I’ve always had a weird relationship with “how to YouTube” content.

There’s this entire genre of creators (How-Tubers) who make videos about how to make videos. If you search “how to succeed on YouTube” or “how to beat the algorithm,” you’ll find it immediately. And I’ve definitely had a bit of disdain for that sort of content.

Sometimes it feels a little multi-level marketing-y… like the product is teaching other people how to sell the product. The only way to win is to start telling other people how to win.

If you want to learn how to make videos, I feel like the best teacher is just to make them. If you want to learn how to do anything, just start doing it.

And at the same time, I’ve been interested in building a YouTube channel for 15 years now (wow. I’m old). I’ve made content as a career. I’ve obsessed over thumbnails and titles and pacing and sound design. So it would be kind of dishonest to pretend there aren’t principles that matter.

There’s no guarantee you’ll be successful on YouTube. But there are ingredients.

If I had to boil it down, if I had to say, here are the only things you really need to consider, this is what I’d say:

1. Show Up (Have a Forcing Function)

The number one thing is just showing up. I’ve talked about this before but it’s important to drive home the point: just make stuff.

Figuring out a regular rhythm that allows you to show up. If you stick to a schedule, your behavior becomes mapped to meeting that deadline. Something is better than nothing.

For me, I’ve told myself that every Saturday at 5:05am, I am going to put something out. It doesn’t matter what it is. That’s my forcing function. It prevents me from being a perfectionist. It prevents me from fixating on the perfect idea. It keeps me from saying, “If I just made this graphic 10% better, then I can upload.”

In my experience, if you don’t give yourself a deadline, you can just never show up. I can’t guarantee that you’ll be successful in your creative endeavors if you follow all the steps laid out in this column, but I can guarantee you won’t succeed if you don’t put things out there.

2. Advice Is Contextual (The Best Teacher Is Doing)

Advice is easy to give. My experience is my experience. I can tell you what worked for me. And, yes, there are common principles: You wouldn’t see all these channels teaching how to make a good YouTube video if there weren’t patterns that worked.

But there are also so many examples of people being successful on YouTube making wildly different kinds of content. There’s an audience for the obscure. There’s an audience for something different. Most advice exists because it worked for that person.

The best teacher is actually doing it yourself. Try things. The worst thing that happens? You make a video that stinks. And if it doesn’t perform well? Relax. Nobody saw it. You can just move on and make the next one.

3. Quality vs. Quantity Is the Wrong Question

Quality does matter… But the quality versus quantity debate doesn’t have a clean answer. The real answer is cadence first, then meet quality within that cadence.

If you have a regular rhythm that allows you to show up consistently, that is everything. Then within that time constraint, you dial in the quality as much as you possibly can. And quality, to me, is attention to detail.

That’s:

• Graphic language

• Spelling mistakes (I struggle with this still)

• Filmmaking language

• Writing

• Sound design

• How all the above melts together in the pot

There are principles that are true. Understanding language, whether it’s filmmaking language or writing language, matters. Showing your audience that you care about the details shows them that their time is well spent. Lord knows there’s plenty of other options for folks to consume. Make it worth their while.

So the debate ends like this: show up consistently, and within the time you’ve given yourself, make it as good as you possibly can.

4. Learn the Platform You’re On

Different platforms have different rules.

When I first started uploading to TikTok, I wasn’t getting views. I was posting the same short videos I was putting on YouTube. I was confused.

A friend pointed out that I was baking subtitles into my videos instead of using TikTok’s native subtitles… which they use for indexing the content.

As soon as I changed that, the videos performed better. A lot better.

All the different platforms that are out there have rules. It can be extremely overwhelming to keep up with every single one, and by no means do you need to be everywhere, but knowing the specifics of those platforms are essential.

On YouTube Shorts, two metrics matter most:

• Stayed to watch vs. swiped away

• Average view percentage

If you can get that average view percentage up near 80%, your Short is probably going to do well.

With long-form YouTube, packaging is everything.

Thumbnail.
Title.
The first thing you say.
The first thing you show.

You need a strong click-through rate. But if it’s clickbait and you don’t deliver on the promise, people are going to hate it. A video’s retention, how long people are watching your video, in tandem with click-through rate work together to determine if a video gets more views. That’s why you need strong packaging… and then you need to actually deliver on the promise.

That’s the whole ballgame.

5. Niching Down Makes It Easier (But It Has to Be Real)

Niching down is something you’re going to hear everywhere. And it works. But you have to actually have expertise in that niche.

Let’s say I decided I want to be a pocket knife YouTuber. I’ve got a couple pocket knives. But I don’t know enough to actually be trusted. I could probably fake it with some B.S. and ChatGPT and stuff like that… but your audience will see straight through it.

If you’re passionate about something, try it. See if people are into it. Especially if it’s something that isn’t regularly served. You might find there’s an untapped market out there.

At my main job, I’m the Director of Programming for Mostly Media. We run two podcasts: Run the Numbers and Mostly Growth Run the Numbers is for CFOs and aspiring CFOs.

There is CFO content out there. But it’s not nearly as saturated as “how to grow on YouTube” content. It’s a much narrower niche. There’s less competition. And I think one reason we’re successful in that niche is because we’re the best at it. We focus heavily on quality. We care about the details. We go deep. We stick to the principles I’m speaking about in this column.

By being specific, and by caring about quality and consistency, it makes growth easier.

I struggle with this personally. This Substack? I don’t fully know what the niche is. I’ve tried to say it’s for creative leaders or aspiring creative leaders… But I’ve talked about Disney, Blockbuster, YouTube, Costco Hot Dogs (more on that soon). Whatever I’m thinking about. I don’t want to be put in a box.

And I think it’s possible to not have a niche. But it is demonstrably more difficult to make a living on YouTube without one. It’s just harder.

If you stick to the principles we’ve talked about, you can grow either way. But having a niche makes it easier.

6. You Have to Actually Like This

This might sound dumb, but I really think people overlook it. You have to like making videos. You have to like telling stories. There’s definitely a lure to being a YouTuber. For a while, it was the number one job kids wanted and it’s still at the top of many kids’ lists. I was one of those kids.

But it’s still a job. The hardest part about putting my work on the internet is being sucked into the depths of view counts and the rabbit hole of analytics that dictate success. As I’ve discussed, there’s important metrics to consider, but refreshing “studio.youtube.com” every 5 minutes will not change the results.

When you look at top creators, you mostly see the fun part, because that’s what they craft and publish. You don’t see the schedule. You don’t see the weeks when views aren’t what you want them to be. The grind of consistency is obscured by the glitz and glamour of the edited export.

It’s hard.

And when it gets hard, something has to carry you through. If you don’t enjoy the process, not just the results, it’s going to be very difficult to sustain.

That part is huge. In fact, it’s everything.

So no, I don’t love the genre of “how to YouTube.” But after all this time, if I had to reduce it:

Show up.
Experiment.
Balance cadence with quality.
Understand the platform.
Consider your niche.
Enjoy it.

