This morning I hunched over my coffee brewing station near our kitchen window.
I watched the 100% AMERICAN* grown bean fuel drip-drip-drip from its white funnel into a steamy mason jar.
I inhaled deeply, savoring the aroma o—
“Want to see the newest social media trend in Vietnam?” My wife suddenly whispered over my right shoulder.
“AYYsshheeEEE” I yelled incoherently, jerking away and nearly toppling my tower of coffee. “Where did you come from!?”
Grinning deviously, Nhu raised her phone to my face.
The looping video showed a Zoomer Vietnamese girl strutting away from the camera.
The camera angle pointed downhill, showing a long car-lined boulevard that terminated near the horizon.
Her outfit rhythmically changed to the beat of a bigly popular song from the mid-2000s—spring, summer, fall, winter.
I kept staring at the screen, waiting for the punchline.
The video looped again. I looked back at Nhu.
“Uh…so?” I asked my wife expectantly.
Nhu kept grinning. “Do you see where she’s walking?”
I scrunched up my eyes and squinted at the screen like meemaw trying to finish a crossword puzzle without her bifocals.
- Cars to the left…
- Cars in front…
- Cars in front?
…
“Is she IN the road!?” I gasped.
Now that I knew what to look for, I could clearly see this girl was IN the left lane of traffic…
Catwalking (and jaywalking) BEHIND A MOVING VEHICLE…
NEXT to another car in the right lane…
And in front of what I assume to be MORE cars.
Nhu laughed and pocketed her phone.
“That’s the new trend in Vietnam that they copied from China,” she replied. “You jump in the road between traffic and strut yourself to the top of TikTok.”
“Wooooowwwww,” I continued. “I thought we’d reached peak clout-chasing when that one girl walked off a bridge trying to take a selfie. Guess not.”
“Guess not!” Nhu echoed before prancing off to snatch Valentine’s chocolate out of the pantry.
The Ultimate Clout Chase… to Zero
We live in the age of maximum attention addiction.
People will jump into oncoming traffic for a few extra likes, a 15-second viral dopamine hit, or an algorithm’s fleeting affection.
Chasing TikTok clout isn’t a business strategy—it’s a high-speed lane to irrelevance.
You don’t own the algorithm.
You don’t own your followers.
And you sure as hell don’t own a long-term income stream if all your marketing eggs are in one digital basket.
At best? You’re dancing on borrowed time—waiting for your account to get throttled, banned, or replaced by the next trendier, shinier, more foolish fool.
What If You Redirected That Attention Into Making Money?
Let’s be clear—there’s nothing wrong with TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, or whatever today’s trendy mind-melter happens to be.
But…
- You don’t own those platforms.
- You can be kicked off at any time.
- They’re really tough to monetize.
- (AND… they could literally kill you, apparently.)
I don’t care if you’re generating leads, selling physical products, or coaching—if your entire marketing plan is just [insert social media platform], you’re in for a rude awakening.
One day. It WILL happen.
With eggs now roughly equivalent to gold nuggets, you can’t afford to put all your chicken nuggets in one basket.
So Where Do You Put Your Eggs? Nuggets? Whatever?
Into optimizing the stuff you actually control…
Like your email list.
Like your website.
Like OWNING your audience, so some Silicon Valley dork can’t yank your entire business off the internet overnight.
This is why smart marketers—business owners who actually make money online—build their email lists and optimize every single email to turn attention into revenue.
That’s what I do.
And if you want to make your email list quiver with cash, you should probably get on mine.
Join my email list now:
