07- intellectual property: P.O.V. kilos in my maybach
notes on how to build a brand that's valuable even when its not visible and why Demetrius Flenory is my muse.
GRWM #29 - 20 July 2025
I had no time to write an introduction.
In today's newsletter we'll explore:
Why doing more might be the reason nothing’s moving.
How real intellectual property comes from risking truth, not recycling trends.
What it means to build work that lives beyond you, even when you’re not visible.
how to build momentum instead of building activity
Creating momentum is based on the principle of compounding. I discuss this in 02 - culture assets: liquid death, outlining how every brand is personal brand, compounded.
You need to establish structures that build momentum, but most of us create structures that build activity. This is my gripe with modern productivity. It has no constraints and ends up leading to wildly unsustainable action that doesn’t lead to growth.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, three young wizards break into a dark wizard's vault to retrieve a cursed gold cup they must destroy to defeat the dark lord. After successfully sneaking into Gringotts bank, they arrive at Bellatrix Lestrange's vault to find a double-edged protection curse on the treasure that causes gold to multiply uncontrollably when touched, while simultaneously burning the person touching it.
I’m convinced everything that comes out of Silicon Valley has the same curse.
On the treadmill of digital productivity and modern marketing, the more you do, the more you have to do until you finally burnout.
I’ve created my fair share of ass shaking reels, sent cold DMs and emails, attended networking events to mAke coNneCtiOns and even created my own passive income course so I can maKe mOnEy whILe I slEep.
Can I save your time and money?
The only way to make money while you sleep is to build and acquire ASSETS.
As Daniel Priestly says, “Income follows assets,” not activity.
In 05 - market assets: i hate marketing, I unpack how most businesses are liabilities masquerading as assets. A whirlwind of activity but no compounding outcomes. Just high cost, high effort and no sustained rewards.
Momentum is a product of mass and velocity. Velocity doesn’t build momentum without assets.
I’ve slowed down this year so I can give attention to increasing my weight. I wish I could tell you my bravery led to exponential income, but I haven’t copped my Maybach yet.
Slowing down has been valuable in other ways. I’ve found time to stop guessing what my ideal customer wants, and actually meet with founders 1:1 virtually and in person for coffee. During these meetings, they tell me directly about their dreams, worries, and challenges in running their businesses.
Instead of eating ChatGPT's avalanche of nothing burger paragraphs about fictional customer avatars, I'm collecting language, patterns, and lived friction points I will use forever. Even more valuable are the genuine relationships I'm building along the way.
I’ll take an afternoon coffee with you, over posting on Instagram 3 times a week any day.
coherence > consistency
In 06 - brand assets: misanthropic beauty, I discuss how everyone worries about AI collapsing art into mediocrity, but really we were making collective slop long before ChatGPT launched.
Nothing highlights the opportunity created by the collapse of creativity into templates, memes, and marketable sameness like Clipse dropping an album in 2025.
My favourite track is P.O.V. (feat. Tyler, The Creator).
“They content create, I despise that. I create content then they tries that.”
— Pusha T.
Our social media fixation with consistency comes from the COVID-era playbook, where success meant making as much noise as possible on a regular schedule.
I think we’ve all had enough of corporate brands being teenagers (or cheeky millennials), in everyone’s comment sections. Maybe I’m no fun, but I hate that shit, and being first to every viral comment section is a dying tactic. Making noise gets attention, but visibility is not value. Telling consistent stories differently sparks curiosity—attention’s final boss.
Attention is notice taken of someone or something. Curiosity is a strong desire to know or learn something. The brands that clock it are moving away from attention-grabbing to curiosity-sparking content, releasing content in narrative arcs, not content pillars.
Brand communication as storytelling in motion. Remember momentum is a product of velocity and weight. How much does your brand weigh?
P.O.V. kilos in my maybach
Intellectual Property is the legal right to own, protect, and profit from ideas, inventions, and creative expressions. Inspired by Enlightenment era thinkers, in 1883, the Paris Convention formalised global protections for creative and industrial rights.
"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his."
— John Locke (whose ideas helped justify both colonial expansion and private property)
Locke’s definition of “man” excluded most of humanity. His theories helped rationalise colonial theft and nothing has changed. Today, IP culture rewards repackaging over originality.
In 2009, Simon Sinek published Start With Why, successfully shipping the 2000s Christian evangelical mantra of purpose-driven living to the marketing world. Since then, we’ve been assaulted with brand frameworks claiming to offer the next mystical missing piece.
And I’m no better.
I have my own framework for brand-world building that you can explore here. It started as a paid course that I decided to make available after making 3 sales, including my best friend. It turns out knowledge doesn’t sell itself and you actually have to have a traffic strategy for your get rich quick scheme.
For the longest time I was insecure about my intellectual property because of the deluge of Start With Why derivatives and anti-Start-With-Why theses. I remember reading that the brand as a friend strategy was tired and now we’re moving on to asking deeper questions, but I call BS.
I've endlessly studied brand strategy and customer experience frameworks, made my own too, and found they all come back to the same core idea as "Start With Why." Not because Simon Sinek invented something revolutionary, but because true principles repeat. Like gravity.
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9
Usually, the most valuable things are already there. I speak about this in 04 - product ecosystem: time is the original software program.
Simon Sinek didn't invent anything. He noticed something that allowed him to develop a point of view. That P.O.V. became intellectual property: books, talks, frameworks, and licensing that, as of 2022, built him a net worth of $18 million.
I’m watching Season 2 of BMF, a TV series that dramatises the rise of the Black Mafia Family—a drug trafficking and money laundering empire built by brothers Demetrius “Big Meech” and Terry “Southwest T” Flenory in Detroit during the late ’80s and ’90s.
Their mother, Lucille, was a preacher in real life and a hardworking Libra. Watching her feels like watching my early twenties: a wise, disciplined wife and pastor, waiting for a reward for saving everyone but myself.
My problem with most ministers (and marketers) is we have wisdom with no weight. What inspires me about Lucille's drug-dealing sons isn't just their work ethic, but how they were willing to take real risks to live out their beliefs.
Everyone is performing the role of artist, entrepreneur, thought leader sans the pleasure of actually being what we perform. We've replaced original perspective with repeatable performance for the hope of becoming 60-day stars and 20-year thousandaires.
Creativity is not a shortcut to wealth. It's a search for wisdom.
Pusha T’s P.O.V.s are in a Maybach because his wisdom creates outcomes. If you're in business, wealth is evidence of the wisdom. We can't claim to have valuable P.O.V.s if they have no material effect on reality.
A brand doesn’t have to be new.
It has to be necessary.
And necessity is born from truth, not tactics.
“My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” — Ecclesiastes 12:12
Stay Hot,
Lineo (pronounced di-neh-wo)
If you made it this far 👀 I’d love to know what landed. Drop a comment or share this with someone whose business deserves to feel like heaven, not hell.
currently
Weekly digestion of everything consumed online and experienced irl this week as an administrator of pretty privilege:
Restacking: Black Women Being Loved Softly—and Publicly
Reading: Why I Am Closing Ami Colé
Watching: BMF
Recommending: Reading instead of scrolling. I finished a book in a week for the first time in years.
Your closing 3 sentences hits HARD! It’s what I want to create my business on, but it constantly feels like I’m going upriver and against the tide. The path we’re both similarly on requires us to have patience in building something that is needed but still in the works and will take time for others to catch up on.