Attention, personal brand, and the shift to interest media

Executive overview

Social media no longer surfaces content from people you follow — it surfaces content based on what you're interested in. This shift from social to interest media means any creator can now reach a perfectly matched audience without a single follower.

The opportunity: relentless organic content across every platform, obsessive consistency, and a long-term brand as the only durable moat. In a world where AI accelerates everything and attention is the scarce asset, individuals who build personal brands will outcompete those who don't.

The only arbitrage you can rely on long-term is the brand you build.

The shift from social to interest media

• Four years ago social media died; feeds now deliver content based on interest, not who you follow
• A video of someone eating a banana and drinking rum and coke will reach people interested in exactly that
• Organic content posted consistently across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn can reach anyone
• Different thumbnails and hooks on each platform matter; volume and variety are the strategy
• You do not need followers to get distribution — you need relevance

Building a personal brand as a moat

• Attention has always been the asset; what changed is that small operators can now acquire it cheaply
• Prior to 1990, attention required massive ad budgets — TV, billboards, print
• Individual creators (Rogan, Mr. Beast, Bartlett) are building billion-dollar enterprises by amassing attention
• The thesis: the individual person is about to build their own empire
• AI will accelerate this — it is an accelerator for people already grinding, not a job killer

The barbell future: tech on one end, real life on the other

• Society is polarising: extreme AI/AR/VR tech on one side, in-person experiences on the other — nothing in the middle
• Events and experiential will boom over the next decade; more tickets will be sold, not fewer
• Alternative sports (sailing, new golf leagues, pickleball) are growing because social media and streaming extended their reach
• Collectibles (trading cards, comic cons, Funko/Labubu) are a major green shoot
• The winners are people living in real life and people living on the bleeding edge of tech

Building businesses across multiple companies

• Scaling to multiple companies requires turning employees into family, not just staff
• Key partners in each venture are people known for 15-20 years — trust is the infrastructure
• Managing multiple entities is like parenting multiple children: give energy to whoever needs it most
• Continuity in teams compounds like an offensive line — the longer they work together, the better
• Self-awareness is the biggest financial lever: know what you're good at before you scale

Hiring: self-esteem over insecurity

• The single most important filter: is this person secure or insecure?
• Insecurity is the seed of internal politics; it is short-term fuel that eventually burns out
• Confident people can receive candid feedback and grow; insecure people become political
• Communication capability is the second filter — everything else can be trained
• Insecurity can drive short-term results but will not sustain a healthy culture

Money, mental health, and detachment

• A healthy relationship with money means knowing it creates freedom, not self-worth
• Living within your means removes most money-related stress
• Detachment from outcomes — bank balance, company performance, personal brand — makes mental health easy to protect
• Beating yourself up for mistakes is irrational; everyone, including people on stage, is figuring it out
• Balance is not about being at every moment; it is about making the best decision available and accepting the tradeoff

On trust, collaboration, and overcoming fear

• One bad experience with a broker or partner should not shut down collaboration permanently
• Fear of being burned again limits growth more than the original betrayal did
• Do more homework on the reputation of potential partners, then take the leap
• Letting one person's bad behaviour dictate long-term strategy is giving them too much power

Intuition and staying on your own sword

• Acting on your own judgment, even when wrong, is better than acting on someone else's and being wrong
• If someone around you is right repeatedly, that is data — start listening to them more
• Being in the trenches and knowing your business deeply is the foundation of good intuition
• Dying on your own sword creates more pride and resilience than dying on someone else's

Blockchain, NFTs, and digital collectibles

• The blockchain is a ledger of proof — within a few years, every video online may be AI-generated and unverifiable
• Minting originals and establishing public addresses will matter once synthetic media is ubiquitous
• NFT markets crashed like internet stocks in 2000 — the underlying technology is real, most individual projects were always going to zero
• Crypto Punks have history; a handful of other projects will become the Jackson Pollocks of digital art
• 99% of NFTs are zero, just as 99% of sneakers, watches, and trading cards are not collectibles — but the 1% is real and significant

If you lost everything: where to start

• First skill to deploy from zero: buy something for less than you can sell it
• Flea markets, garage sales, eBay — the same instinct that built the first business
• Buying and selling is a foundational gift; everything else is built on top of it