Chapter 7: Tribe Stacking
Three words.
Plank.
North Narra.
Control crying.
I put those three words on the screen during the 9am call and asked the room how many of them they understood.
Edward got all three. He's on the Northern Beaches, he's into fitness, and -- at the time -- he'd recently become a parent.
Almost nobody else did.
Now here's the thing. Each word on its own is already tribal. We've spent the last four chapters on this.
Plank, to a fitness person, is a specific movement. A core hold. A benchmark. To a tradie from the Beaches, it's a piece of wood -- something you'd pick up at Bunnings. You've created selection the moment you use it. That's the directional meaning concept from Chapter 3 -- same word, different worlds, the tribe determines the direction.
North Narra is North Narrabeen -- a suburb on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. If you've never been to the Beaches, you've got nothing. If you have, you can picture the lagoon, the surf, the specific stretch of Pittwater Road.
Control crying is a baby sleep technique. You either know it because you've been through it at 3am with a screaming kid and your whole body running on nothing, or you don't. There's no middle ground.
But here's what happens when you put them together.
Each word zooms in further.
Plank. Okay -- fitness person. Millions of people.
North Narra. Wait -- fitness person on the Northern Beaches. Now it's specific. Maybe a few thousand.
Control crying. Fitness person on the Northern Beaches who's going through the specific exhaustion of early parenthood. That's not a category. That's a person.
And that person, when they see content using those three words -- in combination, in context -- they don't think "this is relevant to me."
They think: is someone watching my life?
That's what stacking does. It takes individual tribal recognition signals and compounds them. Each word is a zoom. Each zoom gets you closer to describing one specific person's exact world. And the closer you get, the harder they stop.
The suburb. The street. The house.
Here's how I want you to think about this.
One tribe is like seeing your suburb.
You're driving around and you see a sign that says "CrossFit." Cool. You know you're roughly in the right area. Millions of people do CrossFit. You might glance. You might slow down a bit. But there's nothing specific enough to make you pull over.
Two tribes stacked is like seeing your street.
"CrossFit on the Northern Beaches." Now you're paying attention. That's not just a general area anymore. That's YOUR area. A few thousand people, maybe. You recognise the intersection. You slow down. You look closer.
Three tribes stacked is like seeing your actual house.
"CrossFit dad on the Northern Beaches going through his first year of parenting."
You stop dead.
That's your house. Your garden. Your mailbox. The colour of your front door. Every detail is yours. You're not in the right suburb anymore -- you're standing in front of the exact place you live.
And here's the part that people don't expect.
When you nail the tribal stack AND the internal world -- the language, the specific references, the stuff that sits inside their head at 11pm -- it's like someone's not just standing outside your house. They've walked inside. They're showing you a carousel of photos. The hallway. Your bedroom. Your kitchen. The mess on the bench from this morning. The exact brand of coffee you drink.
That's when it goes from "oh, that's relevant" to "what the actual fuck, how do you know my life?"
That's not a 30% improvement in recognition.
That's a completely different emotional response.
Primary vs secondary tribes
Here's where most people get confused about stacking.
They think niching down makes the market smaller. Like, if you go from "fitness" to "CrossFit" to "CrossFit dads on the Northern Beaches" -- you must be shrinking the pool, right? Fewer people. Smaller market. More risk.
Wrong.
Here's what actually happens.
You have a primary tribe. That's who you're actually targeting with every post. The specific person you write for. CrossFit dads.
You have a lens. That's the place or circumstance that narrows it further. Northern Beaches. First year of parenting.
And then you have secondary tribes. These are the people who share enough tribal DNA with your primary that they come to you for free. You don't write for them. You don't target them. They just show up.
Let me give you the example.
Say you're a physiotherapist. You do CrossFit. You live on the Northern Beaches. And you decide to market specifically to CrossFit dads on the Northern Beaches.
