A statement I hate:

Attention is the new oil.

There’s an influencer peddling this shit every 20 minutes on social media. As an early creator, I used to drink it up like a dog dying of thirst on a hot summer day.

Hell, scroll my timeline and you’ll probably find I’ve said it too.

But as you can tell, I’ve since changed my mind.

Let me explain why.

‘New oil’ gets people frothing at the mouth—eager to ‘cash in’ on the opportunity.

But you only need to brush the dust off a history book to realise the metaphor falls short.

Why?

Because 80-90% of early oil companies collapsed. Read up on Rockefeller and you realise oil was a cutthroat, cash-crabbing, winner-takes-all business.

If you approach the online game with this attitude, you’re in for a rough surprise.

Sure, the top 0.1% can treat their audience like a number on the screen because they have the volume to back it up.

But you and I?

We’re not in the oil business.

We’re in the relationship business.

And relationships require a dramatically different approach.

‘Oil cowboys’ spam generic content on social media, build low-value products with no transformations, and manipulate their audience by selling a dream.

This feels productive short term.

But they’re trading long-term reputation for short-term revenue—burning through followers and churning through customers.

Meanwhile, the writers building relationships are working quietly in the background.

They’re not chasing every ‘shiny object’—desperate for oil.

They’re committed to their craft. They’re sharing valuable stories. They’re overdelivering at every opportunity.

They’re building their empire, one fan at a time.

And many are making a killing in the process.

This is what the oil cowboys get wrong:

One fan is worth 1,000 followers.

Why?

Because a follower knows you exist, but a fan cares that you do. A follower consumes your content, but a fan raves about it. A follower might buy one product, but a fan buys them all.

This is one reason I built Magnetic Emails.

Email marketing is great fun (and great for your business). But it’s like the Wild West out here. It’s full of entrepreneurs trying to make a quick buck from their audience.

If you take a relationship-orientated approach, you can carve out a solid slice in your niche—even if you’re new to it.

…By being different to the crowd, you stand out from it.

Magnetic Emails gives you a 6-step process for taking a rough idea to engaging email in under 40 minutes.

More importantly, I show you how to pitch your business without putting off your audience, so every email builds relationships AND revenue.

If you care about serving your audience, the launch is 1st September.

You can join X people on the waitlist by clicking here.

Make sure you’re playing the right game,

Kieran