When did it become okay to prioritize your e-communications and e-social life over your actual reality? There appears to be a new paradigm that permits you to use your mobile device, at any moment and in any situation, without excusing yourself or giving an explanation. How did this come about? For those born into the 21st century, being given a smart phone and allowed to have a Facebook (or other social media) account, is a rite of passage. Listen to the enabling conversation from parents. Little Janie needs to be able to call for help if she gets into trouble. She needs to be able to call for a ride … blah, blah, blah. These parents sign up for expensive accounts to facilitate this. Think about how this has all exploded and how it has been justified, protected, permitted, encouraged, and enabled. Why is this important to think about? Well think about yesterday’s message. We understand that there was no master plan for world domination by the first manufacturers of cell phones. What was once an exclusive productivity tool, for business, has become a ubiquitous device that has pervaded every aspect of our lives and created trillions of dollars of profit.

Think about how we like (love) this device and the pains we go to making sure we are connected and within network range. It has become a dependency, if not an addiction. The point is that the smart phone has bumped, nudged, tested, explored, floated, and invaded our lives without being driven by any master plan. It has been tugged into this role by user behaviour, acquiescence, and opportunistic marketing strategies, put into place by a variety of entities that lined up to benefit from this great social experiment.

Here is an explosive example of watching what worked and what didn’t and following the first path to where we find ourselves now. Are we now at the pinnacle of the process … or are we still on the growth curve? This process was not without pain, not without setbacks, not without winners and losers along the way, and we are not done yet. When a wave is this pervasive, true warriors understand that we have experienced a seismic shift that cannot be reversed. It will only continue to expand and mutate. The true warrior watches for profit opportunities and understands that we are experiencing an asymmetrical phenomena that can provide opportunities for limited downside and almost unlimited upside. The true warrior will unleash many tests and opportunistic nudges to see what will take off and produce those most spectacular results. When we have the opportunity to gain massively on the upside, from modest investments on the downside, we crank it up and increase the odds of massive success by increasing the frequency and absolute number of experiments (bets). That way, when one hits … it is so sweet!

You are warriors, so start thinking … and then start doing whatever you can to maximize the number (not the size) of your bets. This is not about going all in, which is all about one big bet, it’s about playing as many games as you can to have one small bet hit it big. This is not the lottery; it is just the opposite. We all have access to the marketplace with little or no cost. You are warriors and you can hit the big time in times like this, when the stars align. So it is written.