But before I roll the video, Jacob Paulsen called me up to call me out about the last post.

He said he didn’t believe for a minute that the next post would be funny, or entertaining… So here it goes, if you need something to laugh about watch this, then go be productive and makes something awesome.

(P.S. I actually think the most productive thing about having people work with you is to take breaks together, I’m guessing that if we spent more time watching you tube videos, taking quick breaks to play ping pong or go get something to eat, and then getting back to work and letting each other work on their own, that we’d be more productive.  It’s just a hunch though.)

Now for the comedy of the week:

Now for the seriousness… Why You Can’t Work At Work…

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.

The perception of “being successful,” from the outside in. Which doesn’t really matter, except that it does influence wether or not you think you are successful, and that changes your results, drastically.

THE 2 THINGS:

1- Systems
2- Skills

Systems are everything really. Your habits are systems you install in your subconscious. From more of a tangible business perspective as an entrepreneur in both your business and your personal life your systems will largely determine your success.

Skills:

I think it’s obvious but the critical things that make your life or your business go… that make it succeed, is largely determined by your skills. And skills are learnable.

The first person to teach me that was Brian Tracy, and it was one of the simplest, yet most empowering and important insights I’ve ever been given.

Skills like learning how to make a sale, how to generate a lead, how to write a headline, how to find out what people want, which types of questions to ask in an interview.

The list goes on and on. I’ll make this promise. Everyone you see that has a lot of success, has both of these things in place. They have systems, they are always working on improving, and they’re always acquiring and improving their skills and the skills of the people all around them.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT, OUTSOURCE FORCE… THIS WON’T LAST LONG

– Andrew James

I had a mind blowing mini-mastermind strategy session with Spencer Shaw (creator of Paid in 14 Days) yesterday.

As we were scheming up new marketing tactics and ideas, Spencer started to talk to me about some of his coaching students, and marketers in general, and a big problem or trap we all fall into.

“They want to give away SOOOOOOO much stuff, and they don’t realize that what they are giving away could be their first product and they could be making money by now.”

I saw this mistake in myself and see it in others all the time.

The fatal flaw has everything to do with misunderstanding this law of value.  What it creates in marketing, is that portion of the list, the traffic, the members, the viewers… the audience that would have taken action but because a disconnect you created in the process, they do not.

This is how I pin point the necessary points of focus to improve advertising campaigns.  We look at key words, search volume, and the metrics all along the way in the process, and see where things drop off.  It’s a disconnect.

If we want to build a bigger business, a better process, and make more money making more of our prospects, customers, clients, and partners more happy, we must do our very best to create smooth processes with as few disconnects as possible and then they will feel like they have received value.  Then reciprocity can work, then the free thing you are giving away to get people in the door, is worth it.

The Law Of Value

So, “Andrew’s Law Of Value” says that:

I made a kind of funny, crazy decision a little while ago.

Limit extremely or stop completely watching TV that

doesn’t in some way inspire or motivate me.

-News… nope

-Most sitcoms… nope

-American Idol… (well the really really bad try outs, those are encouraging, but other than that, nope)

-Sports Movies and Stuff That Stretches my ideas like

Rocky, The Matrix, It’s  a Beautiful Life, Rudy, and on and on.

YES.

So, I’ve been on a bit of a Rocky kick lately, and just got done watching

Rocky IV where he battle’s “THE RUSSIAN”… Drago.

Anyway, I got to the end of the movie and saw that there was about 15-20 minutes left and “THE FIGHT” was just starting.

90% Of the movie is all the build up to the fight.  The fight that the “Boxing Movie” is supposed to be about is only a small part of it.  The rest is mostly Rocky coming to the decision to fight, getting mentally and physically ready to fight and so on.

How This Can Make You More Money

So that brings me to business.  Yes, I could end there and state the 80/20 rule an say that what you think about your bring about and stuff like that.

While that’s true, it’s not what I am going to do today.

I want to give you a real, actionable way to look at it and apply it to your business right now.

It’s in your marketing.