You write about the specific injuries that come from trying to maintain your training when you've got a newborn. The shoulder mobility issues from holding a baby for six hours. The back problems from the car seat. The guilt of missing the 5am session because the kid was up all night. The specific way CrossFit dads push through soreness that they probably shouldn't push through.
That's your primary market. You own it. There's literally nobody else writing that content to those people.
But then something happens.
The HYROX people show up. They're competitive-fitness-adjacent. They relate to the training culture, the physical demands, the "pushing through when life's getting in the way" thing. Their world isn't exactly CrossFit, but it shares enough DNA.
The F45 people come. Similar vibe. Group fitness, intensity, community.
The Strava runners come. Different sport, but the same obsessive tracking, the same "training around a baby" struggle.
The competitive-sport-ish parents come. The ones who aren't CrossFitters specifically but who see themselves in the broader pattern -- active people on the Northern Beaches who are going through early parenthood and trying to keep their identity intact.
You wrote for the primary. The secondary came for free.
Your market isn't smaller. It's bigger. Because adjacent tribes flow in. They share enough tribal DNA that your content resonates even though it wasn't written for them specifically.
This is the thing nobody tells you about niching. The specificity doesn't shrink the market. The specificity is what creates the gravitational pull that brings adjacent tribes in.
You write for one. You attract many.
Evan
One of the clearest examples of tribe stacking I've seen on LinkedIn is Evan. We can show you his profile.
Evan helps Canadian university students land $100,000 consulting roles -- graduating in 2026 or 2027.
Look at that sentence carefully.
Canadian. That's place.
Graduating 2026 or 2027. That's circumstantial -- a specific cohort, a specific timeline, a specific anxiety about the job market at a specific moment.
$100K consulting role without a 4.0 GPA. That's chosen. Consulting is a professional tribe. But specifically: people who are smart and switched-on but not the highest grade-pointers. That's a very specific chosen identity within the consulting-aspirant world. "Without a 4.0" is an identity statement -- the specific pride and slight defensiveness of someone who's ambitious but not a grade-gamer.
Three tribes. All congruent. All pointing at the same person.
And when Evan puts out a lead magnet post?
A thousand comments.
Not from the vague set of people who are broadly interested in careers. From every Canadian university student who is exactly his person.
Now here's the primary-secondary thing in action. Evan writes for Canadian students targeting consulting. But the American students in similar programs see enough of themselves in his content that they engage too. The 2025 grads who are one year ahead -- they still relate. The people targeting investment banking instead of consulting -- adjacent enough. The secondary tribes flow in.
Because every word in his content says: I'm talking to you. Specifically you.
And they stop before they've thought about it.
The Steven Bartlett competition test
Here's a diagnostic that'll tell you immediately if you've stacked enough.
Ask yourself: could this content have been a Diary of a CEO episode?
Steven Bartlett has a massive platform. Millions of followers. Excellent production. If you've been on LinkedIn for more than five minutes you've probably seen a clip. Something like "The Mindset Hack Every Millionaire Uses" or "5 Habits That Changed My Life." Big topics. Big production. Broad appeal.
Now think about your content.
If what you're writing could have come from him -- if it's on the same topics at the same level of generality -- you're not competing on ground you can win. Because when someone's choosing between your post and his, they'll choose his every time. More followers. Better production. Same insight. You lose.
The only way to win is to go somewhere he can't follow.
Let me explain kite surfing for a second, because this matters for the example.
Kite surfing -- or kiteboarding -- is a water sport where you're pulled by a large power kite across the water on a board. Different from wing foiling, which we talked about in Chapter 3 with Edward. In wing foiling you hold the wing in your hands. In kite surfing, the kite is attached to you via a harness and control lines, and it's up in the air, sometimes 20 metres above you. The kite generates huge power from the wind, and you use it to ride and jump. Popular at beaches with consistent wind. The Northern Beaches of Sydney has some great spots for it.