Don’t get sucked into optimizing content and fall for the trap of the How-Tuber MLM. There’s no formula that guarantees success. But if you don’t show up, don’t learn, don’t iterate, don’t respect the platform, don’t understand who you’re for, and don’t like doing it — you definitely won’t succeed.

That’s what I think actually matters.

I’m glad you’re here.

My dad turned seventy in August of 2025. Disneyland turned seventy in July of 2025. As a Disney “Enthusiast” (the layperson may use “Disney Adult”), I enjoy the fun fact that Tim and Disneyland are approximately the same age. We celebrated my father and, thus, Disneyland for their shared 50th anniversary, which was the last time my dad went to the park. Naturally, my sister and I decided to treat him and my mom to a trip recently.

I won’t regale you with my knowledge of Disneyland, but for reference, I think I could traverse the park with my eyes closed. I recently tried this out and I kind of scared myself… for example, if you’d like a corndog, you just have to walk through the entrance, under the train tracks, past the opera house on your right, through Main Street and there’s a cart that serves them between the end of Main Street and Tomorrowland on the right-hand side. I’m not sure what else to do with this information, so now you have it.

For all that familiarity, it’s not like Disneyland hasn’t changed. I first went to the House of Mouse at least 25 years ago - there’ve been numerous updates, including new lands and even parks, since then. One of the biggest reasons my sister and I wanted to bring my Dad back to Disneyland, aside from their shared age, is the major addition of a Star Wars land. My dad saw the original movie in theaters when it came out in 1977, and he’s been pretty good at keeping up with it since then. We were excited to show the man who introduced us to Star Wars the immersive atmosphere of this new expansion - rides, themed food, characters, and more, all from the Star Wars universe. There’s a full-scale Millennium Falcon, an accompanying ride, and another ride, which is perhaps my favorite ride of all, called Rise of Resistance.

It might surprise you to know that, aside from Disneyland, none of the names in what you just read are correct. There are longer, more specific names for the land and its rides. And it’s not just because of Star Wars - this name confusion happens all over the park.

For instance, on a previous trip, we got absolutely soaked on Splash Mountain, but, fortunately, the Cars ride wasn’t too long of a wait. We decided not to go on Grizzly Bear rapids for fear of getting drenched again, so we rode Soarin’ to close out that run of rides. Fans of Disneyland will know what rides I’m talking about, but none of those ride names are their official names

Splash Mountain → Tiana’s Bayou Adventure
Cars Ride → Radiator Springs Racers
Grizzly Bear Rapids → Grizzly River Run (I convinced myself it was officially called the former)
Soarin’ → Same name, but seasonally it might be “Soarin’ Over California”

If I were to tell you a story of the trip with my dad and use the official Disney names, it would sound pretty mechanical. “My family and I enjoyed our trip to Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. We went to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, which is in the village of Black Spire Outpost on the remote planet Batuu. We were thrilled to ride Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Afterwards, we enjoyed a meal at Oga’s Cantina, where we all enjoyed an Angry Bloody Rancor.

Contrast that with “We went to the Star Wars land at Disney. There’s this cool Millennium Falcon ride and another dope Star Wars ride. We loved the Bloody Marys at the Star Wars cantina. It all felt right out of the movies!”

Even for someone who’s never been to Disneyland, the latter example doesn’t require that much extra explaining. While the former example is technically correct, I think it signals an inauthentic vibe. But I’m curious why Disney felt the need to be so specific. And why go through all the work to name so many things in Galaxy’s Edge, and then you’ve got a food stand called “Milk Stand” where I can get “Blue Milk”?

The question I’m left wondering is: why do brands insist on precision when people instinctively simplify?

Why Brands Care About Precision

Disney has been around for over a hundred years. In that time, billions of dollars have been spent to establish their brand. And this is partly what has made them so successful. A brand is essential for recognition; it allows a person or company to distinguish themselves from others using a myriad of tactics. When I think of Disney, I think of family-friendly, I think of the mouse (shoutout Mickey), I think of creativity (especially when it comes to theme parks). The word “brand” is thought to come from the practice established thousands of years ago when livestock or enslaved persons were marked by their owners with a hot branding iron. Perhaps it’s not the same, but if you think of Disney and close your eyes, I’m sure good ol’ Michael Mouse is staring back at you, burned into your retinas. You’re welcome for that horrifying visual.

While not visually scarring, there are some other freaky ways that brands can get ingrained in our psyches. If you look at your shopping list, did you list laundry detergent or Tide? What about soda or Coke? Baked whole-grain snack food crackers or Wheat Thins? A team of marketing professionals is punching the air with jubilation right now: all the ads and campaigns they ran were worth it just to end up on this Substack column.

Unlike its more visceral origins, brand recall and recognition these days don’t happen from one advertisement; it comes from multiple campaigns based on years of research. You know about Disney because they’ve been in the zeitgeist for over a hundred years. Each movie, artist, and sub-brand that has come from Disney during that time has reinforced the brand. And in recent years, it has taken on conquest, folding strong existing brands under its larger umbrella.

Star Wars was brought into the fold of Disney in 2012. Before that, it had thirty-five years and multiple films to establish its own brand recognition. Though the first movie may have been made on a shoestring budget, Disney ended up shelling out $4.05 billion to acquire Lucasfilm. George Lucas, already sitting pretty after capitalizing on the success of his IP with a lucrative merchandising deal, got a large chunk of that cash. After the first film came out, Lucas gave up his director fee for sequel rights and merchandising. Many would call this a shrewd move. I wonder what Bill Watterson would have done.

I don’t know that Star Wars and Disney are interchangeable, like Coke and soda. But Disney has successfully folded the Star Wars brand into their “brand hierarchy.” And they’re just one of many IPs Disney has acquired over the years. ESPN, Marvel, Pixar… all now sub-brands of Disney. I’m sure my family is one of millions in the last year that spent thousands of dollars at Disneyland to experience the Star Wars brand in person. And if it wasn’t for Star Wars, someone was shelling out for the Marvel experience or to let their kids meet Bluey. These sub-brands benefit from the Disney recognition and recall as their revenue ladders up into Disney’s pockets.

But with all this, I don’t think they’d care to be so specific in their naming if it was just about brand recognition. They know, like we know, that the difference between Disney and Disneyland isn’t going to keep people from visiting the parks. So, while I might take joy in the parks calling it something like “Laser Town” instead of “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge”, there’s another reason for Disney to be specific: immersion.

Immersion vs. Recognizability

Since its beginning, Disneyland has been a place designed for everyone. While you may associate it with being a place for children, Walt Disney himself said this was not the case. When asked about his films in a BBC interview, he said, “You have to appeal to the adult… the Adults have the money, the children don’t have any money”. More delicately, when talking about the origins of Disneyland, Walt expressed a desire for a place where he, too, could have fun alongside his young daughters.

One of my favorite things to experience at Disneyland, and the feeling that keeps bringing me back, is the escapism. It happens at least once every trip, whether I’m imbibing a signature Disney cocktail or singing along on the Little Mermaid ride, where I forget where I am. Reality melts away, and I’m not worrying about the world or if the money I’m spending is worth it. I’m sure nostalgia plays into this as well, as I yearn for the innocence I once felt attending the same park as a child.

