In 2019, Alex Hormozi recorded a video about business cash flow management. It got 847 views.
That same week, he posted a gym workout clip that hit 2.3 million views in 48 hours.
The cash flow video - the one that barely anyone watched - generated $4.7 million in client revenue over the next six months.
The workout video? It got likes, shares, and comments. Then disappeared into the algorithm.
The work that matters least gets the most attention.
The work that matters most often goes unseen.
The Vanity Metric Trap
We’ve been conditioned to believe that impact equals reach. More views means more value.
Going viral is winning.
But virality optimizes for the wrong thing. It rewards content that triggers immediate emotional reactions - outrage, surprise, humor, envy.
These emotions spread fast but fade faster.
Research from the Wharton School examined over 7,000 New York Times articles to understand virality. Articles provoking high-arousal emotions spread significantly more.
Articles requiring deeper thinking? Far less viral, but far more cited in research and policy discussions.
The content that goes viral optimizes for distribution.
The content that creates value optimizes for transformation.
These are not the same thing.
Why Your Best Work Reaches Fewer People
Your most valuable work will probably reach your smallest audience.
Not because it’s poorly made. But because truly valuable work is:
Specific rather than universal.
The CEO struggling with delegation doesn’t need another “leadership tips” thread. She needs the exact framework for calculating which decisions to delegate.
That framework might only resonate with 300 people. But for those 300, it’s worth more than a viral quote graphic.
Complex rather than simple.
Real transformation requires nuance. Derek Sivers’ essay “There’s No Speed Limit” has been read by approximately 50,000 people over two decades. It’s changed dozens of careers.
Meanwhile, feel-good productivity threads with 10 million impressions are forgotten by Wednesday.
Useful rather than entertaining.
A detailed SaaS pricing breakdown won’t get retweeted 10,000 times. But the founder who implements it and adds $200K to their ARR will remember where they learned it.
The paradox: the narrower your focus, the deeper your impact.
And deep impact rarely scales to viral numbers.
The Lindy Effect vs. The Viral Spike
Nassim Taleb’s Lindy Effect suggests that the future life expectancy of non-perishable things is proportional to their current age.
A book in print for 50 years will likely stay in print for another 50. A trending book will likely disappear in 18 months.
Applied to your work: posts still relevant in two years will likely remain relevant for another two years.
The viral post from last Tuesday is already stale.
James Clear’s essay “The Akrasia Effect” from 2016 gets approximately 15,000 readers per month - the same as it did then. That’s 1.4 million people over eight years who encountered a framework that helped them understand their behavior.
Not viral. Lindy.
Compare that to viral content: massive spike, rapid decay, forgotten within a week.
The half-life of a viral tweet is measured in hours.
If you’re building something that lasts - a business, a body of work, a reputation - optimize for Lindy, not virality.
What to Do Instead
Create for the smallest viable audience.
Stop asking “How do I make this appeal to everyone?”
Start asking “Who is this specifically for, and how do I make it 10x more valuable for them?”
The founder with 800 newsletter subscribers in his exact niche has more leverage than the influencer with 80,000 random followers.
Measure impact, not impressions.
Track what actually matters:
How many people implemented what you taught?
Did this change someone’s behavior or decision?
How often do people reference this three months later?
Alex Hormozi’s 847-view video generated $4.7M because the right 847 people saw it.
Impressions don’t pay bills. Action does.
Build the body of work, not the moment.
Your work should accumulate value over time, not extract attention in the moment.
Naval Ravikant’s wealth creation tweetstorm went viral in 2018. But what kept it relevant isn’t the viral moment - it’s that people keep returning to it, referencing it, building on it.
The viral spike got attention. The depth created staying power.
A Different Scorecard
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you’re optimizing for viral, you’re probably not optimizing for value.
Viral content is fast food - satisfies immediately but provides no lasting nutrition.
The work that matters - the frameworks, the systems, the ideas that change how people think - is slow-cooked.
Tim Urban’s “Wait But Why” posts take months to write. They don’t go viral in the traditional sense. But they get passed around in private messages, emailed to colleagues, bookmarked for later.
They become reference material.
That’s the goal: not to be seen by everyone once, but to be valuable to someone repeatedly.
The irony is that truly valuable work often does eventually reach large audiences - but it happens slowly, through word of mouth, through people who implemented it and saw results.
It compounds.
Going viral is a spike.
Building something valuable is a slope.
The Real Win
The next time you create something, ask yourself:
“If this reached exactly 100 people, would it be worth creating?”
If the answer is no, you might be optimizing for the wrong thing.
Your best work might never trend. It might reach a few hundred people instead of a few hundred thousand.
And those few hundred people might build businesses from it. They might reference it in their own work. They might email you two years later to say it changed their trajectory.
That’s not viral.
That’s something better.
That’s valuable.
See you next Monday!
-jett