. And I got two million views out of it because I said I didn't want people wearing wearables in my house. Well, you have you have a phone, you have this. And it was wild. It was a very wild 48 hours, but it's also useless. Um, it didn't serve me, it didn't serve my clients, didn't serve a lot of things. And so what I want for you is just to try these two rules out. I want you to try these two boundaries out, manage your time with the feed, and think about your content creation in a library way, not in a gaming the algorithm way. The algorithm game would say, well, how is anybody gonna find it? Right? Well, you're gonna find it by building relationships, and those relationships send people to your library. Because relationships is how the game is won and lost, not 10,000 people following you on an algorithm. That's just not how the game is won and lost. And so I hope this is giving you a little bit of like, okay, one, why is Nick posting so many videos when he said so many nasty things about the internet? And two, how does that impact your way of engaging the internet in a trust-made way? You want to go further with this? Obviously, you can follow our YouTube channel, it's right here. You can uh like and subscribe on our audio channels if you're getting this through audio. We would love that as well. Um, and or you can go to Damsgiven and just get everything through the newsletter. So that's another way, damsgiven.com. Um, lots of ways. We're trying to put the library lots of places. The internet is helpful in that front. We can have little library outposts all over the internet so you can find what you need. And uh, we'll see you where we find you. This has been Damsgiven. Please like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find this channel and at Damsgiven.com. And always send us your questions and feedback at podcast at culturecraft.com. Everything you've heard today is part of Trustmade Growth, My Ecology at CultureCraft to help ventures escape the extraction economy and realign them to the ways we naturally build, collaborate, and buy. You can learn more. You can find a strategist, you can become a strategist, and join the community at trustmadegrowth.com.