All about guarantees.  I’ve been doing a lot more copy writing lately, so I am listening to a lot of the good old direct mail guys.  I heard Dan Kennedy tell a story and talk forever about guarantees.

I realized that almost NO ONE uses this strategy ever… and there are some powerful ways to apply it.

Here’s a the quick video explaining it.

When I say there is NO secret, what I mean is that there
isn’t a single secret. There isn’t one principle, idea, concept, strategy,
or technique that is sure to make everything work no matter what.

To really be successful with any principle, always requires other
principles, strategies and techniques to make them work.

This is the power of AND.

It’s actually demonstrated most perfectly by the natural world with
chemistry.

Any element alone by it’s self is just that, a single element.
Only when elements are combined do we get reactions, action, things happening.
It usually requires some kind of state change to make the difference,
but the point is, no one thing alone without the other pieces is complete.

There is not one secret that makes everything work, there is a philosophy and
a series of simple things that when combined you get a result.

So, I’ve been thinking about this lately and he’s a short list of keys to the puzzle:

1- Success Psychology

2- Self awareness: Your understanding of your self, what you’re best at and what you truly want, your purpose, motives, drive, etc

3- Productivity: This is really my favorite.  Our lives are ultimately an equation of inputs and outputs.  I love to draw inspiration from natural laws of how things work.  Newton discover that ”To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”  (part of his 3 laws of motion) Every input your make, every action you take produces some kind of result. Your ability to recognize what you want and then manage your productivity (your inputs) will get you there.

4- Emotional intelligence.

All in all, this is probably an incomplete list.  I’ve kind of just figured out through my own experience that like Jim Rohn said, “there’s always about half a dozen things that all the difference.”

So that’s the big secret, that there is no secret.  It’s a combination.  Your job is to figure out all the numbers on the lock so you can open it up to what you want.

1. Bust your balls, your brain, and maybe your bank account

I don’t know anyone who’s achieved anything you’d want who hasn’t had to go through at least some of this stuff to get there

2. Leverage, momentum, and cash flow…

Aka you actually start making money

3. System Over Ride: Freedom

Outsource stuff just to see if you can or because you feel like it…

You basically don’t have to do anything but you still do you favorite stuff and anything that sounds fun.

Focus time on building, optimizing and delegating systems to people companies or other systems so you don’t have to touch them at all.  Taking you to freedom.

So this basically the pattern I see with most entrepreneurs who make it from start up to freedom.  Have you seen differently?

It will work

It is work

What do you have to be grateful for?

Don’t you realize the possibilities

Be YOU

Be YOUnique.

You are unique, and that is valuable.

Whether it’s the economy or the policies and procedures or the socialistic tendancies and trends of our society, it’s cleansing time. The weak are going to be weeded out, the roads are going to be cleared and only those with high performance engines are going to be allowed. We’re all going a lot faster.

The road is wide open to those who will open their minds.

Whatever you why really is. What ever you are really truly passionate about, that is where you’re attention needs to go.

Here’s Mine, these are the places I have true passion and empathy:

1- People that are entrepreneurs, people who have a dream, who know it is possible and who want to make a big, positive difference in the world
2- People in spiritual pain. People in lack. People who are frustrated
3- Adrenaline junkies and hippies. Snowboarders. Surfers. Skaters. Skydivers, etc. Adventure travelers.
4- Travelers and adventurers. The people who jump on a plane and all of a sudden everything seems allright.
5- Artists. Particularly photographers.

There you go that’s me.
There’s my why and my yeses and nos and frustrations and gratitudes.

Here’s the reality.

It’s going to be easy to succeed at whatever you want, but particularly your business…if you’re legitamate, honest, and sincerely want to provide real value to people.
If you really want to make it work. It can and will.

Great Book Of The Day That I Would Recommend: “The Go-Giver”

It’s actually simpler than you think…

Problem + Innovation + Marketing = Entrepreneurial Success

Just focus on a market that’s big enough, passionate enough, and that spends enough money to:

A) be worth your time

B) be profitable to you

-Andrew James