Untangibles

You may not have heard much about untangibles, but you will.

Untangibles are to intangibles as intangibles are to tangibles. Times ten.

Basically, when viewed scientifically, the universe is made up of three distinct components: matter, energy and dark energy.

Matter is tangible--and relates to a corporation's products and material assets--buildings, trucks, computers, desks.

Energy is intangible--and refers to a corporation's know-how, ability to reason, design acumen, and part of what is termed "goodwill".

Dark energy, discovered by science only recently (1998), is entirely untangible. That means they can't find a single mote or flicker of it. Despite it's elusive nature, scientists know conclusively that it's running the entire universe. They estimate dark energy comprises 96% of the universe--with matter and energy making up the remaining 4%.

You can imagine, then, how crucial untangibles are for any business' future.

Before 1900, the economy was almost entirely tangible--and the world GDP grew at an average rate of less than .3% a year.

From 1900 to 2000 the economy was both tangible and intangible. Running on two cylinders instead of one, the world GDP grew exponentially more quickly--averaging a robust 3% per year.

But while the intangible age has provided for many of us materially and intellectually, it hasn't done much emotionally or culturally.

Just like the tangible age failed to deliver reason (high quality intangibles), the intangible age has failed to create meaning, happiness or relaxation--or any other high quality untangibles.

In the market, untangibles are essentially creative content--songs, movies, television, fiction, etc. This sector of the economy is most clearly defined by its low, fixed prices.

All songs are $.99, all movies $10, all DVDs $24--regardless of production cost, demand, or quality.

Your company has all three attributes whether it knows it or not--products, reasons/technology, and stories. The stories are what's most important and where most of the value is, but because they're essentially irrational, they scare the pants off of most managers and executives.

Forests are murky and ambiguous, trees are concrete and clearly defined. Forests are also where the money is, even though many businesses get by for years going fearfully from tree to tree.

The current economy doesn't properly value untangibles just as the economy in 1800 didn't properly value intangibles. And it suffers from just as significant inefficiencies because of this oversight.

This will change as the market corrects pricing structures for untangibles. CEOs, CFOs and COOs will be largely outsourced just like white collar is now. Most of what we think of now as commercial activity will be little more than a back office for enormous content engines.

Untangibles are 96% of the economic landscape. Right now they're largely hidden, just as reason and technology was hidden a hundred years ago, but they will have their day.

Put it this way: after iPhones, designer shoes and blazing internet connections are universal, disposable cheap and omnipresent, the only thing that anyone will care about is content--meaning--and they'll gladly pay a premium for quality just like they pay a premium for organics, good design and selvage jeans--high quality tangibles and intangibles.

Put another way, after all the "what" and "where" (tangible) questions are answered and all the "how" and "when" (intangible) questions are answered, the only game in town will be the beautifully untangible "why".

As this new untangible age blossoms, the world GDP is likely to increase by as much as 10 times--to an incredible 30% a year. The economy will not only be more efficient but will also be more relaxed and have a much smaller negative impact--thanks to new ultra-efficient untangible systems that produce nowhere near the environmental impact of current intangible and tangible systems (both of which are relatively inefficient and produce lots of waste).

The Googles and Microsofts of tomorrow will be making films, writing songs and books, producing high quality television and creating new content. They will play the internet like Jimi.

And they'll mint billionaire artist/producers like MSFT mints millionaire managers/engineers.

And the owners--the pioneers and original shareholders--cold easily be trillionaires.

It sounds fantastic, but it's important to remember that it sounds exactly as fantastic as billionaires did the the most reasonable experts just a hundred years ago. The tangible age created millioniares, the intangible age created billionaires--you do the math.

Oh--and by means of comparisons--as the paradigm-shift cycle time seems to decrease each cycle by a factor of at least ten (tangible age--thousands of years, intangibe age--one hundred), we should expect to see these trillionaires in as little as ten years.

Sound impossible?

Imagine a corporation better at relating than Oprah, better at rocking than the Stones and with better taste than Prada. Now make it global and mass-market like hip=hop.

The best band in the world selling $14 songs.

They don't have to tour to make money, nor do they care about albums, so they release 10-20 singles--hits--a year.

At $14 a song, $140 an album, a corresponding $12 reality tv show (two and a half episodes a week), a licensing deal with Gucci for an affiliated clothing line, an 8 Mile-like movie telling the backstory ($24 a ticket, $14 a rental, $140 for the DVD).

