Imagine a large stadium at night. Maybe it’s for baseball. Might be for football. Maybe it’s a large racetrack for NASCAR. So here is the question… How do you light it? You want to invite thousands of adoring fans, but they have to be able to see the action.
You could install a giant 1,000,000 watt light bulb in the middle of the stadium, but that wouldn’t be very practical and the light wouldn’t reach the edges. The glow would blind your audience, and half the light would just go up in the sky. Not an option.
You could install thousands of 100-watt incandescent bulbs at the top of the stadium, but the reach of a hundred watt bulb is just a few feet. The top of the stadium would glow, but the field would be dark. Here again, not a viable option.
You could install a few big spotlights, like in a theater house. Someone could aim them at the field, but this wouldn’t work well for a multiplayer game. You would have the reach with the light, but only part of the stadium would be lit at any one time. Not a good option, either.
The Best Option
The best way to light a stadium is to get a set of long reach spotlights and cluster them in groups. Multiply these group of bulbs all around the top of the stadium, with each group aimed at a different part of the field. Now you have full coverage of light. You have depth with the spotlights, and width with the placement of many bulbs. Now you have full coverage. Now you can seat 60,000 people and have everyone be able to see the action, without being blinded by the light from the other side. And since they are in groups, you have control. You can turn individual groups up or down and aim them different ways, depending on the event.
This is the concept of deep and wide.
In life, we can use this concept to make a great impact.
Imagine you want to start a church or non-profit organization. You start with a small group of focused people. This group has depth. Now just multiply this group by 10, then by 100, then by a thousand. Now you have width. Now you have a mega church or a worldwide organization like Toastmasters or Rotary. The concept of multiplied small groups or clubs is a powerful one. You have focus and depth with small group leadership. You have the width and diversity of multiple groups, and there is an overall leadership that guides the groups within the organization.
Imagine the Possibilities.
Let’s say you want to launch a new book. How do you get the word out? You could tell everyone on your Facebook page, but like a 100-watt bulb, you wouldn’t have much reach. You could tell a popular blogger in your genre about it, and they could put the word out to their thousands of followers. Now you have depth. Now all you have to do is tell 100 similar bloggers the same thing. Now you have depth and width, with hundreds of thousands of people hearing about your book. Focus this launch to a few days and you’ve got a concentrated message going out at once. That’s how you hit the bestseller list.
This is how popular authors like Michael Hyatt and Jeff Goins did it. They formed a group of like-minded bloggers on Facebook who were willing to get the word out. Then they set a launch date and offered everyone an incentive to buy their book during launch week. When launch day came, hundreds of thousands of people heard about the book. Since these were all people who followed bloggers in the same genre, they were ideal clients to buy the book. Within hours, the titles rocketed to the top 100 on Amazon.
This same technique can be used to sell products by bringing in affiliate sites who get a commission for selling your product. This is how Amazon and other large companies get the word out.
Deep and Wide: The Bottom Line
So here is the bottom line. If you want to fill a stadium full of people to hear your message, buy your product, or like your cause, you’ll want to use the concept of deep and wide. Find focused groups of people who have depth and desire, and multiply them by 10, 100 or 1,000. Offer them an incentive to get involved and you just may fill a stadium… Launch this multiple times, and your message spreads.
Deep and wide is how you truly can make an impact.