Here's the thing about kite surfing though. The learning curve is brutal. First six months you're crashing constantly. Getting dragged through the water. Losing the kite. Doing the walk of shame back up the beach. Getting tangled in your lines. Watching other people glide past you while you're face-down in the shallows for the fourth time in twenty minutes. It's humbling in a way that most sports aren't, because the ocean doesn't care how coordinated you are on land.
Now imagine Edward writes this:
"Mindset for kite surfers on the Northern Beaches in their first six months."
Steven Bartlett will never write that. He doesn't know that world. Even if someone on his team tried to research it, they'd use the wrong words, miss the specific details, sound like a tourist. They'd get the kite surfing bit technically right and the Northern Beaches bit completely wrong. Or they'd nail the location but miss the specific emotional texture of those first six months -- the frustration, the obsession, the way you watch kite surfing videos at midnight even though you can barely stay on the board.
That's the gap.
Edward doesn't need to beat Steven Bartlett. He needs to write for people Steven Bartlett will never write for.
And in that gap -- in my data -- you get 13.6 times the inbound leads relative to generic content at the same follower count.
Not because you're a better writer. Because you're the only one standing there.
The congruence gate
Here's the catch.
Not all stacking works.
When two tribe types in your stack are pulling in different directions -- representing worlds that don't naturally intersect -- you don't just fail to multiply. You lose ground. The Niche Scoring Bible applies a congruence penalty of 0.75x for combinations that don't fit.
But here's where it gets more nuanced than "orthogonal = bad."
Direction matters. Which tribe is the primary target and which is the cultural layer?
"CrossFit coaches who do financial planning."
That's two professions bolted together. Neither serves the other. CrossFit has a culture -- physical, community-based, proud of its differences from mainstream fitness. Financial planning has a completely different culture -- professional, credential-based, conservative in presentation. These two worlds don't naturally share people. You can't write content that honours both cultures simultaneously. Try and you sound like a tourist in each.
That's incongruent.
But flip it.
"Financial planners who do CrossFit."
Now the direction is clear. Financial planners are the TARGET. That's who you're writing for. CrossFit is the cultural layer -- it adds recognition, adds texture, adds a secondary identity that makes the content feel less generic. A financial planner who scrolls past your content and sees CrossFit references woven in thinks wait, this person is like me. The CrossFit isn't a second profession. It's a tribal signal layered on top of the primary audience.
That COULD work. Because the direction is clear.
Even better: "Aussie financial planners getting the train or the metro into the CBD every day, working out of an office on Castlereagh Street or George Street."
That's congruent. Profession plus place. They naturally overlap. The same person is both things at once.
Here's the key distinction.
You are probably a member of a lot of tribes. You might be a parent, a CrossFitter, a Strava runner, into knitting, into puzzles, a dog owner, a coffee snob, someone who grew up on the Northern Beaches and never really left. You have many tribal affiliations.
Not all of them go into your stack.
You pick the ones that are congruent with your primary target audience. The ones where the direction makes sense -- where one tribe is the audience and the others add recognition and cultural depth.
The congruence test is simple.
Does one person naturally belong to all of these tribes at once?
Canadian university student who wants a consulting job and is graduating in 2026? Absolutely. That's one person with three simultaneous identities.
CrossFit coach who specialises in financial planning? Weird. Two different jobs, two different cultures. Cognitive dissonance.
CrossFit dad on the Northern Beaches going through first-year parenting? One person. One life. Three layers that are all true at the same time.
A two-layer congruent stack beats a three-layer incongruent one every time.
How to build a congruent stack
Start with your chosen tribe.
This is the primary. The professional or identity tribe that defines who you're actually targeting. The thing they've trained for, qualified in, or built their career around. Who is your person? What do they call themselves at a party? Run the "I am a ___" test from Chapter 3.
Write down the five most insider words in that world.
Then ask: what circumstance are they in right now?
Not a background circumstance. The active one. The one that shapes their daily experience right now -- a stage of life, a transition, a challenge that was handed to them. New parent. First year in business. Just got licensed. About to graduate. Going through a career change. The thing that's dominating their headspace.
