Ditching Hourly Nick Richtsmeier - The Damn Rules
23 snips
Aug 28, 2026 
Nick Richtsmeier, growth consultant and author of The Damn Rules, rethinks trust-made growth in an age where inbound marketing no longer works. He argues distribution broke, explains why trust and attachment are now scarce, and explores using deliberate friction and human contact to rebuild durable relationships and real-world distribution.
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The Attention Economy Is A Casino
- The attention economy functions like a casino: platforms extract rent by keeping users scrolling with unpredictable rewards rather than delivering real value.
- Nick says platforms prioritize keeping people on-platform, promoting middling content and nerfing outbound links.
Five Disruptions Creating A Trust Crisis
- We're living through five interregna—broken digital marketing, collapsing commons, political insecurity, shifts from nation-state to corporate order, and AI redefining knowledge.
- These layered disruptions create distrust and make selling exponentially harder.
Trust And Attachment Are The New Scarcity
- New scarcity is attachment and trust: people need grounding in place, people, and processes to make context-rich decisions.
- Nick argues widespread detachment (loneliness, contextless online life) reduces people's willingness to take commercial risks.
