Two Economies One Big Leadership Blindspot

Most leaders think they’re “in the digital economy” because they use digital tools.

Email instead of paper.
Zoom instead of a meeting room.
A CRM instead of a notebook.

Nothing wrong with that. But it’s still material-economy thinking (you’re just holding a shinier spanner).

This video is about the real shift that’s been hiding in plain sight for decades. There are two economies running at the same time (material and digital) and they don’t behave the same.

The material economy is finite. Local. Linear.
Scale costs more. Assets wear out. Time and availability are hard limits.

The digital economy is different. Value detaches from presence. Scale is cheaper. Output is non-linear. Assets compound with use. Time becomes asynchronous.

That’s where the real distinction lands:

Optimisation is speeding up the treadmill (doing the same work faster).
Leverage is designing assets (work that produces without you).

In here, I unpack what that means for service businesses, why competition is no longer local, why commoditisation and AI noise erode trust, and why clarity becomes the real differentiator (because digital products force it).

If you want a business that doesn’t collapse when you rest, you don’t start by asking “what tools should we use?”
You start by asking, “what can exist without us being there?”

That’s not abandoning the material world. That’s freeing it.

At the heart of all of this is something deeply human. The digital economy doesn’t reward louder voices or harder hustle. It rewards clarity, originality, and the courage to design work that actually reflects who we are. When we stop trying to copy what everyone else is doing and start building from our own strengths, values, and rhythms, leverage follows naturally. That’s the thread I explore more deeply in Weird is the New Normal (because what we’ve been told is “weird” is often the very thing that creates trust, resonance, and durable value). Embracing our unique selves isn’t a soft idea. It’s a strategic one. And in a world where everything can be copied, authenticity is still the one thing that compounds.

https://weirdisthenewnormal.net

https://m31.com.au