Since they're the first and clearest of vision, they sign the best new talent to their roster like Dr. Dre signed both Eminem and 50. (Who both signed other platinum-sellers, started clothing lines, etc.) They might even have ghostwriters writing books like Jeff Koons has other people doing his paintings.

At that point, Hollywood looks like the backwater it is and have lawyers watching accountants watching computers loading up bank accounts. As no artists really want to run the back office, if you can do it right and preserve quality, you'll be sitting on top of the largest licensing and production deal in the history of the world. Managing the best artists/designers/creatives in the world.

And inspiring others to shine--you make trillions by making the best artists billions. As every artists has a virtual monopoly, there's little of the competition for market share that we see in the tangible/intangible economy.

And a rabid audience of wealthy, brilliant sell-outs and starved, creative counter-culture refuseniks--both desperate to connect creativity and cold hard cash in their own lives. Thankful that it's been done and interested in as many particulars and as much inspiration as possible.

It's aspirational, inspirational, high, low, Wall Street and gutter all at the same time.

It will be untouchable and it is the future.

We have everything else--the only significant demand left is for a meaningful way to live. A way to be happy and feel the luxury that surrounds us.

And the market always gets what it wants.

White Gold Business Plan—Executive Summary

Intention: To capture the global market for premium culture—by creating and licensing unique content in the film, music, publishing, periodical, clothing and consumer goods industries.

Current Market: Fixed pricing for mass cultural content gives us childish content producers. frustrates mature, sophisticated and wealthy consumers, and arbitrarily limits growth in co-branded consumer goods.

Clientele: The market is increasing comprised of creatives, editors, and wealthy sophisticates. White Gold will offer unique, branded content unavailable at current price points and license industry leading manufacturers to offer the same.

Strategy: Improving the model of the most successful artists, White Gold will demonstrate cultural value with the release of premium literature and music, which will then be leveraged with premium film, television and magazine offerings and maximized with licensed premium consumer goods.

Cornerstone: White Gold’s first offering is a book currently available entitled The Love Artist. Priced at $120, The Love Artist is a book that American culture must reckon with to move on, but also offers what no recent novel has: a way out for both artists and connoisseurs.

Walking the Line: The sole occupation of White Gold is to create premium creative content and license it's use to top manufacturers and distributors. Specifically, those who have demonstrated superior manufacturing capabilities, an advanced design sense, and enlightened cultural and social values. The market—and especially ROI—is moving premium by every measure, it is our intention to create a new model for personal, financial, cultural, environmental, spiritual and social success.

Focus: As the launch of White Gold will literally ignite a powderkeg of consumer desire, our focus will be relaxed, intentional, spontaneous brand management. Premium mass culture is the most—and perhaps the last—underserved and lucrative market on the planet. Once ignited, White Gold will likely enjoy eponymic recognition similar to Xerox, Band-Aid, Chapstick, Styrofoam, and Q-Tips.

A Permanent Edge: Creating the sector will give White Gold a distinct head start, especially as others rely on our products to compete. However, it is important to note, that this is no ordinary business proposition, but rather a turning point in the understanding of economic growth and human culture.

Put simply: anyone who tries to position premium culture as exclusive is fighting a losing battle. Material goods skew exclusive, cultural goods skew inclusive. Our pricing is merely a reflection of what it costs, in real terms, to achieve the conditions necessary to ensure a clear voice.

Assets: White Gold currently owns the exclusive rights to the first and only existent expressions of premium culture. If punk, country, rock and hip-hop are diverse sub-genres, then premium is the single, unified sur-genre. White Gold also owns significant brand bandwidth and internet domain real estate.


White Gold is currently seeking allies with at least $2 million to launch what will be the globe’s most lucrative and efficient business.

It is estimated that an ad campaign of $10 million, with personnel and overhead of $6 million, would be sufficient to capture this market worldwide. As this undertaking is likely to be noteworthy, if not controversial, a significant portion of the publicity should be free.

White Gold is literally delivering content for the massive and essentially empty pipeline to mediate.

We’re giving both consumers and industry what it wants.

Please contact White Gold Owner and Chief Executive Artist Eben Carlson at 773 655-6100 or visit our web site at www.whiteg.com for more details.

