Be the Muse, Not the Hero (Media Flywheel)
Build trust through niche, high-quality public learning instead of overt marketing.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 80%
Patrick's approach to building Invest Like the Best into a durable asset: never treat content as direct-response marketing, instead go deep into a narrow, 'wonky' niche driven purely by curiosity, hold a high minimum quality bar for what gets published, and let a compounding trust flywheel do the work. As the audience grows, each new high-caliber guest strengthens the pitch to the next guest ('laddering up'), and listeners who feel genuine authenticity respond by becoming customers, employees, or capital sources for the guest's business ('the flood'). The role to play is muse, not visionary or hero—getting other people talking about interesting things rather than promoting yourself.
Origin
Patrick started Invest Like the Best in 2016 with no growth targets, purely as an outlet for curiosity following a chance recording with author Jeff Grigsby, and it grew into what he calls a competitive advantage 'no amount of money could buy.'
Core principles
- 01Brand-building content works only when it is not secretly optimized for a direct business outcome
- 02The internet rewards focused, extreme positions at the tail of a distribution, not broad appeal
- 03A high minimum quality bar (say no to most drafts) builds long-term audience trust
- 04Each strong guest or episode compounds into leverage for attracting the next one
How to run it
- 1
Pick a narrow, personally fascinating niche
Choose a specific, wonky topic area you are already deeply curious about rather than one designed to appeal broadly.
- 2
Separate content from direct-response goals
Treat the content purely as brand-building and public learning, never as a subliminal funnel toward a business outcome.
Pro tip Ask 'would I still do this exact thing even if it never drove a single sale?'
Watch out Audiences can smell content designed to sell them something, which damages trust.
- 3
Enforce a high minimum quality bar
Cut or withhold anything that doesn't meet a consistently high standard, even if it means less frequent output.
- 4
Publish consistently without chasing metrics
Avoid checking growth metrics obsessively so that curiosity, not audience feedback, drives what gets made next.
- 5
Let the trust flywheel compound
Allow each strong episode or guest to make the case for the next, and let the resulting audience attention ('the flood') flow back to guests as customers, talent, or capital.
Pro tip Be the muse that spotlights others rather than positioning yourself as the hero of the story.
In the wild
Starting from 571 listeners on the first episode with zero marketing beyond occasional tweets, the show grew through a compounding flywheel, including recurring guests like Michael Mauboussin whose reappearances produced a lasting 10% audience jump each time (the 'Mauboussin bounce').
→ The show became a durable, hard-to-replicate competitive asset that also feeds OSAM's Canvas business and Patrick's new venture fund.
Common mistakes
Designing content around a business funnel
Patrick explicitly avoids ever planning content with a business outcome in mind, believing audiences will detect and reject it.
Chasing broad appeal instead of a niche edge
He argues the internet rewards focused, extreme, tail-of-distribution positioning rather than a 'Walter Cronkite' broad-appeal approach.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders or operators willing to invest years into an authentic, niche content platform as a long-term brand and distribution asset.
Not ideal for
Businesses needing fast, measurable customer acquisition where a slow-compounding trust flywheel isn't fast enough.
From the transcript
“I think of it very much as brand versus direct response marketing.”
“Another way to frame this would be just try to be the muse, right? Don't try to be the, don't try to be the visionary…”
From the episode
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