The attention game

Everybody knows that the "if you build, they will come" approach no longer works. It literally belongs to the "Field of Dreams" (if you are under 40 and want to understand the reference, it might be a good idea to watch this iconic Kevin Costner movie on Amazon Prime or Hulu.)

It's not enough to build. To win today, more than ever, we must be able to win at the attention game. And it has become increasingly hard to do it.

But it wasn't always like that.

My name is Carlos. I'm an aerospace engineer specialized in computer science, turned into a marketeer (in a pre-social networks era, when the only way to get users' attention was by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on TV commercial production and traditional media), turned into a digital entrepreneur for the past 12 years.

From 2011 to 2015, I created, led, and sold one of LatAm's first massive open online courses platforms. During that time, getting attention was a lot easier: just a bit of SEO metatags, a bit of video content, and a bit of PR to make relevant news websites point to you, and you were done! 6 months after launch, I was sitting in over a million visitors a month, and VCs were throwing money in my direction. Not even my complete inexperience made me lose. Nevertheless, although fun, the experience had its drawbacks. Learning how to manage a large team, many partners (and their egos), and many investors (and their conflicting agendas) was painful.

From 2016 to 2020, I had the opportunity to lead an unicorn in global expansion. Oh boy, that was fun! I've become a better leader and learned to build amazing teams & delegate, which made a difference. The business grew fast (in 2017, we grew 3-4% a week!), and time flew by.

One thing, though, had changed: although we were making a lot of money (in the range of tens of millions), we had to spend 20-30% of it to get people's attention on Google and Facebook. In fact, we had become addicted to it. Any attempt to change that method that resulted in reducing digital ad spending led to an immediate drop in sales. And in no time, we would put the money back, telling ourselves: "This is the only way."

Despite that, we were growing and having fun until someday, I received a call from HQ in Silicon Valley telling me that the CEO, my boss - a fantastic leader and a good friend, was fired. The new chief just dropped: "I decided to refocus the company, cut costs, and close the operations worldwide."

I tried to reason with him, over the phone and in person, in vain. But this is a topic for another post. The fact is that although I had a lot (I mean, a lot) of autonomy and felt very entrepreneurial, I wasn't in control. He was. Thus, I closed the operations and started it over again.

Over the past 3 years, I've created another edtech business I just sold. Happy ending, right? Not really. Let me explain.

With all previous experiences in my belt and many connections with great professionals, VCs, and industry leaders, I felt ready. What could possibly go wrong? I followed the playbook I've learned over the years: I raised money, assembled a great team, built a great product, and then… almost nothing. The growth was a far cry from what I had achieved previously. Trying to get people's attention was extremely hard. Trying to buy people's attention was way more expensive. Things had changed.

Ultimately, it wasn't a total disaster because we managed to sell the assets to a large player willing to monetize them. That was a no-brainer for this player, as it has over 10 million monthly visitors. It already has people's attention. For them, it's just about how to monetize the attention they already captured.

I've made some money over these years, which puts me in a comfortable position (not quite where I want to be yet, but I'm not in a hurry), but I feel unsatisfied. I feel I didn't win yet, and I believe this has to do with the fact that I didn't figure out the attention game quite yet.

Over the past month, I found IndieHackers, this amazing community, and decided my next project would be outside my comfort zone. I decided to bootstrap a business and build it in public, following what you are doing! (Which, by the way, I find brilliant!)

My first (not very original) idea was building an education website around AI. Something like Realpython.com or Geeksforgeeks.org, but niched to AI. I always liked the model of long-tail written articles to drive traffic through SEO and monetize with courses.

So, I wrote the first tutorial, quickly put a website online, and created a Twitter account to start spreading the service. My game plan was simple (so I thought): write a tutorial every 7-10 days, and post about them daily on social networks. This would be my approach to solve for the missing piece in the puzzle: how to get people's attention.

Only then I started paying more attention to the attention game. My first realization was: "oh my, it's not that easy to create content daily catered to my target audience, to drive people out of Twitter to my website." How the heck will I do that?

Then, I started to observe Twitter more closely. It's an arms race for attention. As Logan Roy said, "It's a fight for a knife in the mud."

Twitter feels like a Wild West… or a jungle. There are a lot of people selling look-how-I-transformed-my-life-now-I-will-help-you-do-the-same content and/or consultancy. To me, they all resemble Gary Vee, the first of this kind who really managed to get big. It's not a judgment, just an observation. I like the guy (and several of his copycats).

There's a second large group of entrepreneurs, which comprises people selling tools to other creators. I find this group pretty smart, as I have always loved the wisdom of "selling shovels in a gold rush."

Well, there are way more groups: entrepreneurs selling SaaS products to mid-large companies, people selling curated content, professionals trying to establish authority to sell their hours, etc. And most of them use all copywriting tricks in the book: from FOMO-generating lines to old clickbait templates.

But above all, my observation is that the most successful businesses are the ones massively churning relevant content to their target audience.

Content strategy

To win as a digital entrepreneur, we must be able to win at the attention game. And to win at the attention game, we must devise and execute a solid content strategy, preferably one that can be systematized into a content production pipeline capable of outputting several relevant content pieces a day for different channels. Why? Because it's a numbers game.

Think about it. All monumental business successes have Twitter and/or TikTok accounts churning content multiple times a day specially designed for their target audience, giving away snippets of what they will get once they purchase what their creators offer. No exceptions.

As I was reflecting on my difficulties in tweeting about my recently created tutorial website, I started to think about which kind of product would be easy to create content for. And then I realized like I was shot with a diamond right through my forehead (to use now an even better movie reference, Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now as Colonel Kurtz): some products are just easier to devise a content strategy and systematize a content production pipeline than others.

In fact, there's an even higher realization. We may have a great product strategy, with a clear vision, an undeniable unmet need, an unsatisfied target audience, and compelling competitive advantages… we might check all the boxes in our products, but if we don't have a winning game plan to draw people's attention, i.e. a solid content strategy, it's probably better to change course.

Then, I faced a hard decision: I could either grind through a hard content production process for this current project or pivot to a different project for which I can devise a clear content strategy that can be systematized in a content production pipeline. One that will be easy to output several content pieces a day across channels. For me, the second route was a no-brainer: I really want to figure out the attention game this time.

So, for me it's time to start over. But this time, really think through how to win at the attention game - and design everything around it.

I will post more about the journey in the upcoming weeks.

Cheers!