Eben has founded and grown numerous businesses including a design house producing creative for international brands like NBC, Safilo, and Warner Brothers. A founding member of liberation capitalists T hree and micro non-profit The Puny League, he was also in the pit when grunge broke. With photos to prove it.

Eben is an accomplished multi-disciplinary artist with a degree in Intellectual History/The History of Change and Studio Art from Hamilton College. White Gold is the result of ten uninterrupted years of economic, artistic and cultural research.

Eben was chosen as a Future Watch Cultural Visionary by Yes Magazine along with Ram Dass in 1996.

He currently resides in Chicago.

Getting Stronger Every Day

While I've got your attention..

I'd like to mention a thing or two that I've been wrapping my noggin around as of late.

If all this stuff is right: and all this stuff includes a large part of the posts I've written here; all the self-help books about making yourself happy, changing your life, etc.; and quantum physics--if all this stuff is right, and our beliefs on the matter are not secondary and inconsequential but primary and essential--if we can never really be rich until we feel rich--then all this hemming and hawing, all this chewing the fat seems to come down to one very fine point.

Do we believe?

And I don't mean this as some abstract, what would you answer if I asked you what you believed in, but a moment to moment feeling.

Do you feeel it?

Do you believe it enough to feel it?

I've been reading a number of books about feeling your way there and in general throwing belief at my, not problems, but areas in which I'd like to be more perfect, areas where I'd like to have even more bounty and love. Like my finances.

But to throw anything at these areas, it is easy to label them first--to sell out the whole process from the get--as problems. To find the places most surrounded by fear and then believe the fear and come to the conclusion that they need to be fixed.

Which of course presupposes that they are broken. Which of course, in this process, from this viewpoint, is a bear to overcome.

I find that I can even throw 60 or 70% love feeling at something--which is pretty darn warm and fuzzy--and still have a reservoir of fear underneath it. Lurking. Certain that this is a problem. Nagging that the way it is closer to doubt than belief.

I guess the finest point I could put on it is what do yo do first thing Monday when you wake up? If you're going to be a writer, or a singer, or a dancer and you go off to work at Burger King where all that gets put on hold is that really getting yourself any closer? To make the money to come back to it on Friday night?

And I don't belittle the day job. Not at all. My question is what is the right alignment of priorities to get the best and fastest results? What is most effective?

I looked way down deep last night and found I had a dividing line. On top was my keep hustling--do the work first and get the rewards--enjoy it--later. That viewpoint was mired in doubt and rosy-futurism but could also be "felt at" in the manner I described above. So that it seemed like positive thinking. Was chipper or perky.

The lower, more essential, more frightening part of me was the feel it right now place. Was the take the damn thing place. Was the "The Academy" doesn't know shit you don't tell it place. Was the this is the truth and this is what's real place.

This place scared me completely. I am deathly afraid that if I am comfortable, if I am happy, I won't perform as I should. I won't be motivated. I won't get what I want or need.

But this place seemed to me to be more in line with every spiritual book since (at least) the Bible. We are. We are already.

If you bring forward what is inside of you, what is inside of you will save you. If you don't bring forward that which is inside of you, that which is inside of you will destroy you. (I think that's from the Gospel of Thomas--one of the Gnostic Gospels--attributed to Jesus).

They don't say if you don't get the crop in, not getting the crop in will destroy you. They don't say if you don't do a good job, or advance in your career. They say if you don't be yourself. If we don't realize what we already HAVE! Who we already are.

This is a radically different faith than I've been employing. This is more of a Monday Morning faith. Could it be that we could go straight at what we want? Go straight to what we choose to do and have faith that the rest will be covered?

As I've mentioned in other posts, I have explored this method extensively while writing my book and afterward. I never fully believed it even while I was practicing it but I still did it white knuckle style.

It's pretty much a free fall when you say you're a writer and two years into a book you're not sure you can finish. And even less certain anyone will put out. And you haven't written anything in two weeks. And two weeks ago it was two hours and three days before that it was three hours and then it was another week before you had produced anything.

And it's fairly well established that I ended that period in my life in significant debt. Significant.

But what if it was my true belief that the universe was responding to--my actual belief. What if it was my 90% fear that created my surroundings and not my 10% tip o' the iceberg can-do-it-iveness.

