Attention shall precede product.

The world is made up of people.

People experience friction in their lives.

That friction creates problems.

Products exist to reduce that friction.

But before products, before problems, there are people.

Which means, you never start with the product.

You never even start with the problem.

You always start with the person.

Content is how you find that person.

Content is how you attract them.

Your content creates a world.

Your world brings together people.

That world has its own problems.

Then you build products to serve that world from inside it.

You are creating the market.

Then you serve it from within.

If you build a product without an audience, you are left with holding costs.

If it’s software, you are holding development costs.

If it’s physical, you are holding inventory costs.

If it’s service, you are holding uncharged hours.

All of them are financial drag unless demand already exists.

Suppose you paid $50k to a developer last month to build a perfect app.

Right now you have no audience.

You have no ad budget.

So how do you sell it?

You are stuck holding $50k of cost.

Now imagine you ordered $5k of inventory from a manufacturer.

But you have no buyers and no reach.

You are holding dead weight.

It is the same thing.

The product does not move itself.

It needs distribution.

You either need a physical space with footfall.

Or money to run ads.

Or natural reach through an audience.

These are your only three options.

Without them, there is no business.

Only holding costs.

Every rupee earned proves that some attention existed.

That attention could be organic.

Or paid.

Or physical.

But it must exist.

For humans, it may be “I think therefore I am.”

For business, it is “they know therefore I am.”

Business exists only through recognition.

Not creation.

That is why attention is the primary and recurring cost.

Take footfall as an example.

You can build the same shop in two places.

One in the center of LA.

One in the middle of a desert.

Same building, same shelves, same branding, same employees.

But the outcomes are not the same.

One has buyers.

The other has none.

One will have higher rent than other.

You are paying for footfall.

That is the difference.

So before you build the product, build the audience.

Or build the distribution.

Because if you delay, you lose time.

And time costs money.

Selling later is more expensive than selling now.

$100 is worth more than tomorrow.

Not to mention the costs you will incur to hold it.

Every person has potential to do something big and unique.

What they lack is attention.

If you cannot generate attention.

If you cannot afford footfall.

If you cannot run ads.

Then you take a job.

You work as cog in someone else’s system that can afford or generate attention.

That is the default setting.

Because business only exists when one of those three inputs is in place.

Lean methodology says demand must exist before manufacturing.

That applies here too.

Attention must exist before the product.

Or at worst, at the exact moment of release.

Ideally not after.

In lean manufacturing, there is a also a concept called just-in-time inventory.

You do not store anything.

You get your inputs exactly when needed.

That keeps costs low.

It keeps working capital low.

But this only works if demand is already there.

You cannot time supply unless demand is predictable.

Wrong timing can lead to over stocking and holding cost.

Demand only exists when attention exists.

That is why footfall and attention are primary.

Without them, there is no revenue or terminal value.

The product sits idle.

The money stays locked.

And the business holds bags it cannot move.

Without attention, a product is itself a cost sink