What Running Weird Businesses Taught Me About Attention

Most businesses treat attention like a marketing problem.

How do we get noticed? How do we stop the scroll? How do we make people look?

That is part of it, sure.

But if you run weird businesses long enough, you start to realize attention is a lot more than that.

It is not just about getting eyes on something.

It is about getting people to pause. To lean in. To care. To remember. To come back.

That is a different game.

And weird businesses teach it better than normal ones.

Because when your whole thing depends on curiosity, surprise, atmosphere, laughter, tension, discovery, or some beautiful little what the hell is this? moment, you learn fast that attention is not something you buy.

It is something you earn.

The weird thing gets the glance

Weird gets attention.

A dessert that looks like pasta. A comedy room that can go from dead silence to riot laughter in ten seconds. A puzzle that makes people stop walking and start staring. A concept that is just off-center enough to break the pattern.

That first glance matters.

But it is also the cheapest part of the whole exchange.

Because getting somebody to look is not the same thing as getting them to care.

Anybody can get a glance..

Surprise is a hook, not a business model

This is where a lot of people get lost.

They think if something is unusual enough, that is enough.

It is not.

The weird thing gets people to stop. The real thing decides whether they stay.

That is true in food. It is true in entertainment. It is true in hospitality. It is true in anything built around experience.

A gimmick can buy you five seconds. Maybe a photo. Maybe a comment. Maybe one visit.

But if there is nothing underneath it, people feel that almost immediately. They may not have language for it, but they know. The room feels hollow. The idea feels overpackaged. The product feels like it spent more time getting dressed than preparing for the show.

Weird only works when it is backed by something real.

Real quality. Real atmosphere. Real intention. Real follow-through.

Attention gets deeper when people participate

People remember what they step into more than what they simply look at.

That is why passive attention is weak.

If someone just sees something, maybe they remember it for an hour.

If they have to solve it, laugh at it, order it, guess it, vote on it, decode it, or become part of the bit, now it belongs to them a little.

And that changes everything.

Participation creates investment.

The second people feel like they are not just watching the moment but helping complete it, attention gets stronger. Now they are not just consuming the experience. They are inside it.

And once people feel like part of something, memory gets a lot stickier.

Story, details, and belonging

People do not remember normal.

Nobody tells their friends about “pretty good.” Nobody goes out of their way for “fine.” Nobody builds loyalty around “competent.”

People remember the thing that made them feel something.

That is why story matters.

Not “brand story” in the fake corporate sense where some candle company tells you it was born from resilience and lavender.

I mean actual story.

Context. Tone. Internal language. A sense that this thing has a world around it.

A joke lands harder inside the right room. A product feels more memorable inside the right concept. A meal hits differently when it feels like it’s telling a story. A puzzle matters more when it feels like it belongs to a world.

And a lot of that comes down to details.

The way something is presented. The language you use. The extra beat of humor. The way staff talks to people. The follow-through after the first impression. The sense that somebody actually thought this through.

People can feel the difference between weirdness as a façade and weirdness with a real pulse underneath it.

That is why the best weird businesses are not just odd.

They make the right people feel like they found something.

Like they are in on it. Like they get the joke. Like the place has room for them. Like this experience was built by somebody who understands what they enjoy and why.

That feeling is stronger than marketing.

That is identity. That is community.

That is why some places feel alive and some places just feel open.

The real job

Attention is not the goal.

Attention is the doorway.

The real job is turning that first look into curiosity, curiosity into participation, participation into memory, and memory into loyalty.

That is harder than just being loud..

The real trick is making that glance feel like the beginning of something.

Final thought

Attention is not something you steal.

It is something you earn by making people feel like this moment was worth stepping into.

The weird part gets them to look.

The real part gets them to stay.

And if you do it right, they do not just remember what you made.

They remember what it felt like to step into something alive.