Day 9 — Total Domination

How to design loops that make your platform the place everyone has to go through.

We’ve talked about the idea that you can build a distribution platform and why it even makes sense to. We’ve also gone into how to start thinking about building one. But today, I want to go deeper into something that sits at the core of it all: domination.

Because at the end of the day, that’s what great distribution platforms do: they dominate. They own attention, own access, and become the go-to channels that others depend on to reach an audience. Think about it: when you’re a true distribution platform, other channels actually distribute through you. That’s the highest form of leverage when the world routes distribution via your ecosystem.

But there’s always this chicken-and-egg challenge:
You need users and audience volume to attract others to distribute through your platform. But you also need other people distributing through you to get that audience volume.

That’s the paradox. You need dominance to attract distribution, but you need distribution to achieve dominance.

So how do you break through that loop?
You focus on value and dependence. You ask: how can I make sure the audience depends on me to get something they can’t get elsewhere? What experience, insight, content, or access do I provide that becomes the magnet? Once that dependence starts forming, it becomes easier to attract creators, distributors, and partners.

From a marketing standpoint, this is the real game. How do you keep bringing in more people in and make sure they stay? How do you turn their engagement into a flywheel that feeds itself?

You can’t just think in straight lines anymore; you have to think in loops. Every strategy you build should have a return path. Every new user should make the experience better for the next. That’s where network effects come in.

Every great distribution platform eventually becomes a marketplace, a place where discovery happens.

That’s what all social platforms really are: marketplaces of discovery.
Audiences come to find something. Creators and brands come to be found. The platform sits in the middle, orchestrating discovery.

And the platforms Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X become the bridge, the discovery layer that connects everyone. That’s what makes it a distributional marketplace.

If you’re building your own distribution platform, even if you’re a brand or a creator, start thinking of yourself this way. You’re not just publishing; you’re enabling discovery. You’re creating a space where people grow through you.

And when you start seeing yourself as a system where others grow through your platform, you begin to design with loops and network effects in mind.

Once you get one or two players distributing through your platform, it gets easier. Momentum kicks in. Other platforms start coming to distribute through you. That’s when the flywheel turns into domination when you become the default gateway for your niche.

Because domination isn’t about crushing competition, it’s about becoming the default route everyone has to pass through.

Pick your niche. Own the flow. Make your platform the bridge people must cross to reach what they want.

That’s how domination happens, and that’s the real heart of building a distributional platform.