But Disneyland is not just for freaks like me who know where they keep all the corndogs. Disneyland is meant to appeal to as many people as possible. By capitalizing on their various IPs, Disney provides a world where folks from two to two hundred can exist in the same place, enjoying themselves in exchange for the price of admission.

Could Disney get away with naming their land “Star Wars Land” and having simpler names for the things that exist in the land? Sure. In California Adventure, Disneyland’s sister park, there’s an entire land dedicated to the “Cars” film franchise that’s simply called “Cars Land”. Perhaps Disney could get away with calling “Galaxy’s Edge” “Star Wars Land”, but for the dedicated fans, the specific names provide a level of immersion that deepens the experience. “Cars Land” doesn’t require the same level of immersion as its audience represents a younger demographic.

There’s a level of detail that Disney can go to that is rarely matched. Star Wars fans are, to put it lightly, nerds. We (I say, begrudgingly, as one of them) have deep knowledge of the lore and canon and enjoy discussing the details amongst one another. I’ll get ahead of it and admit that Star Wars fans can be overzealous, which I find grating at times. Why don’t we all just settle down and share a glass of Blue Milk?

Development of Galaxy’s Edge began soon after Disney acquired Lucasfilm. They could have very easily phoned it in and opened up a cheap land with carnival rides and basic food stuffs with the Star Wars label on them, but that’s not the Disney Way. At the very least, they learned their lesson after spending $1.1 billion to re-imagine California Adventure only a few years after initially cobbling together a paltry excuse for a theme park.

While there are many worlds within the Star Wars story that Disney could have selected from, they created a new world for all guests to enjoy. While nerds like me might have enjoyed podracing on Tatooine or riding swoop bikes on Endor, Joe and Suzy from South Dakota might just want to experience a world different than their own. By creating Batuu, Disney could appeal to as many folks as possible.

They drew inspiration from real places like Istanbul, Morocco, and Egypt. They even took inspiration from Ralph McQuarrie’s original concept art for the original Star Wars trilogy. They spared no expense with the details. There’s even a product tie-in with Coke products, where the bottles sold in the land have been given an in-universe design.

“Our intent is to make it feel as if you just walked into one of the movies... Bringing Star Wars to life in the physical world gives us the opportunity to play with a whole bunch of things we’ve never done before... to really engage all of the senses. What does that street feel like? What does that animal smell like? What does blue milk taste like?” - Scott Trowbridge, Senior Creative Leader at Disney

There are actually two versions of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge: one at the Disneyland resort in California, and another at the Disney World resort in Florida. When researching this piece, I was amazed to discover the level of detail they went to for each location. Because the two resorts face different cardinal directions and are on different latitudes, sunlight hits the land in different ways. To account for this, Disney designed each land with separate shades of paint and color schemes.

If Disney cares about how light hits its buildings, you know there was deep thought put into the naming. Labeling it “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” and placing it in the village of Black Spire Outpost on the planet of Batuu puts you, the guest, in that world. Star Wars Land could be anywhere, and you’re not just anywhere. They didn’t stop there - they crafted a deeper narrative than just names. Galaxy’s Edge is set between the films of Episode III - The Last Jedi and Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker. The characters that you interact with in that land, the stories that take place, all exist in a specific time and place. It adds another level of immersion, and while a dork like me has the context to understand the full picture, Joe and Suzy from South Dakota may visit Galaxy’s Edge and finally be inspired to dive deeper into Star Wars lore. Just as Walt said, it’s designed for both the adults and the kids (I’ll let you decide who’s who in this scenario).

Are Brands “Personal”?

My Substack friend Hannah Jay has a wonderful piece on personal brand. There’s a particular quote that struck me:

“But the internet has decided that mystery is a liability. That ambiguity is a flaw. That if you can’t explain yourself in one sentence, you don’t deserve attention. So we compress ourselves. We sand off the strange edges. We rehearse the same three stories until they harden into identity.”

Life & Longing

I hate your personal brand

I don’t want to build a personal brand…

Read more

2 months ago · 57 likes · 51 comments · Hannah Jay.

Disney has a hardened identity, but then again it’s been around over 100 years. Star Wars didn’t exist when Walt first started dreaming up Main Street, U.S.A. So if a brand like Disney can shift, does the same have to be said for people? I’ve had numerous “brands” that I’ve developed for myself over the years to define my work. I understand that, in order to build an audience from which I can monetize my work, I can get there faster by fitting into a niche. But this compromises my work, it encourages me to make decisions that fit into a box of familiarity instead of the weird nuances that make up who I am. I need to figure out how to embrace and talk about my personal Batuu.

Meanwhile, it brings me great joy to walk through Disneyland. I’m excited by the new projects and expansions that are seemingly always on the horizon. I’m not trying to go to bat for the Disney corporation and defend everything they stand for, I’m just grateful I get to experience it in my own way. Isn’t that why the details of Disney matter?

By getting to a level of precision, Disney has made it possible to appreciate a world as a unique experience. People from all walks of life who speak any language can absorb the details in their own way. You get to be the main character, whether that’s riding every ride, playing pretend with the characters, or any other combination of variables.

I’m not conscious of the proper naming conventions as I ogle the Millennium Falcon. I’m mostly in awe that something I saw as a kid on a TV screen actually exists in the real world. It’s right there in front of me, my imagination came true.

The trip we had to celebrate my Dad is one that I will never forget. It ultimately didn’t matter what we called the various rides and restaurants because it wasn’t about them: it was about us and our shared experience at Laser Town

Whoever you are, whatever galaxy you’re from, I’m glad you’re here.

Lamenting the Volvo

Growing up, one of our family cars was a 1998 green Volvo V70: light leather interior, automatic transmission, with a nose that scraped the pavement of even the most shallow driveways. But most importantly, it had a third row, a very special kind of third row, with fold-up seats that faced not forward, but backwards. These were my favorite seats, making faces at drivers, pretending I was driving when the car was in reverse, and playing with toys, inventing my own stories and narratives.

We would pile into this car and drive less than a mile away to the place that had more stories than you could possibly imagine. I’d open the trunk, exit the car, and make a beeline for the entrance. Inside the store, I was let loose, searching the aisles for a movie to watch or a video game to play. I remember seeing the case for Jack Frost, a heartwarming Christmas fantasy, right next to the case for… Jack Frost, a black comedy slasher film. A mix-up there definitely contributed to the insomnia I wrote about previously.

Blockbuster was a place designed for entertainment that was, importantly, not in my home. The selection of films wasn’t determined by an algorithm; real-life, breathing humans organized the shelves, drawing folks in with their hand-crafted design. I would see many movies there that inspired my own stories in the Volvo’s backseat. Blockbuster is where I first saw Back to the Future, a movie that had a profound impact on my career. It was at Blockbuster that I realized, “Wait a second, there are TWO more movies?” Because the store only had so many copies, though, the second movie was already checked out when I went back to learn more about what happened with Marty and Doc. I actually ended up watching the third one second… and the second one third… kind of playing into the whole time travel device encapsulated in the movies themselves.