Write down five words from that world.
Then ask: what's the place they're shaped by?
Physical or digital. A specific geography or a specific corner of the internet. Where do they live? Where do they gather? What place has gotten into them?
Write down five words.
Now check for congruence. Do these three worlds naturally coexist in a single person? Can you picture one real human being who is all three at once?
If yes -- you've got your stack.
If any layer feels forced -- like you're bolting it on because it's a popular niche, not because it's real -- cut it.
Here's the other thing. There are tribes that are part of your personal identity and tribes that are part of your professional identity. You might be a CrossFitter, a parent, a surfer, a dog owner -- those are personal. You might be a physiotherapist, a consultant, a recruiter -- those are professional. Not all of them belong in your stack for your business.
The physio example in full:
Primary tribe: CrossFit dads. That's who you're writing for. Every post.
Lens: Northern Beaches. That's where they are. That's the place that narrows it.
Content: written from inside CrossFit culture, parenting exhaustion, and Northern Beaches life. The 5am sessions at the box. The B-Line ride into the city when you've had three hours of sleep. Control crying at 2am and then trying to snatch 70kg the next morning. The specific tension between wanting to maintain your training and wanting to be a present parent.
Secondary audience: HYROX people. F45 people. Strava runners. Competitive fitness people on the Northern Beaches who share enough DNA. They come for free.
You own the primary. The secondary flows in.
That's not a small market. That's a market with a gravitational centre.
Micro-celebrities and the specificity within specificity
Here's something that matters as well.
Even within a tribe, there are layers.
If you pick "CrossFitter" -- that's already specific compared to "fitness person." But men doing CrossFit versus women doing CrossFit is different. The culture is different. The conversations are different. The specific insecurities are different. Teens doing CrossFit versus the 50-year-old parents who may not do RX -- completely different experience. The competitive athlete who's trying to qualify for the Games versus the person who shows up three times a week because they like the community -- different worlds within the same world.
There are micro-celebrities within each layer. Cultural rules. Language that shifts depending on which sub-tribe within the tribe you're in.
The stack creates specificity within an already specific tribe.
That's why "CrossFit dad on the Northern Beaches in his first year of parenting" hits harder than "CrossFitter." Not just because it's more narrow. But because within CrossFit, a dad in his first year of parenting is having a specific version of the CrossFit experience that other CrossFitters don't fully share. The 5am alarm hitting different when you've been up since 2am. The guilt of choosing the gym over sleep. The way your body feels different now because recovery is shot.
The stack isn't just about combining tribes. It's about zooming into the specific version of that person's life that nobody else is writing about.
The five-word test
Here's the practical diagnostic. And this connects back to something from earlier.
In Chapter 3 we talked about the one-word test. Say one word to a tribe member. Watch what happens. "Fran" to a CrossFitter. "BQ" to a marathon runner. "PE stamp" to a structural engineer. One word. One world.
The five-word test is the stacked version.
Pick five words -- one from each tribe type in your stack, and a couple from the overlap between them. The spaces where the tribes intersect. The words that only exist because of the specific combination.
Now say those words out loud to someone you think is your ideal client.
One after another. Just the words. No context.
Watch what happens.
If they start nodding and filling in the gaps -- if their face changes before you've finished the list -- you've got a stack.
If they look slightly confused and wait for you to explain each word -- you haven't found the intersection yet.
The words need to fire before the explanation arrives.
That's the test.
For Evan: "Canadian, consulting, 2026, GPA" and watch a specific Canadian student's whole world activate.
For Bill Krell: "PE stamp, $8M projects, licensed in five states" and watch every structural engineer stop.
For Beck: say "cotton" and "evokeAG" and "AgForce" and watch every rural ag person in Australia recognise their world.
For our physio: "snatch, B-Line, control crying, 5am" and watch every CrossFit dad on the Northern Beaches feel something shift in their chest.
