Plato sold MILLIONS using this one trick…
An ancient strategy to pole vault your content over the noise.
Early in his career, Plato wanted to sell to a very high-end audience. Unfortunately, in the eyes of most of his prospects, his product offering was widely regarded as ridiculous, if not downright harmful. He called it “philosophy” - his own riff on something his teacher Socrates used to do. It involved many annoying questions.
Plato was convinced his product actually worked, and was desirable. Theoretically. But also he knew he needed a lot of time to explain it to people. The best salesmen don’t sell, they teach. Right? But how do you get the attention of wealthy, smart, ambitious, well connected Greek men, and their sons - and keep it for long enough to convince them to come study “philosophy” at Athens?
Plato’s solution was to write historical fiction. That’s not what I’m going to suggest you do, but consider: Plato wrote vivid dialogues depicting people from the recent past, meeting in famous public places in Athens, like the gym, the market, or someone’s house. The characters were people his prospects considered role models, or even heroes. I don’t mean Socrates, here. Plato’s audience was generally more interested in the other people in the dialogues, the ones usually squirming while Socrates was asking the questions. People like Laches and Nikias (famous Athenian generals), Menon the warlord of Thessaly, the playboy politician Alcibiades, Ion the Poet, etc. But in the process, as people sat with these other men they admired or otherwise found fascinating, they came to understand what Plato meant by “philosophy.”
After many years of reading his works, when I zoomed out and looked at Plato’s career as whole, I realized a key ingredient of his success: If you want to bring attention to a counter-intuitive idea, you should look outside your narrow field, and find other people’s heroes. Plato was trying to build a school, on a revolutionary new model. He wasn’t trying to command an army, write poems, or run for office. But he knew his audience, and who they were interested in.
Here’s one example of how I used this. My podcast consists mostly of long-form stories about ancient heroes, some of whom are long-forgotten. In an early episode I did on Sertorius, the great Roman rebel, I referenced Steve Prefontaine, who was a famous track runner. Like Sertorius, he died relatively young, before reaching his potential. A few of my listeners wrote in and said the Prefontaine example really resonated with them, because they knew about him, and suggested they even considered him a hero. I think the example got many people to stick around for a story about someone they hadn’t heard of.
I don’t like running, or track & field. I’ve never been to Oregon, and have no particular attachment to it. But I came to admire Prefontaine after reading his tragic story in Phil Knight’s book, Shoe Dog, the story of Nike. Prefontaine’s story did good work for me. And as this example shows, the hero-reach principle works on examples both great and relatively minor in scale (I only spent a few sentences on Prefontaine).
Too often, we stick to fields we already know, and people we already like. But behind just about anyone’s hero, or discipline-specific role model, there is a great story, and one likely to resonate with an audience wider than the narrow channels you are getting stuck in.
Go find that story. Learn someone else’s heroes better than they do. That’ll get them to put down their sandwich and listen. Find out about that person’s virtues and achievements. Write them up, celebrate them, or even. You can find out about the vices too, the controversies, these are important to know as well. Just remember, when it comes to other people’s heroes: you’re treading on sacred ground.
Check out the recent interview I did on Plato's career with Justin Murphy of the Other Life Podcast/YouTube show.
This one was really fun.
Dear Alex,
I'm a regular listener of your podcasts mainly because there's a special place in my heart for Plutarch, and anyone who's Plutarch's friend, is my friend. You've identified an interesting ingredient of Plato's success, one that I find insightful as it seems to confirm Plato's deep understanding of human nature: people will listen to you when you talk about their heroes. I would love to hear how this insight takes form in your mind. For example, could you address what you mean by counter-intuitive? Surely, philosophy, as presented by Plato, was novel, but was it really counter-intuitive? If so, in what way? Also, when one starts talking about someone's heroes, I can see why a listener might start paying attention. But Plato, in brilliant fashion, would progressively expose the flaws in these heroes (I'm putting it mildly). Is that the beginning of the contemplative process for the listener? In other words, by seeing the flaws of my hero, I realize that, although I might marvel at his feats, my hero does not live up to the higher ideals that Plato, via Socrates, is revealing to me in his dialogues? If my reasoning is correct, how, then, do you address the very real possibility that one plugs one's ears when you start attaching his heroes (another common trait in human behaviour)? In short, how much of that special ingredient should one add to the broth before it becomes too salty?