You Got Sharked: A Street Hustler’s Guide To Building An Audience For Your Idea
Whenever I’m in San Franscisco, I like to wander The Embarcadero—it’s one of the best places in town for people watching.
This trip didn’t disappoint, and we ran into a street hustler playing the shell game—a ball is placed under one of three identical looking shells before they’re quickly rearranged while you try to keep track of the ball. It looks like this:
If you’re in the audience and know where the ball is, you can place a bet and make a guess.
A good hustler will rake in cash all day long tricking unsuspecting tourists with a few different slight-of-hand maneuvers.
I’ve seen the trick performed many times, but what I’d never seen is how otherwise intelligent and rational people actually get tricked in to playing and losing their money.
On my walk down The Embarcadero, I stumbled onto the game in its early phase and got to see exactly how a real hustler makes a living by using a series of psychological cues and tricks us normal folks are pre-programmed to respond to in predictable ways.
But here’s the really important part: the tricks a street hustler like this uses can also be used to build an audience in a honest and ethical way.
Here’s how it works.
Hustle #1: Put Yourself Where The Best Audience Already Is
You’ve probably seen this game and others like it many times. Now, think about the different times you’ve seen it played—where you were, what you were doing, and why you were there.
When I think back, I’ve only seen the shell game played when traveling and doing touristy things in touristy places.
The hustler knows his audience: tourists! If you walk into any normal, everyday neighborhood, you won’t find these games being played. Why? Because the audience isn’t in the right mindset. If you’re going to the grocery store or picking up your kids, you don’t have the time or patience for this. Also, you’ve probably seen it before and know it’s a sham—you can’t actually win (I’ll explain shortly).
But if you’re a tourist, you’re the perfect target because your brain is already primed for the game. You’re probably just wandering around, looking for something fun to do. You don’t have to be anywhere or do anything, so you’re more likely to stop and, at the very least, watch (which helps the con build his audience).
When you’re a tourist, your mind is already primed to spend as well. You’re on vacation and you expect to be emptying your wallet, so there’s little objection to spending some money having fun trying to outsmart a street hustler.
If you’re trying to recruit an audience for something you believe in, you can take a very important cue here. Go where the attention/money/whatever it is you’re looking for already exists in abundance. By understanding exactly what the people you’re trying to attract want and need, you can be sure you’re looking for them in the right places.
This is half the battle of building an audience. When you tap into the right existing communities, building your own is easy. But if you go to the wrong place and try to convince the wrong people what you’re doing is important, you’ll never get off the ground—they’re not ready for your message.
Hustle #2: Get A Few Friends To Help At First
When you’re trying to get the word out about something important, and starting from scratch, it can be difficult days ahead. It’s a hard knock life for the street hustler just setting up shop, as well.
When I’d seen this game being played before, I was just one of many standing in the crowd. But how did the crowd get there? This time, I got to see.
When I arrived at the table, there were only five others standing around it. We were initially intrigued by seeing someone make a $100 bet and win. “Let’s stop and watch for a minute,” I said.
One guy was wandering around the group making jokes about how bad The Hustler was. Another kept wandering up to the table to make $100 bets, winning about half the time, losing the other half.
Pretty soon, a larger crowd had gathered to watch, and some started participating.
What I didn’t realize until we left, though, is that of the first five people watching, we may have been the only ones who weren’t in on it. At least two others were part of the scam.
The guy wandering around was the “Roper,” and his job was to get our attention long enough to make us stop and watch. Once we’d watched awhile, his job transitioned to encouraging us to play.
The other guy making bets was the “Shill,” and his job was to entertain and build up our confidence. If no one was betting, he would walk up and put $100 on the table to keep things moving along.
If you’re trying to build an audience from scratch, you’ll be better off recruiting some friends to help you out.
I did exactly this when I started Riskology.co several years ago. I had no traffic and no connections in the blogging world, and I was afraid no one would come read my articles. So, I sent an email to a few of my closest friends just before launching, and asked them to share a few articles with their friends to get things rolling.
Pretty soon, others came along to leave their own thoughts and start sharing my writing with their own friends. I didn’t have to ask for help any more.
No one wants to be the first person to the party, so it’s your job to get a few people on the inside to help break the ice. It’ll make building that initial audience base much easier.
