
This is the free version of Trends PRO #0049 — Internet Challenges
🔍 Problem
You need to build a strong brand and community.
💡 Solution
Internet challenges are time-bound games with clear rules and incremental steps.
Challenges build new habits, identities and communities.
Turning non-coders into no-coders, coach potatoes into runners and consumers into creators. Through action.
🏁 Players
Creator Challenges
Writing Challenges
Health Challenges
Comfort Challenges
Lifestyle Challenges
Finance Challenges
🔮 Predictions
- Challenges will lead to iconic personal brands. Casey Neistat shipped daily vlogs 534 days in a row. James Clear published twice a week for 3 years.
- Challenges will become lead magnets for paid communities. #100DaysOfNoCode members tag updates and drive traffic back to the community.
☁️ Opportunities
- Use challenges to build audience-first products:
- Rejection Proof — Face 100 days of rejection (Book)
- Rice Mountain — Trade a grain of rice for a mountain (Newsletter)
- 1000 Awesome Things — Share one awesome thing each weekday (Blog)
- Turn your public challenge into a paid community. See #100DaysOfNoCode. Yarty and Daniel are doing it with Kick Ass Letters and #90DaysOfProse.
- Use challenges to build an email list. See Gabby Berstein’s Manifesting Challenge. Align your value ladder with the challenge. See lead generation for more.
- Add a challenge to your self-paced course to boost accountability and completion rates. This can be done without affecting scalability.
🔑 Key Lessons
- Challenges drive the creator economy. Seth Godin ships a post each day. Trends.vc sends a report each week. Bad Unicorn builds a bad idea every two weeks.
- Effective challenges:
- Have clear rules
- Encourage sharing
- Celebrate completion
- Leave room for self-expression
😠 Haters
“Challenges are fads.”
Some still read 100 pages a day like Benjamin Franklin. We ignored the pee your pants challenge in this report.
“Consistency over intensity… What if I make it too easy?”
Use the minimum effective dose and build momentum. In a perfect world, we’d baseline each person’s ability.
“The rice mountain challenge was inspired by the red paperclip challenge.”
Stew acknowledges that.
🔗 Links
- Looking for challenges. Any examples? — The tweet behind this report.
- Atomic Habits — Learn to build habits in order to build effective challenges.
- Trends #0021 Gamification — Design incentives and ‘sticky’ experiences.
Thanks to Jeremy Abraham (Spiffy), Neeraj Hirani (NeerajHirani.com), Logan Johnson (Logan.io), Christina Pashialis (ContentUK), Miles Beckler (MilesBeckler.com), Daniel Hunter (#90DaysOfProse), Daniel Wulf (Wurst Circle), Max Haining (#100DaysOfNoCode), Dickie Bush (#Ship30for30) and Yarty Kim (Kick Ass Letters). We had a great time jamming on this report.
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What you’ll get:
- 10 Creator Challenges (150% More)
- 8 Writing Challenges (166% More)
- 10 Health Challenges (233% More)
- 6 Comfort Challenges (100% More)
- 5 Lifestyle Challenges (66% More)
- 6 Finance Challenges (100% More)
- 4 Predictions (100% More)
- 11 Opportunities (175% More)
- 5 Key Lessons (150% More)
- 10 Summarized Links (233%)
With Trends Pro you’ll learn:
- (📈 Pro) How to launch a challenge for your brand?
- (📈 Pro) Where are internet challenges heading?
- (📈 Pro) Why are streaks powerful?
- (📈 Pro) How to use challenges to hire?
- (📈 Pro) How to customize challenges at scale?
- (📈 Pro) How to use challenges to sell?
- (📈 Pro) How to stay top of mind?
- (📈 Pro) How to optimize for consistency over intensity?
- and a lot more…