Today, if there’s a movie I haven’t seen, I just open up the streaming service of my choice and make a selection. And if I don’t know what I want to watch, there are algorithms learning about my preferences, serving me up stories that some computer somewhere thinks I might like. What happened to all the people who did that for me?

What Blockbuster Was (Beyond a Rental Store)

Blockbuster began 40 years ago in Dallas, Texas. It was not the first video-rental store, but it became perhaps the most recognizable chain, employing over 80,000 people and operating over 9,000 stores across the globe at its peak in 2004. Blockbuster’s rise and fall happened almost entirely within my childhood, initially expanding in the 90s when I was born and closing the last of its company-owned stores in 2014, two years after I turned 18.

The video store was a physical location where you could figure out what movies were relevant or discover under-represented classics that time may have forgotten. I miss the friction of it. If I wanted to watch something new, I had to leave the house, travel the distance, and go to the place where movies were kept. Today, I can (and do) consume entire TV show seasons in a weekend without leaving my couch. I recently did this with Gilmore Girls. I had some thoughts.

As much as I miss Blockbuster, I don’t want to set myself up to worship a corporation that only cares about money. Ultimately, I believe that’s what contributed to Blockbuster’s downfall (which I’ll touch on later), but because they had such a grip on the supply of movies, I can’t forget the memories it represents. Not just roaming the aisles, looking for my next favorite movie, but the playdates and family movie nights that were built around the trip to Blockbuster. It served as an extension to fun that was already being had, not the crux of enjoyment for a whole day.

I’m certain I’m not alone in the fondness I feel for the video store. Yes, Blockbuster was a source of entertainment, but its cultural place in history must not be forgotten. I’m sure the employees that we interacted with may not have had the same passion for films as famous directors or critics, but their remit required them to show up and help their guests find something good. It’s something you may only be able to find today at the library or one of the few video stores that still exist. But your need for entertainment does not have to be satisfied by a trip to one of these institutions. You have everything you could ever want at the tap of your finger.

Blockbuster Optimized for Revenue, Not Culture

Beyond being a source for entertainment for the average consumer, Blockbuster, and other video stores like it, represented a second opportunity for films to earn revenue that had had a theatrical release. It was almost like opening the movie for a second time. The revenue model shifted over the existence of Blockbuster. Initially, video stores had to shell out around $65 per videotape to distributors and would keep the roughly $4 per rental as pure profit. So, profitability for a video store really depended on the careful balance of how many tapes were purchased and renting enough to exceed the upfront cost.

Blockbuster’s real bread and butter for a while was late fees, a tax of $1 for each day the video was late beyond the initial rental period. The fee did not make folks happy. One guy even had a copy of Apollo 13 out for six weeks past the due date because he misplaced it… The $40 fee enraged him so that he decided to start a video rental company with a different business model, where one could order DVDs in the mail. It was like some kind of internet flick watching website. A “Net-flix” if you will (and I shall).

This business model changed a bit with the rise in popularity of the DVD, as disks were much cheaper to manufacture at scale than VHS tapes. With this model, the rental store would pay distributors a portion of rental income in exchange for a cheaper up-front cost, bringing the price-per-unit down to as low as $8. This made it possible for more copies to be available too… yet I still had to watch Back to the Future III before II. Make it make sense, Blockbuster.

Even before Netflix arrived on the scene, Blockbuster wanted to dive into the video-on-demand world. They entered into a partnership with a company to launch the service, and trials began in the early 2000s. The initial plan was to “provide on-demand entertainment, including movies, games, television programs, sports and music, to consumers’ television sets.” Users could start watching whenever they wanted, they could access films on demand as long as they had a broadband connection. The deal was for 20-years… but ended merely months after the announcement when the other company filed for bankruptcy. That company Blockbuster partnered with? Enron.

In an LA Times interview, analyst Ron Barone said of the initial deal, “Enron is the leader of the pack and I think this could be the beginning of streaming of content over its network… Signing a company like Blockbuster is a reassuring signal of the validity of their strategy.”

But fear not! Another deal was presented to Blockbuster to help them dive into a new, exciting world of mail-order movies. Reed Hastings, the Apollo 13-losing man inspired to rival Blockbuster out of spite, approached them with a deal: “Fifty-million dollars and you can have the whole thing.” Hastings was essentially laughed out of the room without even receiving a counteroffer. Right now, you can watch a TV show about the last Blockbuster in America only on Netflix.

Platform Blindness and Cultural Damage

Last Christmas, my cousin asked our family, “Why aren’t movies good anymore?” I don’t think it’ll surprise you to learn that I was ready with an answer and it centered, in part, around Blockbuster. Like I mentioned before, film studios saw the rental period as a second opportunity to earn their money back after a movie was released in theaters. In his appearance on Hot Ones, Matt Damon sums it up perfectly:

Matt Damon himself was a product of the thriving independent movie world of the 1990s. Movies made for peanuts that couldn’t afford a wide-release had a second chance at success by entering the video rental market. It was just a different way to see a movie, cheaper for the consumer but a second chance for guys like Matt to “make it.”

Modern auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh benefited greatly from the video store model, and not just because of the second chance at success for a movie. Video stores were a “launch pad” of sorts, serving as a kind of cheap film school for budding filmmakers. You could rent a movie and consume all the extras, including director commentary, bloopers, and other behind-the-scenes content that wasn’t available in the movie theater. Today, some of that exists on YouTube, but the DVD extras feel like they still only exist for crazy people like me who still buy physical media.

Streaming favors “binge-watching” TV shows. It feels like we’re all probably watching more media these days, but fewer independent titles. It’s easy to consume an entire season of your favorite TV show when you don’t even have to get up off your couch. You get familiar with characters and melt into a world as it’s established over multiple hours. Contrast that with spending the same amount of time watching different movies, and you can see why the competition isn’t fair. Each movie has to grab you, pull you into its world in a shorter amount of time. If people don’t watch it, the algorithm makes sure it gets banished to the bottom of suggested watches.

Streaming also means the content is cheaper to consume, and less money goes back to the artists behind it. Studios compromise on taking risks on new stories and instead drill repurposed IP into their offerings because they think “hey, remember that thing you like? Well, here’s more of it!”. I wish it weren’t so, I wish they could all be like Bill Waterson.

I was excited by my cousin’s question, but I also don’t think they were asking the right question. I don’t think it’s a matter of movies being worse now; I think it’s a matter of consumer behavior changing. Because media is so prevalent, so available to us wherever we might go, fewer gems are able to rise to the top. Netflix has said that their greatest competitor isn’t other streaming services, it’s YouTube. YouTube dominates “watch time”, commanding more TV time than any other media provider in the United States. In February of 2025, 11.6% of all TVs streamed YouTube. Netflix trailed at 8.2%. You can still go to the movies, but chances are you’re more likely to consume media in the comfort of your home.

There’s so much competition that exists out there for movies. A single movie isn’t just fighting with other films for your attention; it has to contend with music, podcasts, amazing Substack columns like this one, or sick YouTube channels like this one. While video stores still exist, they are no longer the gatekeepers to entertainment. Because of this flood of content, only those films that are truly great can break through the noise of the competition and make an impact. Otherwise, you’re left with whatever schlock the algorithm gives you to devour.

