Your friends have more friends than you do

It’s strange, but it’s math: your friends really do have more friends than you.

And that small truth explains why change spreads the way it does.

It’s never the billboard. It’s never the announcement. It’s the person everyone quietly listens to — the one whose choices echo across a dozen circles.

Your neighbor buys the electric car. Your colleague shows up with one. Your sister says she’s thinking about it. Three signals from three directions — and suddenly the new thing doesn’t feel new anymore.

That’s complex contagion: ideas don’t spread because one loud voice said so. They spread because a few trusted people say the same thing at the same time.

And that’s where the minimum viable audience comes in.

You don’t need the whole field. You need the smallest group who already leans your way — the ones whose “yes” carries weight. Delight them, and two things always happen:

they’re bigger than you thought, and they tell the right others.

But aim for the masses, and you end up building for no one.

Change doesn’t start with reach. It starts with reinforcement. With a tight circle whose trust muscles the idea forward long before the crowd even knows what’s happening.

Your job isn’t to shout louder. It’s to find the few who make the whole thing move.