This week I turned 24.

A year of massive growth, moving away from home and my usual comforts.

Moving to a new football club. 5 hours away from everything and everyone I know.

A conscious choice though, to focus on myself and my priorities.

6 months of living in new surroundings and around new people can be a curse which ends up being a blessing. Starting from scratch allows for reinvention.

A breakout from a life-cycle, on unconscious auto-pilot.

It has allowed me to strip my days away from football down to the bare bones.

This left me plenty of spare time. As the saying goes:

'The devil finds work for idle hands'... I would find myself constantly distracting myself from the fact I was alone.

Scrolling social media, watching YouTube, Netflix, spending the majority of my evenings in the gym listening to podcasts. I would consume for hours on end thinking I was making progress, but at the end of the day feeling a sense of overwhelm.

I realised I needed an outlet for what I was learning, a medium to extract my ideas and try to refine them.

This is when I came across Dan Koe.

I found his ideas on twitter. They spoke to me, grab my attention.

They were thoughts I couldn't stop thinking about.

I knew there was more for me.

But I couldn't put my finger on it.

Until he mentioned his 'One-Person Business Model'.

Being able to earn an income doing what you love. Monetising your mind through creativity and writing.

He mentioned how he made over $600,000 dollars in a year by writing 2 hours everyday. Information I wasn't aware of.

I would then see creators on my feed talking about making £10/20k per month by creating YouTube videos and TikTok. By writing blogs online and tweets on X.

The dots started to connect: I saw common themes.

• Gary V pushing content creation.

• Naval in his famous twitter thread 'How To Get Rich: (Without Getting Lucky):

Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both. You will be unstoppable.'

'If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.'

• Jordan Peterson empathising The Power Of Writing.

‘If you can think, speak and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way.’

We are in a new digital age

Most people are still unaware of the possibilities to create an income by simply posting content online in a certain way.

For so long I had my head in the sand. I knew at some point I needed to take the jump. So these are my first steps.

This opened up new possibilities.

I wanted a piece of the freedom.

But I didn't know where to start.

Instead of confronting this notion, I decided not to take action and continue to go about my life, I opted out. I thought this was unethical, life shouldn't be seen as a game.

The problem is: Once you are exposed to new information that can transform your life.

There's no going back.

You can't ignore it.

Your freedom is determined by your creative ability.

Our future has shifted.

Technology is slowly phasing out our labour jobs to robots and machines.

One study estimates that about 400,000 jobs were lost to automation in U.S. factories from 1990 to 2007.

Automation will replace plenty of jobs. Leaving only the creative tasks for us humans.

The creator economy is expected to double from $250 billion to $480 Billion in the next five years.

Do not be alarmed. This is a great win.

We are tapping back into the strengths of our ancestors.

We humans posses a huge creative power and that is what has made as the dominant species.

And you are a content-creator whether you water it down to a new-age internet job or not.

You write texts to your friends. You persuade peers to go out for drinks on a Saturday.

You are doing everything 'content creators' do. With a fraction of the leverage, and a fraction of the reward.

You already have accounts on all different platforms.

Do you mindlessly scroll social media without giving anything in return?

You are actively denying the world your knowledge by doing so.

You have information, you have experience and you have skills that can help people a few steps behind where you are.

This was me. I never saw myself with any creativity.

At school, I favoured Maths and Science over English and Art.

I prefer definite answers.

At school, you're taught what to think and how to answer. Not how to think and what to answer.

You are an act of creation by your parents. A miracle.

Being able to create, no matter how small is what makes humans thrive.

Creators get outsized returns.

Building Digital Real Estate

As a teen, I remember coming back from school. Dropping off my bags and playing my Xbox. Sometimes, from the minute I got back to the minute I slept I would play. Only coming up for breath for dinner. It was an addiction for sure, I didn't have the awareness to know at the time. I was compelled to play.

Looking back on that time, the games I would be hooked on all involved a common theme:

Building.

Minecraft, Fortnite, FIFA Ultimate Team, Grand Theft Auto.

They all incorporate building as the main theme of the games. That's what makes these games so compelling and addictive to play.

Building is addictive, we all have it in us to build.

We've always built tools for survival.

We built tools to help us hunt and eat.

We built tools to defend ourselves from predators.

We built planes to allow us to travel the world in a few hours.

We built fires to keep us alive in harsh winters and to cook our meals.

The quantum leaps of human advancement are the result of what we've built.

There will always be a necessity for physical building.

Build digital real estate.

Think of your audience as the foundation on which your house can be built.

Nurturing your audience on your views and attracting like-minded people is the best way for this.

Write what you're interested in.

In a way that is persuasive.

Use short form content as an army of digital workers you can send out to attract people like you.

You build digital real estate by understanding the content game:

• How to write

• How to tell stories.

• How to build a network

• How to capture attention

• How to dominate one platform

• How to balance depth and virality

• How to distribute your content multiplatform.

Use short form content as an army of digital workers you can send out to attract people like you.

Use longer form content to build depth and authority.

Your Attention Portfolio

Attention is the first step.

Attention is the modern day currency.

The more you gather. The more success. Being in the forefront of people's mind is crucial.

A 30-second SuperBowl commercial costs $7 million. The companies that pay for these commercials understand how valuable collective attention is.

You have to weaponise this.

You need to start making contributions into your attention portfolio. The investments you make now can be small, but overtime they compound into huge sums. A single tweet of value everyday compounds into a trustworthy character you will likely buy from.

Your ability to gather attention is what will separate you from everything.

You must learn to capture attention.

First you must learn to master your own.

You control your destiny by controlling your own attention. With your own attention mastered.

You are able to write about ideas that can change the perspective of others and collectively raise the society.

To summarise:

1. We’re in a new digital age.

2. Creativity Will Earn Your Freedom.

3. Build Digital Real Estate.

4. Learn how to master attention capture.

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Thank you for taking the time to read. I really appreciate it.

Have a great week, James.