Deep in brain storm and looking at strategic vision with my business this morning, it finally hit me.
The single phrase that distills what I am doing and building into a single simple idea, “attention capitalist.”
I already own the domain www.AttentionCapitalist.com, as well as a few others that are related.
Here’s the basic concept.
I haven’t shared this formula for free with very many people, so to post it publically is new.
The world has gone through several different economic ages, eras or revolutions. Call them what you will, but each age had a distinct comodity that defined the power and the players of its time. The game we play in life and economics always has been and always will be a game of power, trust, and control. However, never before in the history of man kind has a society actually lived, operated, and worked looking directly at the actual end goal as the core comodity of it’s time.
We went from the renaissance, to the agricultural era, to the industrial era, in each phase the commodity was different. In the agricultural era for example, if you wanted to be wealthy you had to get land, and farm it. In the industrial era, you had to get a factory, and make stuff. In each era, there was a core commodity and a few players who understood it’s power and how to control it. Andrew Carnegie controlled the steel in the industrial era and he became wealthy beyond all imagination because it was at the heart of production power at the time.
That comodity today, in the “information age” is attention.
I would argue that we live in the “attention era.” More than ever before, the number of eye balls you have access to and what those eyeballs are capable of, and how much they trust you determines you wealth, your power, influnce, etc.
The amazing thing about an attention based economy is that it is both dynamic, and decentralized.
Meaning, you’ll never be able to control all of it, or have a complete monopoly, politicians, kings, and rulers have tried for centuries and they alwasy fail. That an attention economy is dynamic means that it is fluid and ever changing. Yes there are big players who get it, Google, Facebook, and you tube come to mind, but they are not solely in charge, they are just a part of the puzzle.
This may or may not make sense to you and that’s ok. If it provokes some thought and you have real interest, I’m very interested in talking to you about it.
Just understand this, never before has the entire value distribution line been so compressed to the point that any product or service’s value is directly tied to the attention it can generate, and the attention it costs to sell it.
I could ramble for a long time about this, but let me share the secret formula. This may open some ideas for you and make things more real.
This is based on the premise that attention is the core comodity of our time that determines basically everything in the game of value control and value creation. Upon that premise I suppose that an attention asset or an even better way of looking at it is an influence asset, is the core asset class of our time. The more of these you have, and the more valuable they are will determine your overall wealth, power and ability to create and exchange value in today’s world.
Just like real estate value varies based on many dimensions like location, zoning, quality and size. There is a simple formula that can be applied to any attention asset that you might acquire or create. Here it is.
V = A (T +Mv)
Value = Attention X (Trust + Monetary value)
And, I’ll just leave it at that. If that get’s your brain boiling, I want to talk to you.
I promise the next post will be more funny or inspirational, or light, or just a simple way for you to make more money. But I had to get this one out.
