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The Latest From Kirby

Networking is friendship

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson. 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 aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Howdy folks! Happy long weekend to those of you who just had one!

This week is a longer message about loneliness and isolation and how I’m using business to address these problems for myself.

But first, here’s my weekly request of you: go to this form and tell me something. Take that however you like. The line is open. You write it, I’ll read it. It’s anonymous. Say whatever you like.

Last week I asked about what you all do. The top spot was developer, followed by designer. This is what I figured, though I didn’t know which order those would be in. Third place was business owners and fourth place was teachers. There’s also a fair amount of writers and filmmakers among you.

Also among my readers are a potter, a parole officer, a rabbinical student and even a magician/educator. These replies were anonymous so I have no idea whatsoever who that could be.

Networking is friendship

I’m naturally an introvert. I like to work, create, and ingest media. I can go way overboard with all these.

Those are the interests that emerged when I was a teen. But by my early-thirties, I’d done a good job of building a social life for myself. I lived in Toronto during this era and had a strong network of friends. We made comedy videos together, we played ultimate frisbee in Trinity Bellwoods Park, we had a regular book club where we took turns hosting and preparing meals from different cultures. My sister, niece and nephew were out in the suburbs and I could see them and take the kids to Canada’s Wonderland.

I worked freelance jobs as a graphic designer and had a fine middle-class income. But the work was dull and I yearned for something else. Nonetheless, this was the sweetest phase of my single adult life.

I met Nora in New York in 2006 and we decided we would live together in NYC. As much as I loved my life in Toronto, I wanted to find my thing, to get good. The best of the best congregate in New York and I was excited to go. I left Canada in 2007 which meant leaving behind my friends and family.

Life in New York was more about what you did, it was about work. This is where I ultimately launched Everything is a Remix and it was the period of my greatest professional success. I found my thing and I got good. But I also became more and more isolated. After I established myself as an ideas person, my main interest became pursuing knowledge as far as I could. After years of cramming this activity into evenings and weekend, I was in the fortunate position to go full throttle so I did.

Having a life just wasn’t that important. I had friends in New York and I’m still in touch with many of them, but we weren’t tight, these are the kind of friends you see every few months, rather than daily or weekly. During my time in the US, it’s mostly just been me and Nora. Most of my time was spent in the realm of media and technology.

This sort of tech-media dominated lifestyle used to be limited to a small minority of us, but for most people now it’s just life. The Covid years accelerated this trend and pushed everybody inward. Isolation and loneliness are now cultural defaults, you have to work to overcome them.

Three things have happened that to turn the tide on this for me.

The first was moving to San Diego. I didn’t expect this to help, but it did. I’ve been lucky to move to a tight-knit community and I’ve made lots of friends among my neighbors.

The second thing is being a parent. If your neighbors have a toddler and you have a toddler, you will hang out with them. Kids give everybody a reason. Me and little Kirby walk the hood first thing in the morning and again in the evening. We see all the neighbors and he plays with his friends. He throws balls, climbs fences, splashes in puddles, rides wiggle cars.

The third thing has been talking to a bunch of you folks. When I started doing Zoom conversations with some of you a couple months ago, I didn’t think it had anything to do with trying to reconnect with life again. I thought it was about researching and networking. And it was about that, but not first and foremost. 

I’ve spoken with entrepreneurs like Jeff Vinokur, Jay Acunzo, Adam Quirk and Jordan Terry. I’ve spoken with ideas people like Matt Klein. Most of these conversations have been with teachers. I’m interested in opportunities in education so I’ve spoken with Jeremy, Ted, Eamon, Smriti, Sandi, Joey, Peter, Joseph, John, Jason, Paul, Chris, Ben and his awesome students, and there are more to come.

These conversations have been a revelation. It’s been amazing to connect with people whose lives I’ve already been part of for many years. I’ve gotten to experience just how wonderful my fans are. I’ve somehow attracted awesome people to me. 

I have an agenda in these conversations. I’m seeking knowledge, I’m seeking opportunities, problems I can solve, notes I can take, areas where I can help. I’m trying to make money, preferably a lot of it and preferably fucking fast because I’m getting old.

But none of that is the point. I’m not thirsty. I don’t actually care if anybody I speak with can benefit me. I just love the conversations and I’m now a better listener and more present than I used to be, probably because I’m not itching to get back to chasing some intellectual Moby-Dick.

Alright, what does all this have to do with business?

In order to work hard and focus, I need purpose. You need purpose. The essential objective of business is money but money is not purpose. Nonetheless, I am indeed finding purpose in business.

Business is reconnecting me with life. It’s connecting me with people. Businesses exist to serve people. To serve people you need to be communicating with them deeply. You need to understand their problems and empathize with them. That’s my major interest right now: listening and finding ways to serve that fit my talents.

Out of these talks has arisen an actual promising business opportunity. It’s the sort of discovery I could have researched until I was blue-in-the-face and never would have found. I could have looked right at it and not seen it. I needed to talk to people to understand it. Here’s the broad strokes.

It turns out I’m popular with international schools (click the link if you want to know more about what that is). These schools are global, they’re growing, and the area where I can contribute is mandatory, not elective. I’m going to be creating workshops for international students and teachers. I’m working on a pilot presentation and I even booked my first paid workshop in the fall. (Thank you Eamon!) If you’re an IB teacher I haven’t talked with, reply to this email, I’d love to chat. (And thank you to Jeremy who was the first to bring this to my attention.)

Who knows where this will go but it has the qualities I’m seeking: scale, growth and stability. And it’s well-suited to my talents and interests. It’s a worthy contender and I found it by just having fun, pleasant conversation with lots of people.

Final thing.

Something happened a few times in these calls that I’ll admit caught me off guard: people told me they love me. Gotta say, this made me freeze. Remember, I’m an introvert. But I’ve started to just say “I love you” right back and it feels right and true. You guys have been connected to me for years and now I’m connecting back.

As usual, it’s me on the other end of these emails.

I love you all,
Kirby

P.S. Buy my shit you cheap asshole.

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