What’s Missing Now

Shortly after Blockbuster shut its doors in 2014, we coincidentally said goodbye to that green Volvo station wagon. I hate to be sentimental about an inanimate object, but I miss that car just like I miss browsing the dusty aisles of Blockbuster.

Because I work from home, there are some days where I barely leave the house. I’ve had to force myself to create routines that require me to see the sun, something my doctor is surely grateful for with my low vitamin D levels. I’ve ventured out to the library to see what movies are available. I’ve also started my own blu-ray collection, as there’s no guarantee that any of these streaming services will keep titles available forever. I’ve even frequented the independent video store that, miraculously, still exists nearby.

Blockbuster’s failure wasn’t tragic because it died; it was tragic because nothing replaced the role it played. A common place to access movies isn’t the only loss of human connection we’ve had… Delivery and ride-hailing apps also keep us isolated. There are fewer reasons to leave the house to eat or interact with humans on public transportation. Moving through the world is important for mental health; it’s an empathetic reminder that “hey, someone made this happen.” A Blockbuster employee begrudgingly pointing to the “Store recommendation” section might have felt impersonal, but a real person set up that display, a real person stocked it, and a real person advocated for shelf-placement.

I care about Blockbuster so much because it represents something that required me to physically leave my comfort zone and engage with my world. In a weird way, I’m grateful my apartment building’s laundry requires quarters because it forces me to go to the bank every once in a while and replenish my stores. Interacting with folks isn’t always pleasant, but I think we could all use the reminder sometimes of the value in human connection. What frictions are worth preserving? What places allow discovery without optimization? What spaces still require us to venture out into the world?

Let me know what you think

I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome back to Slacker Stuff, a weekly column for professional creatives, heads of content, or anyone else aspiring to be a creative leader.

Too Much Good Stuff

When I was in the 4th grade, there was a party at school. We had a bounty of treats: cookies, pizza, and soda. I had unrestricted access to anything I could take in. Naturally, I decided to drink about five Dr. Peppers.

Folks, I was absolutely flying: bouncing off the walls in every direction, sweating it all out on the blacktop as I played with my school chums… the real damage happened later that night.

I couldn’t sleep. Surprised? Well, 200mg of caffeine coursing through a 10-year-old boy’s body and brain will do that. I did what I usually did when I couldn’t sleep, and I made my way to my parents’ room, naively believing that mom or dad could figure out how to get me to sleep.

On this night, as soon as I entered their room, I saw a commercial. It was a “Got Milk?” commercial with a woman suffering from the heat in her car. She peeled her skin off, and her skeleton got out of the car and grabbed a bottle of milk from some place nearby.

I’ll be so honest with you: I have not looked up the commercial to confirm any of the details because I would prefer not to re-live that trauma. I also don’t want to risk any other young kids accidentally seeing it as they peer over your shoulder while you read this. I’m sure you can find it if you search for it.

It shook me to my core. Why would anyone feel compelled to strip off their skin suit and just be bones? Could that happen to me? What if I woke up like that? I’m sure my mom and dad saw the horror on my face as I stood there, petrified, eyes wide and mouth agape.

I don’t remember how long it took me to get to sleep, but I’m sure it took quite a while..

Mother Knows Best

It wasn’t a one-night issue. The next night, and many nights thereafter, I struggled to fall asleep. I think I was scared that I would see that skeleton lady in my dreams, and my brain told me, “Well, if you don’t go to sleep, you won’t see the skeleton lady”. It didn’t help that I was frustrated with not being able to sleep which, fun fact, doesn’t help one fall asleep.

One thing that became part of the routine that helped me figure out how to fall asleep was that my mom would sit at her “post” outside my door, where I could see her from my bed. She would work on her Master’s Degree while I would focus on not focusing on sleeping (so I could sleep).

While having a mom guardian was helpful, I needed more to fully unlock sleep. We tried a number of things, but one thing worked better than the rest: One day, at the bookstore, I saw a cover with this little guy who kind of looked like me, who had a stuffed cat as a companion (I, too, had a stuffed animal kitty companion). It was a collection of comic strips called “Calvin and Hobbes”. Calvin, with his stuffed tiger Hobbes, got up to various hijinks and adventures driven by his wild imagination.

I would sit in bed and read through the comics until I got sleepy, sometimes drifting away to sleep while the book was still in my hands. Folks, I was not and am not a voracious reader. I know my parents were happy for me to indulge in this fixation on Calvin and Hobbes books. Sure, there were a lot of pictures, but there were words too, so I’m counting it as reading!

Knowing what I shouldn’t do

Calvin and Hobbes was created by Bill Waterson. First launched as a newspaper comic strip in 35 newspapers in 1985, it wasn’t long before Waterson saw success. Within a year, 250 newspapers carried the comic. By 1995, Calvin and Hobbes ran in 2,400 newspapers and was read by hundreds of millions.

Waterson distributed his first collection of comics in 1987. In total, there are nineteen official Calvin and Hobbes books. By my count, I think I have at least twelve of them and a few of the anthology books. Whenever we’d go to a bookstore, I’d look for one that I didn’t yet have, and my parents, as mentioned, took little convincing to purchase them.

My nightstand had a little cubby where all of the books fit nicely. If one of the books became too familiar, I could easily grab another book to keep it fresh. I don’t really remember specific stories or narratives. It all kind of blends together. I remember Spaceman Spiff, Calvin Ball, I remember Calvin’s expansive backyard, and the contrast of personalities between him and Hobbes. Most of all, I remember feeling seen.

To sum up Calvin, I found a newspaper clipping from an interview with Bill Waterson. He says,

Looking back at what I did when faced with unchecked access to Dr. Pepper, the description feels very on the nose.

So there you have it. Calvin and Hobbes, paired with my mom at the door, won out against skeletons and insomnia. But, for all that Calvin and Hobbes are ingrained into the fabric of my childhood, they didn’t go far beyond my nightstand cubby. Not by my design, but by Bill’s.

Respecting the Craft

The access I had to stories as a kid felt limitless. I remember the TV schedule on Friday afternoons, I remember when we first got cable and spending the entire day glued to the couch watching Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, I remember the gameboy and gamecube games that I’d rotate through. There was always something new, always a continuation of narratives that a kid like me could indulge in.

But Calvin and Hobbes was different. There was no continuation or sequels beyond its initial run. Bill Waterson was staunchly against marketing and distributing his intellectual property beyond the initial run of newspapers and the anthology books. For him, the work he did was enough.

In a separate clipping, Waterson was described as such:

Calvin and Hobbes’ initial run ended shortly after I was born. Bill Waterson gave us Calvin, Hobbes, and the rest from 1985 to 1995. A ten-year run and that’s it. After it finished, he was pretty much satisfied.

There was also no taking the IP and turning it into other marketing opportunities: merchandise, TV shows, even theme park licensing are ways cartoonists can capitalize on the popularity of their work. Look no further than Peanuts, created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. You can buy a Snoopy thermos, you can ride a Snoopy ride… Snoopy will sell you insurance, paper towels, and root beer. I’m sure you’ve seen the characters frequent the Macy’s Day Parade, come to life on the Broadway Stage, or you make it appointment viewing for their TV special on Christmas.