Hustle #3: Make It Look Easy
One of the biggest hurdles to persuading people to try something new and become a part of your community is getting them to believe they can actually be successful if they give it a shot. Great ideas—no matter how exciting or appealing—disappear all the time because no one wants to try and fail.
This is one hurdle the street hustler masterfully maneuvers around.
Remember The Shill from above? His first job is to get the party rolling for The Hustler by pretending to place bets when everyone’s still nervous. But that’s only half his job. The other half is to win.
As I stood and watched, I noticed the same guy standing off to the side would walk up and play a number of hands. What was even more fascinating was that he often won. I was impressed, and started watching closer.
Then, a funny thing happened. I realized the game was incredibly simple. The Hustler was moving slowly and showing the ball as he moved the shells around. I didn’t step up to bet anything, but I started playing along in my head. All of a sudden, I’d quietly gotten 5 games in a row right.
“I can totally do this!” I thought to myself. The Shill would step up every few hands and win to prove just how easy it was. But, once in a while, he’d lose. And everyone would be shouting at him to pick a different one.
We all knew where the ball was—The Hustler was making it easy. What his accomplice had done was show that it’s easy and make us want to step up to bet money to prove it to ourselves.
What these guys were doing was incredibly deceptive, but you can take the concept and apply it very ethically.
If you want to help people understand and take action on something complicated or uncomfortable, you have to build their confidence and make them believe they can do it. The way you do this is by breaking it down into as simple of steps as possible and showing them how someone just like them can do it.
But The Hustler didn’t stop there…
Hustle #4: Offer Something Valuable For Free
This is the part where you really get hustled. Since I’d seen this game many times before and watched real people lose real money, I knew the game was somehow rigged and decided not to play. But there’s one last psychological tactic The Hustler used to get me and the people standing around to take out our wallets and start betting.
Just as I was getting ready to leave, he played one more hand and called on me to pick the winning shell.
“Nah, I don’t have any cash,” I replied honestly.
“No problem. This is a free one. Just tell me which shell the ball is under,” he fired right back.
“Okay, it’s the one to the far left.”
I knew exactly where it was; he’d made it so easy to track.
“That’s right my man. Here’s $100. Thanks for playing,” he replied as he held a crisp $100 bill out to me.
“No thanks; I don’t want the money. It was just fun to play.”
“Go on, take it. You won it!” he came back with. Then he turned to the rest of the crowd. “I’m just havin’ fun. I’ll hand out $100 bills all day. Just step up.”
The Roper walked up to me. “Don’t be stupid! Take the money! You won the money!”
I still refused and, after that, we wandered off to explore the rest of The Embarcadero. But if I’d taken that money, I’d have been hooked.
The Hustler was pulling out the big guns. What he was doing was using one of the most powerful persuasion tactics. It’s called the reciprocity principle.
Had I taken the money, the transaction I had with The Hustler would have been unbalanced—he offered me money (a favor) while there was nothing at stake for me. Thanks to millions of years of social grooming, taking this money would have made me feel in debt to him. I’d have felt I owed it to him to stick around and keep playing.
All the while, he’s keeping track of who’s playing with his money and who’s playing with their own. As soon as I was hooked and playing with my money, that’s when the slight-of-hand tricks would start, and he’d clean house (and my wallet).
Again, not a very nice thing to do, but the underlying principle can make all the difference when you’re trying to build an audience and get people paying attention to something important to you.
Before asking folks to go all in, show them you’re all in first. Do it by doing them a favor and offering them something valuable for free. When they accept, they’ll feel a responsibility to give your idea attention, and that’s when you reel them in with the best stuff you’ve got.
There’s nothing wrong about that as long as everyone is getting something of value.
Hustle Your Way To Attention And Influence
Whatever it is that’s important to you—no matter how bizarre or niche—building an engaged audience around it will be a lot easier when you ethically use these hustler tactics:
- Put yourself in front of a receptive audience
- Recruit a few friends to help get the ball rolling
- Break things down and make your idea simple
- Offer something valuable for free
Everyone has something important inside them they wish they could get more people to understand and believe in. This is what will get that idea off the ground.
And, hey, even if you’re not trying to build an audience or influence people, at least you’ll know what to do the next time you see someone playing the shell game: keep walking!
Additional sources for this article:
How do big city shell games and three card monte games work?
Shell Game Revealed