This week’s book: “How to Make a Few Billion Dollars”Brad Jacobs may not be someone you’ve heard of before my previous article. In the world of publicly traded companies and CEO performance, he is a rock star, having consistently delivered outlier returns. It’s important to understand that he achieved this by creating value, not merely through financial engineering, but through creating a new solution to an industry problem. While he always applies a merger and acquisition strategy, he purchases and integrates companies that align with his broader vision. He believes his financial success is born from how he has conditioned his mind. Through his time in meditation, therapy, and learning to create, he has developed a mental framework for producing value. In his acknowledgments, he lists people along with the key life lessons they taught him. Things like:
- Listening is essential
- Infuse passion into your business
- Dream
- Dare to do new things
- Get the major trend right
- Drop the ego; just get the job done
This was all before the introduction. Already, I was impressed with the book in how he remembered and credited his mentors. Jacobs goes on to share how, while he has gotten a lot of things wrong, he has been so successful because he got the big trends right. To do this, you need to be able to see those big trends clearly and understand how they impact you—not what I think or what the industry thinks, but what you think. Here is the central question of this article: Have you created the right mental framework to assess getting the big things right in publishing? In self-education, there’s a distinction between being taught what to do and learning how to think about what to do. The latter approach gives you agency and control. Although the former may seem less risky, this isn’t always the case, and it could sacrifice your autonomy.
 Consider authors on TikTok right now. BookTok seems to be the trend, and there are all kinds of ways to learn how others are doing it. I’m not saying don’t learn from others, but to observe and evaluate if it will be right for you. It’s easy to get beguiled when we see easy organic reach on a platform and rush there. Everyone is saying this is the way to get reach and connect to readers, so we pile in, and what works slowly stops working. This is all just a replay. This is a tried and true playbook run by social media platforms. Behind the scenes, dials are being turned on TikTok, the same ones that were turned on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Amazon Kindle Unlimited. The owners of these platforms are using our content as bait to attract audiences they can monetize. You have three monetization strategies: advertising (TikTok, Facebook, Youtube), subscription (Amazon, Spotify), or cut of the sale (Amazon, TikTok). The first step as a platform owner is twisting dials to get just the right mix of content creators and content consumers stuck in the system. That’s why organic growth is so easy in the beginning. The Goldilocks mix for a platform has no creator mattering enough to disrupt it. Those at the top of the power law curve don’t matter enough if they do leave (think Joe Rogan on YouTube), but more aren’t willing to leave and risk losing their boon. The big thing to get right isn’t TikTok. It’s just the most recent trend. Brad Jacobs and I agree that the big trend is the innovation and disruption created by AI. The big thing is the massive impact AI will have on everything. Yes, it will disrupt and impact your business. The question is, can you get the big trend right? Are you thinking this through for yourself or following others? Underlying this revolution will be a continued storyline of change and uncertainty. This can get us fixated on the small things, like what other authors are or are not doing with AI or whether the market will be flooded with books (spoiler alert: that already happened).
 Instead, consider the big trends. Look where big tech is putting their money. I’ll use Amazon as an example. In Andy Jassy’s 2023 Letter to Shareholders, he telegraphs the company’s focus:
- Cutting costs on existing services.
- Increasing advertising revenues (up 24% to 47 billion dollars in 2023). This may be the single biggest mistake for customer experience, but it is a boon for shareholders.
- Building out a broadband satellite network.
- Building out AWS infrastructure for AI.
Amazon’s CEO, who came over from AWS, knows that he has to be a dominant player in the future of technology infrastructure. This means significant investment will be made in this last initiative. They are already a large investor in Anthropic. This AI arms race will be driven by current big tech as they all fight for survival in this new world. Like most revolutions, new winners will emerge from the new order, and the old status quo will not survive. So, how am I trying to navigate this major trend? By focusing on what matters in a storytelling business: great intellectual property and an audience that views that IP and their interaction with it as identity-defining. That’s it. I will measure all trends and technology against that standard, and if it helps, I will embrace it. Read: Are You Passionate About Your Brand? How Authenticity Creates Lasting Impact |