Last week Skrillex won a Grammy and during his speech he said success is something you attract not chase. Which got me thinking about the attention economy and my own journey building a brand and creating content online.
Lately I’ve been having hour long discussions with my good friend Noah about how we can figure out how to get YouTube to work for us and grow online.
If we were to look at the market leaders you’d think you’d have to create the most high budget, crazy concept ideas. Mr Beast has been on dozens of podcasts by now and has driven the point home that retention is so important when it comes to growing online. Which may be true to an extent however this has only led to the rise of hyper cut videos that feel hollow.
I’ve become tired and so have millions of other people with creators online shouting for our attention. You can’t go anywhere online without having someone try to sell you an ad, product or course every five seconds. It’s like if you’ve ever travelled to somewhere like Bali or Thailand and tried walking down the street only to have shop owners harass you demanding you visit their store.
And yes, sometimes you might take a look but eventually you just get fed up and start ignoring these people screaming at you for your attention. Since at the end of the day most of the time it’s a low quality knock off these people are trying to sell you.
However, there are stores that exist that have created a unique experience for their customers. Take Supreme for example, you don’t see them outside their store begging for you to check out what they’re doing. What they’ve done on the other hand is created a place of discovery.
What it comes down to I believe is the fact that neediness repels and abundance attracts. The same applies to relationships. When you’re secure in who you are and what you do you are okay with letting people go if they don’t align with you. Whereas if you’re begging someone to be in a relationship with you it’s quite obvious that the other person is going to run the other direction.
I’m hopping across examples here on purpose to demonstrate the universal idea of attracting success instead of chasing it. In the second half of Skrillex’s Grammy acceptance speech he mentioned that he wasn’t trying to make a hit, but simply make music he and his friends loved.
Which brings me to the importance of authenticity. People online aren’t stupid, we’ve all been watching content endlessly everyday for many years now which has made our internal bullshit meters quite good. We instinctively know when someone is coming off as being inauthentic.
One of my biggest inspirations is Casey Neistat who will literally go and make a video on anything from climbing a mountain, to running a marathon to testing out the Apple Vision Pro. These are all things authentic to him and he’s not trying to be anyone he isn’t.
By doing what you enjoy and ignoring trends you are able to carve your own lane. I plan on taking this hypothesis into 2024 and seeing what I’m able to do with my own content. I don’t want to attract everyone just the right ones.