The opportunities are lucrative, too. Just last year, Sony Pictures took a majority stake in the Peanuts franchise for a “Joe Cool” half a billion dollars.

Bill Waterson had all the opportunity in the world to capitalize on the success of Calvin and Hobbes. Over the comics’ 10-year run, Waterson was in a constant battle with his publisher to cash in on the merchandising opportunities. He never relented, threatening to walk away from his contract if the publisher sold out. It is estimated that Calvin and Hobbes could have fetched Waterson between $300 and $400 million had he simply said yes.

In “The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book”, Bill Waterson volunteered his thoughts on the matter:

“I have several problems with licensing. First of all, I believe licensing usually cheapens the original creation. When cartoon characters appear on countless products, the public inevitably grows bored and irritated with them, and the appeal and value of the original work are diminished. Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturating the market with it.”

I’m struck by Waterson’s commitment to his principles. In a world where Snoopy is probably going to be in the next Avengers Movie at this point, it’s refreshing to hear about an artist vehemently against that kind of character expansion. Upon the comic’s end in 1995, Waterson expressed that he was satisfied with what he had done and had no further need to continue

There is no TV cartoon of Calvin and Hobbes, there is no theme park, there is no movie. And there never will be because Bill Waterson was full and did not need to risk his creation for a quick buck.

Doing the Best with What I Know

In my research for this piece, I rediscovered a strip about Calvin discovering an injured baby raccoon in the woods. I encourage you to check it out yourself but, spoilers, the raccoon doesn’t make it. It’s heartbreaking to see a naive 6-year-old come to grips with what death means and how unfair it is that an innocent animal perished so soon after entering the material world. I cried while re-reading it. It was a good cry.

The first row ends with Calvin running off to get his mom. Hobbes expresses a wish that she can help, to which Calvin says, “Of course she can! You don’t get to be a mom if you can’t fix everything just right!”

When I first read this as a kid, terrified of falling asleep, deeply disturbed by the unknown that might attack me, I too wanted my mom and dad to fix everything “just right”. I wanted nothing more than to undo what I saw, undrink the caffeinated soda, crawl back into the innocence that I once had. But parents can’t do that. No one can.

In the last bit of the comic, Calvin says, “Mom says death is as natural as birth, and it’s all part of the life cycle. She says we don’t really understand it, but there are many things we don’t understand, and we just have to do the best we can with the knowledge we have.”

My mom sat at my door, being present with me while I read Calvin and Hobbes and drifted off to sleep. She and my dad did anything they could to help fix the hurt I was feeling, even if it meant buying another Calvin and Hobbes book to add to my collection.

My parents did ultimately help me fall asleep, it just wasn’t in the ways I thought it would happen. Each night as I drifted to sleep, reading and re-reading Calvin and Hobbes, I was comforted by the constant of familiarity. I saw myself in Calvin, and I learned through him many lessons, not just about death. But there was a limit, my parents would only be able to give me so many books. Bill Waterson made sure of that.

I couldn’t look for comfort in a Calvin and Hobbes TV show or carry it with me in a Calvin and Hobbes thermos. The restraint of only being able to consume so many stories of Calvin and Hobbes taught me that everything ends. It taught me, like Calvin, that I just had to do the best with what I had, with the knowledge that I had. Sleep was inevitable; I just had to put myself in the position to accept it.

I’m thrilled to have rediscovered these books, and I recommend them to anyone who has a young kid trying to make sense of the world. They’ve taught me so much about who I am. They taught me how, sometimes, cutting yourself off, even when things are going great, better serves you in the long run. Like… maybe just have four Dr. Peppers next time.

I leave you with the following quote from Bill Waterson from an LA Times Interview:

I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome back to Slacker Stuff, a weekly column for professional creatives, heads of content, or anyone else aspiring to be a creative leader.

The Moment

On Wednesday, January 21st, I had a moment where I nearly gave up on my dream. It was 5:00 p.m. I had just finished my work for the day with Mostly Media on the Run the Numbers Podcast starring CJ Gustafson (shoutout CJ, he’s a huge Slacker Stuff fan). I was in a pretty good spot: I’ve figured out that it takes me pretty much exactly four hours to create a filler video for Slacker Stuff that I upload to YouTube and other platforms (below is one of my recent favorites), so if I focused, I would be done by 9.

I did a little bit of work on a new short, but then the moment hit. It’s a moment that I feel like I’ve hit a lot of times before. I’ve mentioned it before, this familiar pattern where I set a goal for myself, and in the process of trying to meet that goal, I question whether I’m doing the right thing. This circle of overthinking stops me in my tracks, and it eventually culminates in a moment like this one.

I call this moment the “what’s the” point. Here I was feeling it again. It usually comes about when the vision is obscured, when I don’t have a clear vision of my goal, and this time I was feeling it pretty hard. Why was I forcing myself to create a filler video? Why couldn’t I just chill on the couch with my cat? Shouldn’t I be working on something else, like a long-form podcast or full-length YouTube video? I needed to reset and remind myself of the goal.

https://youtube.com/shorts/nNYA80dBPG8

The Goal

Back in July of last year, I had the idea to make YouTube shorts every single day, to execute on the ideas I had quickly and see if they resonated with people or if they were just interesting in my own head. Then I realized I couldn’t do that every day. That’s a 20-hour work week. So I tried every other day…and I didn’t really have time to do that either.

At the beginning of the year, I reassessed again and I set this goal for myself: I was going to publish a Substack column every Saturday at 5:05 a.m., and I was going to put out a filler video on Mondays and Thursdays. I calculated that it takes me about two hours to put together the column you’re reading here on Substack, and, like I mentioned previously, it takes four hours to make each filler video. That’s a 10-hour work week for Slacker Stuff.

I figured by regularly showing up with the filler and the column content that I can slowly build an audience that will open opportunities for me. Perhaps I’ll make paid content, a gated Substack article, or anything else in the toolbelt of a modestly successful influencer. I’ll be a YouTuber, just like I dreamed of over 15 years ago.

The Constraint

Just because I want to see where Slacker Stuff can go doesn’t mean I want to quit my day job. It isn’t some boring, droning desk job. I really do enjoy it. It’s different than the work I do for Slacker Stuff, and it stimulates my mind, presenting an interesting challenge of catering to a demographic I do not belong to. That’s what makes this balance thing so tough.

It’s not like I’m working all day hating my work, waiting until I can work on the things that I want to work on. Instead, it forces me to face the fact that I only have so many hours in the day. My job is typically 40 to 50 hours a week, sometimes a little bit more when deadlines hit. The time I have every week to dedicate towards Slacker Stuff is finite. The only way I get more time is if I take it out of my personal life, sleep, or Mostly Media; none of which I am willing to compromise.

I have roughly ten hours each week that I can dedicate to Slacker Stuff. That’s the filler videos, the column, or anything else I want to do. It works out to about an hour each day during the workweek, and then two hours on Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes I find a little bit extra, but that’s really the only time I have unless I’m on vacation or it’s a holiday.