And--I still graduated from that school with a much better car and nicer clothes. And, more importantly--I somehow found a way, day to day, to write the mo-fo. And the time to edit it. And the will and means to put it out. And that was about five years. And I ate out for probably 1/3 of the meals. Even got some sushi feasts comped by an artist friend who managed a great Japanese restaurant.

What if it just felt like failure. What if it just FELT hard. What if I was just predisposed to see the dark side of things from where I had been?

I'm not trying to re-write history here, they don't call it the dark night of the soul because it's like an all night rave, but what if it was nothing but a training ground to believe the way I wanted to--and the only way to do that was to throw everything that could be thrown at me.

And let me learn to take complete responsibility for my reactions. And emotions.

What if, like a black hole, we had an event horizon. Everything below it being available only to ourselves and everything above it available generally, publicly.

And it was your predominant beliefs in the former arena--those available only to god, and energetically available to others (but silently, wordlessly)--that actually magnetized you for what you would experience?

To back up, I should mention that I think we can live one of two ways: mechanically, where we go faster or do more to get more things and have a "better" life. This is a life based largely on obligation and appearances. We do it for the children, for future generations and enjoy ourselves guiltily, as we know that our enjoyment takes us away from what makes us valuable--our discipline and ability to delay gratification.

I think this represents primarily the way that people have lived until now.

But I also think it is obvious that certain people live another way: magnetically. Due to their skill, or talent, or whatever attributes the possess innately, they draw to themselves experiences, prosperity and relationships. I think this is what people imagine when they think of and hunger for fame--that people would be drawn to them as they are drawn to certain others. That things would be somewhat easy. (Although I don't think that the financial structure of our current culture, or business, makes it easy for almost anyone--including those yoga gurus and home entertaining doyens for whom it appears so. In fact, I think half of their job may be making it look pleasant.)

I think that this second paradigm is actually the universal law of the two. The first being certainly expedient--or appearing so--for matters of a primarily physical, material, nature.

But if the second were the larger law, and the first had us running and scared--that we weren't going to pay the mortgage, that Janie wouldn't ever amount to anything--wouldn't the universe have to reward the practitioners of the latter and at least withhold something from practitioners of the first?

And if we held feelings in part of our body and thoughts in another, and feelings were the currency of magnetism, and thoughts the currency of mechanism, and some of us chose to keep our feelings subordinate to our thoughts, isn't it clear that we could appear to succeed and never really feel safe or rich?

It's interesting to note that magnetism is by far the stronger physical force. Mechanism relies upon friction (think gears and pistons) and so is not only always in need of outside lubrication but also requires much more maintenance. The order of efficiency (and don't quote me here) is something like 15% for a mechanical engine that would push a vehicle and 85% for the same same vehicle moved magnetically.

It doesn't take much (even fuzzy) math to see where enough pollution could come from to mess up the planet pretty good.

The interesting corollary I've read is that research suggests that businesses that work on effectively managing problems and building skill sets in it's employees run at about 15% efficiency compared to businesses that emphasize improving their strengths and putting people with essentially natural aptitudes in positions they enjoy--which run at about 85% efficiency. (Again, don't quote me, I'm a generalist. But do check out the management books on strengths, intuition and creativity, they're fascinating.)

So, where are we. Oh yes, the feeling.

The question basically boils down to do we allow ourselves to feel safe before we do the work?

Or do we make ourselves prove it?

Do we wake up assuming that the world is a supportive, ordered place where we have time, energy, love and money enough to do whatever we're put here to do (and the go-ahead to explore long enough to find it), or so we just wake up determined to create a little more wiggle room in our fear--make tomorrow more likely rich.

Because what if what we get is what we're praying on. What we focus on and chant every moment of the day.

And if that's hide the fear and make more so we don't starve, then we get more fear. I'll say it as lovingly as I can but we, the world's richest people--each one as powerful (or more) than the average 8th century royal (think drinking water, life span, health care, chances for true love, and softness of underwear--and iPods)--we are as anxious, depressed, and medicated as any people I can imagine.

From a study on college students psychological problems:

•Over the three time periods (from 1988 – 2001) problems became much more complicated and complex –– anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, sexual assault, personality disorders.

· Depression cases DOUBLED.

· Suicidal students TRIPLED.

· Sexual assault cases QUADRUPLED.

[Emphasis theirs]

This doesn't even touch how much TV people watch, if their relationships are satisfying, how many sodas, coffees or beers they need to get through the day/week.