The one-word test from Chapter 3 tells you if you've got a tribe. The five-word test tells you if you've got a stack. One word identifies a world. Five words identify a life.
The stack works when the words don't need translation.
Why this is your unfair advantage (and why AI makes it bigger)
Here's where I need to correct something that a lot of people get wrong about stacking and AI.
People think stacking is invisible to AI. That AI can't write tribal content. That the specificity has to come entirely from your head.
I disagree.
All the research I did on each of these niches in this book -- CrossFit, BJJ, Garmin runners, structural engineers, rural ag, wing foiling, kite surfing -- I did it using AI. You just gotta know to ask the right question.
Here's the truth.
Stacking makes AI useful.
If you tell ChatGPT "write LinkedIn content for fitness people" -- you'll get something generic. Technically correct. Sounds like every other fitness post on the platform. Because you gave it nothing specific to work with. AI without a stack writes generic content. That's what it defaults to.
But if you tell it "write for CrossFit dads on the Northern Beaches who are training for HYROX, in their first year of parenting, struggling with the 5am sessions because the baby was up all night" -- AI can produce something decent. Actually, kind of good. Because you've given it enough specificity. You've given it a world to write from. You've given it constraints, and constraints are what make writing land.
The stack IS the prompt.
Without the stack, AI writes like Steven Bartlett's team researching a topic they don't know. With the stack, AI becomes a content engine. Because the specificity does the heavy lifting.
Here's the distinction.
Your job is knowing WHAT to stack. That comes from lived experience. From being inside the worlds. From knowing that "control crying" and "North Narra" and "plank" intersect in a specific person's life. No AI can figure that out from scratch. You have to have been in those worlds -- or at least close enough to them that you know where the intersections are.
AI's job is PRODUCING content from that stack at scale. Taking your lived tribal knowledge and turning it into posts, lead magnets, DM templates, all of it. Faster than you could write it yourself. And because you've given it the specific world, it can actually write with density instead of surface-level generality.
You know what's funny? The people who say "AI will kill content creators" are the same people writing generic content that AI can already replace. The people with a real stack? AI makes them more dangerous, not less. Because they've got the tribal knowledge that AI needs as input, and AI gives them the production capacity they've never had.
The stack is your prompt. The lived experience is the input. AI is the engine.
Without the stack, you're competing against every generic post on the platform.
With it, you're the only one writing for your specific person.
The paint job
Here's where this connects to something bigger.
The Niche Scoring Bible has a house diagnostic. We'll get into it properly in Chapter 10, but I want to give you the preview now because it maps directly onto what we've been talking about.
The house has layers.
The paint job -- the outside of the house -- is identity match. It's what strangers see from the street. The colours. The garden. The mailbox. The style. It's the tribal stack. It's what makes someone driving past go "wait, that's my house."
The window is language match. Can they see themselves reflected when they look in?
Inside the house -- that's offer viability, cultural match, the deeper stuff.
And the person standing at the door? That's carrier trust. That's you.
What we've been doing this whole chapter is working on the paint job.
One tribe is a generic paint colour. Could be anyone's house. You glance. Maybe.
Two tribes is your suburb's style. The colour palette, the garden type, the architecture that tells you "this is Northern Beaches, not inner-west." You slow down.
Three tribes is your exact house. Your colour. Your garden. Your mailbox. Your front door. You stop because you recognise it from across the street.
And the carousel -- going inside the house, seeing the hallway, the kitchen, the mess, the specific brand of coffee on the bench -- that's what happens when you nail not just the identity (the stack) but also the language, the culture, and the trust. That's Chapters 8 through 10 territory.
Chapter 7 is about getting the outside right. Making someone stop because they recognise their own house from the street.
The next chapter is where we go inside the house.
We've been looking at it from the outside -- the tribes, the stack, the recognition from across the street. Chapter 8 is where we measure how deep your content actually goes.
It's called the Meaning Score.
Next: Chapter Eight -- The Meaning Score