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hey! I got some awesome responses from my last letter. It made my day. If you missed it, click here.
Okay let's hit it...
I'm obsessed with friction.
Why?
Friction drives 99.9% of behavior. It's the difference between rolling over in bed to snooze your alarm or ripping that pesky 6 am workout.
It's also the difference between a hit product and just a good one.
Let me explain.
The Law of Friction = If you want more, kill friction. If you want less, increase friction.
Alright, so you're a bit overweight and your big bad new year's resolution is to lose 16 pounds.
But every year you manage to avoid donuts and hit the gym for the first few weeks. You're watching daily Jocko Willink youtube videos to stay pumped up.
However, motivation slowly fades.
And you're left feeling like the movie scene with the guy slowly sliding off a building ledge held only by his fingertips.
You eventually give in to a sugar-infested-evening filled with jelly donuts and sour patch kids.
Alas, maybe you can try again next year!
So how would you use the law of friction?
If you want more, kill friction. So you want to exercise more...
- Put your phone 20 feet from your bed so it's really hard to snooze your morning workout alarm
- Layout your workout gear so all you need to do is pop out of bed and slip into your clothes
- Pre-make your protein shake so you're grab and go
If you want less, increase friction. So you want to eat healthier...
- Never keep crappy food in your house so you need to make a special trip to buy candy at CVS
- Delete ubereats from your phone and disable the ability to re-download it
The sustainable way to win is by killing and creating friction.
Here's another example:
Have you ever thought why Apple made iPhones have face ID?
Think about this through the lens of friction.
Before, you would have to type in a passcode to open your phone (GASP).
Now, you can grab your phone, look at it and it's automatically open.
It works from bed. It works when it's dark. It works wherever.
Apple makes billions from killing this friction. Because if they can get you to open your phone more, they make more money.
And face ID kills a few seconds of friction for a billion iPhone users.
Here's another fun example:
"Every tap by a user is a miracle."
Goddamnit I love this line. To signup for Nikita's new social app (that just sold to Discord btw), the user never touches a keyboard.
I think about this a lot at Meow.
How can we create 1-click onboarding?
If you have no clue, Meow helps startups earn yield on their spare cash.
We're a B2B company with an onboarding process that requires Know Your Customer checks, legal agreements, document submissions, and a few other things.
You know how it takes weeks and a million docusigns to open a bank account?
We turned this into an 8 minute application with programmatic Know Your Customer checks (which makes sure we don't have terrorists on the platform) and 1-click to sign legal agreements.
Because I know that every single sliver of additional friction means a lost customer.
So next time you attack a project, ask yourself this:
How can you kill or create friction to drive the outcome?
See ya soon,
Chris Hladczuk
p.s. i love writing this letter. If you got this far, you don't hate it.
So why not forward it to a smart friend?
It's 2 clicks away :)