Housekeeping note: I enabled comments in case you wanted to leave one on a post. Don’t feel obligated to, but I’d love to hear your thoughts, even if you think I’m wrong (I frequently am). h/t to my friend Dave for suggesting this.

When I came up with the name of this blog, I didn’t really consider that Cetacean is a hard word to pronounce because I’d never actually said it out loud and didn’t think I would any time soon. 

However, my friend Kai over at the Daily Churn has been kind enough to shout me out multiple times on his podcast. In his most recent episode, he quipped that Chasing Crustaceans rolls off the tongue better (he is right), and would be a good blog name for a theoretical partner blog about more shrimp-y churning activities.

So in an ode to the shrimp, crabs, lobsters and others that make up the crustacean family, I’m going to zoom out a bit and talk at a high level about some of the soft skills that made a difference for me in moving from somewhere in the intermediate realm to somewhere in the advanced realm. I think they go in a somewhat sequential order. 

Being proactive

This is the single most important thing for a shrimp to do, full stop. Regardless of whether you’re able to finagle your way into a private chat discussing big plays, nobody is going to want to spoon feed you the answer to something you would be able to easily figure out on your own. 

You know what’s not a ton of fun? Reading through a backlog of months (if not years) of discussion on reddit, Flyertalk, or a private group. But you know what else isn’t fun? Losing a lot of money because your play died due to overexposure, someone calling the bank, etc. 

There’s a misconception that the community is unfriendly to beginners. That isn’t really true, but the perceived frustration comes from answering the same easily answered questions over and over again from people who weren’t proactive. 

I understand how this happens though – in the last few years, churning has exploded even more into the public eye and there are Instagram influencers everywhere writing what amounts to old school direct response copywriting to try and get you to open whatever card is paying the highest affiliate link. 

I feel for the people that are coming into this blindly and looking to get better at it – I’m just saying it will work out much better if you research as much as possible before asking a question. Most people like to help if they can tell that has happened. 

Finding your group

As a result of this newfound popularity, there are more places than ever to discuss churning and MS. However, while reddit used to be the main source of discussion, the need to keep things alive drove a lot of people away from /r/churning. Nowadays, the only time you’ll see the old heads there is something like the AApocalypse or the fall of Hardbody. 

There are plenty of smaller groups out there, both paid and not. As you can imagine, there’s a decent chunk of overlap between a lot of groups, especially on a big day. But each group does have its specialties, and varying demographics and knowledge levels means they will approach things in different ways. There’s also variation in culture – some stay focused pretty much exclusively on churning and MS, others allow banter and off-topic discussion. 

It might take you some time to find the one that’s the best fit for you – like I said, there is overlap, but you’ll eventually find one that fits best. After that, you can reduce paid subscriptions if you have multiple and mute the noise from unpaid groups that aren’t aligned with your goals. 

I think finding a group (or groups) of like minded people with similar knowledge but different specialties is a great way to network and collaborate on plays. Overexposure is a bad thing, but nobody has time to probe every single possibility. Strength in (small) numbers. 

Build your network

Once you’ve succeeded at building your knowledge of the various aspects of churning and MS you’ll encounter somewhere along the way from intermediate to advanced and found the right community for you to continue to learn and grow, it’s time to start networking. 

You’ll eventually find yourself in a situation where somebody:

• Drops a breadcrumb you know a bit about
• Asks an informed question about something you know the answer to
• Provides detail like physical location, day job, MS stack or similar that show you have something in common

When these situations arise, this is a chance to build your network even more. Whether it’s asking help for the final 1% of a puzzle, helping someone with a puzzle you’ve already solved, or just making a new friend, conversations that start outside of a larger group are often mutually beneficial.

I am friends with true whales, people at a similar Orca-esque level to me, and others that are content operating at a crustacean level. There’s true value in having a diverse network of different viewpoints of what scale is. 

It’s not just about the diversity of MS spend, either. Having friends in your backyard probing similar local things is awesome, but some of the people I collaborate with closest are across the country from me.  

Hopefully this is helpful for those of you that are trying to figure out some of the next steps. Make sure you’re operating at a level that you’re comfortable at, even if it tops out at shrimp.