You are the product! until…

You start selling yourself.

If you don’t somebody else will sell you.

See when you are in consumption mode – the platform you are on sells you to advertisers. It sells your attention. Think about it when you spend four hours inside YouTube.

You, I and 2 billion others help Facebook make more than $40 billion in a year. Facebook sells our collective identities as units and makes this money. Every time you see or click on an ad on the platform you sell your attention.

This attention is precious. You can use it for your own growth, for the betterment of people and the world around you. You can do it by selling your own ideas and creations.

Is There A Better Way?

It is tough to ignore the pull of these platforms but we can limit it and use them to our advantage.

How?

Don’t fight with will power when on these platforms. You’ll spend too much mental energy.

Instead, work to understand a platform. Become a superuser.

Master its paid variants because you need to pay money if you want to use these for your own benefit.

No platform exists forever. While it lasts you can leverage it for your benefit and promote our work.

On LinkedIn and YouTube, you still have a chance to find good distribution as a free user. On Facebook and Instagram paid ads are must if you want to leverage them well.

Use these platforms as tools to distribute your ideas and run experiments to see what sticks.

Coming back to selling yourself.

How To Sell Yourself

Start by picking a worthy goal.

A goal that serves your current reality and circumstances. One that also moves you in the direction of new realities, your dreams.

Create something aligned with that goal.

Then go on these platforms to sell what you make or start. A poem, a book, a startup, a cause. Once there tell whoever cares to listen – Hey! I made this come take a look.

Don’t be a jerk.

Be mindful, be generous and share with an intent to help others.

Now go!

There is never a dearth of ideas to start.

Remember we are living in an attention economy. Whoever has the attention wins.