And I'm not a prude either. I drank and smoked my way through college and my 20s. But I also knew that things would be a lot easier if I just had something to do, somewhere to go, anything to aspire to, or knew adults who didn't seem sold out and weird.

So, if getting riches doesn't get us any riches, where do we look, what do we aspire to?

WE'VE BEEn told that our feelings--especially enjoyable ones--are an extremely poor indication of what's good for us. We've been told that what we want is what's destroying the planet. (So we scale back a bit and end up buying sweatshop produce that breaks or we replace in a year because it no longer speaks to us).

We've been told that our desires will lead us astray--like rock stars and drug addicts. But anyone who thinks that they're getting what they want--for the most part--hasn't been around many of them. They work hard, put their emotions on the line and make almost nothing on their albums and have to tour incessantly--leave their friends and family behind for the privilege.

AND, would it make any other sense in the world than for us to be saved--for us to save ourselves--that we have to leap headlong into that which we fear the most? That which we crave but are certain will destroy us? Into love and money? And flip our priorities upside down.

Insist that the vacation start now. Create the most valuable things you can and charge what they're worth. Feel what you already are.

And, if no one else chooses to join the party. You won't care. Because you'll already be rich.

Although people are so smart and so sensitive today, that I highly doubt they'd let a true practitioner--a true life--go by unnoticed. After all, they've been raised on lifestyle--inexpensive and t(h)in as it is.

Once someone drops an actual life. --"You mean a way to really be grown and live?"

Then it's on.

White Gold is like a hedge fund. I'm betting it all that you can't hold on to the denial of your desire--the fear that you can't afford what you truly want--longer than I can hold on to my enjoyment of mind--the faith that I can create what I intend.

And just like George Sorros and Great Britain, one of us is going to blink.

And I've done my math and checked it from bottom to top. I've checked it against ancient texts and up to the minute scientific studies. I've cross-referenced it with the most powerful marketing gurus and guys living on the street. I threw it out to women to see if it titillated, reassured. I fact-checked it with hip-hop and made sure high schoolers could feel it. I checked with the new agers to make sure it inspired.

And my target market? --The mes? Well I've been staring at the same thing they have for forty years. And when they zigged, and I didn't feel it, I zagged. Or went straight. Or just continued on. And I know we started at the same place because we hung out every day. And I locked on to the feelings we all wanted to have forever. And I kept on long after it made a difference for anyone but myself. So I know it matters.

And I hope you've done the same. I hope you have a simple and direct route to joy in this life and the next. For you and your children. For massive relief from downward social and economic pressures. For one of the largest roots of conflict in the world today: employment and opportunity.

Cause as long as you're in charge it'll be an issue. Which directly affects your safety. I know you don't think of your dreams and the rest of the planets dreams an interconnected but they are. And if you can provide (unhappily) all the magazines needed, and your neighbors all the jeans, you're not only going to have to do so but you're going to have to protect your gains from those who's dreams are just getting to the point where they want to do that--but are being stifled and so are squirting out the side. Because you may not consider moving on to bigger and better things.

[Quick note: I don't believe in victims nor do I disbelieve healthy competition, however, I completely understand and feel how much we mean to each other and how weird and personal it can get--how much like victims we can feel--when people get unhappily out of sync. I don't blame anyone for anything but at the same time have a hard time listening to those who are most powerful insist they are not, especially while those who are becoming powerful are literally giving their lives to prove it. I also understand how much easier it makes it when other people are fun, inspiring, involved and available.]

And we all know Sorros won. So did David. And so did Ptolomy, and Copernicus, Motzart, Newton, Einstein, Van Gogh, Tesla, Jesus, Ghandi, the market, the be-boppers, the street, the hip-hoppers, the skateboarders and punks and a million other freaks, weirdos and loudmouths as yet unborn. And we also know that the truth doesn't give a shit about credentials. Or past market performance. Your job doesn't matter, your blog, your meteoric rise to the top of the publishing world, your wife and kids (and may god bless them, I hope they can enjoy your credentials once the rest of you is gone), the artists you've discovered and pimp, the job you finally got that pays the bills and offers some security--none of that matters.

I can even guarantee that all this won't matter in the future, and that you'll like it. --Look back fondly at your salad days.

But that doesn't matter a whit to where we are right now.

And the feeling's getting stronger every day.