The Spiral

So, bringing it back to Wednesday: I knew I had four hours to make a video for Thursday. I got to that “what’s the” point. Suddenly I was thinking, well, wait a second… I can’t make long-form videos. I can’t make podcasts. I have all these ideas outside of just making shorts and writing the Substack that I want to experiment with, and I just don’t have the time to do them.

I got extremely overwhelmed by not having enough time to do the things that I wanted to do. I felt stuck in a trap of my own design: that super genius Benjamin made me this schedule. I started thinking maybe I could change things up, maybe I could figure this out a different way. But instead, I talked myself out of making the YouTube short altogether. I disappointed myself. I let myself down.

What really happened is that I was so fixated on what I should be doing, not what I could be doing or what I was doing. I do want to make long-form videos about topics I’m interested in, transit, movies, TV shows, whatever, but I just don’t have the time to do that right now unless I change the schedule.

I skipped Thursday’s video initially. I went down this shame spiral, feeling like I wasn’t doing enough or working on the right things. It felt like everything I had worked towards so far wasn’t worth it. I kept beating myself up for giving up on something that I had barely even begun. Fortunately, with the help of a phone call to my parents Wednesday, and therapy the next day, I think I found a way to keep going…

Stop. Give yourself a break. By speaking with others, I not only heard different perspectives, but I also processed what I was feeling and figured out what it meant in the space that dialogue gave me. The whole point of all this is to have fun, and if I’m not having fun, why should I force it?

The Refocus

I set up the Monday, Thursday, Saturday schedule for a reason: it creates an opportunity for me to do a little bit of all the things I like doing. The urge I had to stop everything and start something else was a symptom of me missing the forest for the trees. I stopped focusing on showing up every day to put in the work and became fixated on the binary of meeting a goal or not meeting a goal. The truth is, I have only just begun this journey.

I want to create my own work and talk about things I’m passionate about … I just didn’t consider the fact that I would love working for someone else too.

I don’t have more than ten hours a week to work on Slacker Stuff. Unfortunately, between Wednesday’s spiral and today (Friday, as I’m writing), I wasn’t able to figure out how to create a ripple in space-time. I don’t have time to work on longer projects, I don’t have time to do anything on top of what I’m already doing.

Perhaps one day I’ll decide my cup is full, abandon the Monday, Thursday, Saturday schedule I’ve created, and do something else, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet. I know that even when I take breaks from creating, whether it’s filler videos or Substack columns, I end up coming back. I will reach the “what’s the” point again, but I hope I look back at this column to see that it’s going to be okay.

I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome back to Slacker Stuff, a weekly column for professional creatives, heads of content, or anyone else aspiring to be a creative leader.

Introduction

My partner Jenna and I watch shows from the 2000s(ish) in our free time. I’m not sure why the trend started, but it might have something to do with the fascism of the country we currently reside in and the desire for a break from constantly being tuned in to what’s going on. I enjoy contemporary TV as well (where my Pluribus fans at?), but watching a TV show created in a time gone by is like viewing the past through a small digital window.

I’ve also learned a valuable lesson about creative work by consuming these TV shows: the importance of brevity and having something of value to say. A good TV show has a strong message and gets multiple seasons to explore its premise while the audience has time to familiarize themselves with the characters. A great TV show goes beyond that. A great TV show does not overstay its welcome, because the longer a great TV show runs, the greater the risk it undoes the message and the character work that made it work in the first place.

We’ve worked through Friday Night Lights, Lost (the ending is good actually), The West Wing (always in rotation), Parks and Recreation, we’ve been devouring Survivor… but our latest watch-thru was Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Gilmore Girls. The show follows a mother-daughter duo (Lorelai, who had Rory as a teenager) as they navigate their friendship, relationships, and the quirks of small-town living in Stars Hollow, Connecticut. While Jenna had watched the show as it aired, I was new to it and had managed to avoid major spoilers for 25 years (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD).

It didn’t take very long into our watch-thru to feel some sort of ownership over the characters in front of us. I’m sure this is a relatable experience, you’re watching a show, perhaps not for the first time, and you’re willing the character to make a different decision that won’t result in them embarrassing or severely maiming themself. I remember watching Toy Story as a kid, thinking “Maybe Woody will be nice to Buzz this time around” (he was not). However, unlike watching something as a kid, I watched Gilmore Girls with the knowledge that there was not just an entire creative team, but studio execs behind character choices.

Make TV Longer

While this was my first watch-thru of Gilmore Girls, Jenna had seen the whole series multiple times over. I felt such joy watching something, slowly growing to love it knowing that my partner got to share something she cherishes. It becomes interesting too when Jenna knows where the twists and turns are headed and I do not. She certainly tried to warn me of the confusing decisions (especially in the later seasons).

What’s fascinating about 2000s television compared to today is the number of episodes given to each season. Before the turn of the last decade, it was not unusual for comedies and dramas to have 22 episodes (or sometimes more). Now, even the most watched show in Apple-TV history gets a measly 9 episodes. Looking at stats since 2018, the average episodes per season for US Scripted shows has dropped year over year. 15.4 on major TV networks in 2018 to 10.2 in 2023.

An odd relic of the 22 episode season is the random episode that feels like the overall story doesn’t go anywhere. Plot points drag on and nonsense stories are added to fill the contractually-obligated 22 episode order. I felt this a lot watching Lost - we’ll get the backstory of a random character when all I want to do is figure out what’s making that island so spooky! Or, we get an episode where the bulk of it is seeing a specific scenario in “the hatch” play out from the perspective of three different characters.

As drawn out or distracting as these episodes can feel, I really miss the 22 episode season. The length of time allotted made it possible to develop characters over time rather than lean on montages and “x days later” cliches to prove to the audience that time has passed. As an aside: a 22 episode season also means more job stability for the cast and crew when compared to a 9 episode season. Hooray for Labor.

While we were watching Gilmore Girls, I grew attached to the characters. How can you not love Rory and Lorelai’s crazy antics? How can you not adore Luke’s curmudgeon heart of gold? How can you not hate whenever Taylor Doose is on the screen causing a ruckus and everyone excuses it because he’s apparently town dictator?

The first few seasons were positively exquisite. In the season 4 finale of the show, Luke and Lorelai finally get together. When we got to that moment I was thrilled, elated even. We had 4 seasons of getting to know these characters and why they were meant to be together. When you watch the first episode of the show, these do not appear to be two people destined to be together… but when you spend 80 plus episodes with them, it becomes readily apparent that it was always going to be Luke and Lorelai forever. The moment was earned completely, as it felt like they had been building towards this moment through all the seasons leading up to it, but not so much that it occupied the narrative of every episode.

So happily ever after, right? Cowabunga, dude? Well, we still had 3 seasons to go, dear reader. To paraphrase the great Logan Huntzberger, I would not feel “cowabunga, dude” inside for much longer….

