Play The Game To Earn The Message
Satisfy the platform's rules first, then spend the attention you earn on what matters.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 60%
Leon Scott built an Instagram following as a model and semi-professional footballer, then used it to talk about mindfulness, virtue and non-material happiness — subjects the platform does not naturally reward. His mechanism separates the entry fee from the payload. The platform's currency (physique, aesthetics, the lifestyle image) buys attention; the message rides in the layer the platform permits — captions, stories, and the projects the account points to. The constraint is pacing: an audience follows increments, not leaps. Arrive as a monk overnight and you are written off as having lost the plot, and the message dies with the credibility. So you stay legibly inside the game while steadily shifting what the account is about, and you keep the right to speak by visibly living the thing you advocate.
Origin
Extracted from Modern Wisdom. Leon Scott described balancing commercial modelling and semi-professional football against a mindfulness practice, and how he uses the image the platform rewards to carry a message about inner work.
Core principles
- 01Every platform has rules that decide who gets heard; ignoring them costs you the audience, not your integrity.
- 02Attention is earned in the platform's currency and then spent in yours.
- 03An audience can only be moved a step at a time — jump too far ahead and you are dismissed, not followed.
- 04The surface image and the deeper message are layers of one account, not a contradiction.
- 05You forfeit the right to the message if you do not visibly live it.
How to run it
- 1
Identify the platform's actual currency
Work out what the platform genuinely rewards with attention, as opposed to what it claims to value. On Instagram, Scott is blunt that brands hire him because a following of younger viewers is watching, not because he is a fashion-agency model.
Pro tip Watch what gets rewarded, not what gets praised in public.
Watch out Do not mistake the currency for the point — it is the entry fee.
- 2
Pay the entry fee credibly
Meet the platform's bar well enough to hold attention. Scott stays in condition because the physique is what earns the look, and he is explicit that he cannot preach one thing and visibly be another.
Pro tip Competence and conduct compound: Scott credits repeat bookings to being easy to work with, not to his looks.
Watch out Paying the fee cynically shows; audiences read contempt quickly.
- 3
Choose the layer that carries the payload
Split the account by function. Scott uses the image as the hook and the caption as the vehicle — he cannot show his mind in a photograph, so he writes what his mind is learning underneath it, and reserves stories for the practice itself.
Pro tip Pick the layer the platform tolerates but does not police — captions, stories, links.
Watch out If the payload never appears anywhere, you are just playing the game.
- 4
Move the audience in increments
Shift the account's centre of gravity gradually so the audience travels with you. Scott's test is his mates: turn up with a Buddhist monk one day and they assume you are taking the piss. The same content, arrived at slowly, is followed rather than mocked.
Pro tip Let each step make the next one unsurprising.
Watch out Leap to the end state and you are dismissed as having lost the plot — the message dies with your credibility.
- 5
Keep checking the game has not become the point
Revisit whether the image is still serving the message or has quietly replaced it. Scott's stated aim is helping people progress and finding happiness from within; the car, the clothes and the shoots are means he is candid about enjoying, not the objective.
Pro tip Ask what you would post if the platform's rules vanished tomorrow.
Watch out Attachment to the rewards is the failure mode — it turns the vehicle into the destination.
In the wild
Scott's main feed shows the physique work the platform rewards, because that is what earns the look. The message rides underneath it: he cannot photograph his mind, so the caption says what his mind is learning. Stories carry the practice itself — the meditation classes and courses. The account reads as a fitness page to a passing scroller and as something else entirely to anyone who stops.
→ A message about inner work reaches an audience that arrived for the image.
Scott and Williamson discuss celebrities who move too far too fast and get written off as having gone crazy — Jim Carrey the recurring example. Scott's read is that they are not crazy but unfollowable: the distance between where the audience is and where they have arrived is too great to cross in one step. His own version is that turning up barefoot in elephant pants tomorrow would end his ability to say anything at all.
→ Pacing preserved the platform, and with it the message.
Common mistakes
Jumping straight to the end state
Arriving overnight as the fully transformed version of yourself reads as a breakdown, not a journey. The audience does not follow, and the message is discarded along with your credibility.
Refusing to play at all
Turning up to the platform on your own terms is like bringing a tennis racket to football practice — principled, and you are no longer in the game. No attention means no message.
Preaching what you do not live
Scott's own test: there is no point claiming lean 365 while being fat 365. The gap between the message and the visible life destroys the standing that made anyone listen.
Is it for you?
Best for
Creators with a substantive message stuck on a platform that rewards image over substance.
Not ideal for
Anyone unwilling to meet a platform's surface expectations at all, or who finds the compromise corrosive.
From the transcript
“We have to play the game... you've got to slowly give people what I'm learning.”
“I can't exactly show my mind on a picture, but I try to show what my mind's saying or what my mind's learnt.”
“If I just done that now, people would go, Leon's lost the plot. And no one would listen to me and what I'm trying to…”
From the episode
How To Use Your Influence - Leon Scott - #052
Leon Scott