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Now entering Stage 1

THE STORY SO FAR

• I'm best known for the series Everything is a Remix.

• I'm pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons.

• I'm seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life.

• I'm thinking about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule any of these statements.

Hello everybody! I finally got COVID! I give it no stars.

The complete edit of Everything is a Remix 2023 is back online! There was much rejoicing! And by popular request, there are music playlists for Spotify and Apple Music.

In this week’s exciting installment I have not one candidate for my next phase but two! And I’ll be announcing the first major event of this era of my life and career. I’ll also talk about why I’ll never make a podcast, and I’ll close out with some feedback from you. Why am I showering you with such riches?!?!?

But first, folks, my weekly question: what’s your favorite way to learn? Replies are anonymous and it only take a second. (Teachers thank you for reaching out! I’ll be getting in touch with every single one of you. This is now my rallying cry.)

Without further ado, candidate #3 is...

marketing!

(For those who don’t know, I refer to the options for the next phase of my career as Candidates.)

Funnily enough, in the past I’ve mostly not done a good job of marketing for myself. Why am I so confident I can do it well now?

Before I was too consumed by the films I was making. The research and production of these was incredibly intense and consumed almost my entire bandwidth. There was very little left of me for anything else. And of course, I never really cared about business. The goal was to make great stuff and everything else was peripheral.

Why can I be excellent at marketing now? Cuz I’ve got it all folks.

• I care about business now and I have the bandwidth.

• Marketing is for generalists. That’s me.

• Marketing is for designers. That’s my background.

• Marketing is, above all, for storytellers. And that, above all, is me.

I doubt that marketing on its will be the new business. More likely, the business itself will be marketing-driven. But as always, I’m open to just being a marketing business if that’s what the, uh, market wants. I’ll be here all week, folks!

But wait there’s more!

And our final candidate is... writing! For this next era, writing will occupy the space that filmmaking used to. It’ll be where I explore and I learn. I’ll kinda be doing what I’ve always done except without doing a mountain of audio and visual work. It’ll be faster and easier. But the writing will also have a new mission: to support the business. Nowadays you need content in order to get attention. So I’ll still be in the content game, it’ll just be in a leaner, more efficient and more targeted way. Again, seems unlikely writing will be my main occupation, but it can always grow.

Now entering Stage 1

And with that, we have our template for this next phase of my career, which I am dubbing Stage 1. Here’s the projects that are underway for each of the candidates.

• Video Production
  A new AI video coming for Bloomberg.

• Educational Products
  New products being developed for the Remix site. I’ll also be talking with teachers about what their needs are.

• Marketing
  Relaunch of Everything is a Remix site.

• Writing
  An upcoming AI article in a popular site plenty of you know. There will also be some new written content, and this newsletter is where I’ll talk about this whole endeavor.

The purpose of Stage 1 is to build a foundation and launch some experiments. I’m not trying to have all the answers. I’m trying to make some moves, see what works, build and grow.

The relaunch of the Everything is a Remix website will be the first major event of Stage 1. We’ll have several new downloadable products, several new physical products, a new-and-improved look, and plenty of other upgrades. I’m not sure what this launch date is yet but I’ll announce it when I have it.

Now let me tell you why I’m not making a podcast

A lot of people have said I should make a podcast. I get why people think this. It seems a natural fit because I already have the skills and I could make top tier content there. It’d be quicker and easier than making videos. However, for now this is idea is a non-starter for these reasons.

• I don’t love podcasts which means I don’t think I could make a great one.

• Podcasts are an infinite commitment and that freaks me out.

If someday I connected with podcasts and found a sustainable way to make them, hey, it could happen. But it’s unlikely.

Notes from readers

• Longtime Remix friend Hans Sharler summarized Tony Fadell’s recent book, Build.

• James recommends the gorgeous calendar-based planning app, Sunsama.

• TJ made the excellent point that we should not fear saturated markets. He’s had better luck outperforming in those, rather than chasing the few opportunities in tiny niches.

• Samuel Arbesman compiled this Canon of Modern Wisdom.

• I recently caught up with long-time friend Mark Hurst. My first ever public speaking event was at his conference, Gel. Here I am! Mark writes a fantastic newsletter himself called Creative Good, which is about ethical tech. He also created one of the all-time great to do apps, Good To Do, one of the few to do apps that let’s you place tasks in the future, so they’re not cluttering up your list (and your mind) before you actually need them.

See you next week folks!
k

P.S. Need to freshen up your work space with inspiring art? Check out the Everything is a Remix printable artwork below.