But don’t make TV too long…

It’s really hard to make something truly great. I feel like I’m still trying to make great things and I don’t know if I’ll ever make something that meets or even exceeds my taste. Quality is subjective, but consensus and time usually gives a general picture of what the masses think. I don’t mean to poo-poo on the various artists that labored for many years on a show like Gilmore Girls. From what it sounds like, Amy Sherman-Palladino tried very hard to make something great. For the most part, I think she did! Unfortunately, she was fired from Gilmore Girls between seasons 6 and 7 so the end of the series was not in her control.

For a television show to be successful, it has to balance the tightrope of intriguing viewers with conflict to stick around while also delivering satisfying payoffs so as to not upset them. It’s why I know mystery-box shows like Lost can struggle to keep folks around when they tease out situations for entire episodes (just tell me what’s in that damn hatch, JJ Abrams!). Getting enough seasons to tell a story is also not guaranteed. Some of my favorite shows were cancelled in the middle of a major narrative arc (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is one I think about regularly). It’s because of this that a showrunner can’t always make the decisions they want to.

I’m certain that Amy Sherman-Palladino did not know how many seasons she’d get for Gilmore Girls. In fact, I found an interview with her and her husband Daniel from 2006 (after she was fired) where they talk about the uncertainty they faced when writing the show.

Daniel Palladino said: “we always wrote the show so that when a season ended, and they told us it would be the last one, we made sure there were enough things still happening, still dangling, that they’d have to pick us up for the next season.”

I’d imagine it’s difficult to wrap something up before you’re ready. I’ve been laid off before and had to give up projects that I had been working on for months. Honestly, aside from losing health insurance, that crushing blow to my psyche was the worst part. So I do get feeling the need to take the story in another direction, introducing some conflict so the audience expands and you get to keep creating. I just don’t think this conflict has to come at the expense of character development.

After the magic of the season 4 finale, Luke and Lorelai would break up and get back together in season 5… but season 7 is when they’re furthest apart with Lorelai even marrying another man (damn you, Christopher) a mere seven episodes after breaking up with Luke… and then Luke and Lorelai get back together in episode 22 (the season finale). I can’t place the blame on the Palladinos for this one. As I mentioned, they’d been laid off by season 7. The tightrope of intrigue and payoff is a challenge faced by every showrunner and creative.

Each time Luke and Lorelai break up technically has a valid reason, but it didn’t feel like a believable scenario to the audience (and consensus seems to agree). Season 7 was such a dramatic whiplash of them getting into relationship-ending arguments over a single piece of information not being shared or being shared inaccurately. Just talk to each other!

This isn’t about me “shipping” two people and deciding they should be together forever… I get it. People break up. Gilmore Girls is not the only show guilty of preventing two characters from being together for the majority of its run. But I do think story gets to a much more interesting place when one stops going back to the well and creates new situations that test and grow the characters. Parks and Recreation is a great example of this.

Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt have a little will they/won’t they thing going on. It’s cute. Situations are created that prevent them from being together once they both realize they like each other. However, it’s not like the rest of the series is spent “will-they-ing” and “won’t-they-ing”. They very much will, folks! Instead, situations are created that bend and stretch their relationship, but don’t force them to break. It’s so much more satisfying than two characters growing to love one another and then having that progression clawed back in an attempt to stir up some drama. Ben and Leslie being together allows their characters to be more than just a couple. Their story not being focused on their relationship simply existing means it can evolve and gives the two characters the ability to grow both inside their relationship and out.

Again, I get that more seasons are not guaranteed. What if a Hollywood labor strike happened in the summer between Season 4 and 5 of Gilmore Girls? Luke and Lorelai might have kissed and we’d be left wondering: “what would have happened to them?”. Instead, Gilmore Girls ended after season 7 and the audience was still left with that very question.

Give it a rest, will ya?

I’d imagine being torn away from the show you created is, at the very least, excruciating. I’m sure watching an entire season of a show be created without her control was agonizing to Amy-Sherman Palladino. Perhaps she drove the story in a certain direction at the end of Season 6 just to feel something, ya know?

Despite the final 3 seasons of whiplash, I do look back fondly on Gilmore Girls. I’m sure, if I didn’t have the luxury of binge-watching it all in a few months, I would have given up watching it as it aired. But there were some redeeming moments during the dark ages that kept me engaged: I’m definitely Team Logan and most of his progression occurs during that time. I would have been happy if the show ended there, but then Netflix came-a-calling…

Gilmore Girls, A Year in the Life, was Amy Sherman-Palladino’s personal chance at redemption. 10 years later, she would get the opportunity to end the show on her terms. I didn’t suffer the same pain that Jenna did, having to wait 10 years to see a cherished show return and revisit beloved characters. She told me that the hype was immeasurable, staying up late and donning her P.J.s with her family in order to watch the show at midnight upon its release. What a treat to see a world you thought was gone. I only had to wait til the credits rolled on the end of the original series (just kidding, there’s a “play next” button so it was instantaneous).

Unfortunately, the revival didn’t land the way I would have liked it to. I feel confident that it wasn’t because of the quick juxtaposition of finishing the initial series and starting the revival because Jenna feels the same way. I’m also aware that the consensus seems to be that the revival is mixed (at best). It invites an important question of revivals themselves: do we need them? I feel like for the most part, you’ll never be able to re-capture the magic of that initial run. But that’s a question for a different column.

Regardless, Amy Sherman-Palladino certainly needed this. Here’s what she said after losing Gilmore Girls back in 2006:

I can imagine it’s difficult to turn down the opportunity to not only finish creating something you started but also get paid an exorbitant amount of money to do so. Apparently, she knew the exact 4 words the show would end on initially and decided to end the revival the same way. It ends with Rory saying “Mom?” Lorelai saying “Yeah?” and Rory saying “I’m pregnant”.

Through the lens of the show’s initial run, this makes sense. If this is how it ended in season 7, Rory would have been finishing up her promising college career at Yale. It would have brought the series full-circle, where Rory would have her life interrupted by an unplanned pregnancy just like Lorelai. It would have provided for an interesting discourse around the sacrifices mothers make for their children. Throughout the initial series, the audience is shown how important it is for Rory to succeed and not make the same decision her mother made. Wouldn’t it have been such an excellent, yet tragic way to wrap things up?

Instead, the revival feels like we’re picking up right where we left off in Season 6 after Amy’s departure from the show, but everyone’s 10 years older. The show may have remained in stasis for 10 years, but technically speaking the characters should have developed off-screen. The impact of the end of the revival is hollow: it doesn’t feel like Rory’s promising post-grad career is being interrupted, it feels like a lost 32 year old is becoming a parent. Hardly a dramatic conclusion… I don’t even think 22 episodes would have saved the show here. To make matters worse, guess what? Luke and Lorelai are “will-they/won’t-they-ing” again! And then they solve it by getting married, so I guess that was all for nothing.

For me and many others, the revival ruined the reputation of the characters we grew to love in the initial run. In the 10 years since the show ended, folks have created their own theories and ideas about characters. There’s a natural, believable progression that happens with fandom. Without continuing the canonical story, technically no one would have been wrong because no one would have been right. By overstaying her welcome, Amy Sherman-Palladino sacrificed some of the good will built up by her initial project.

Conclusion

It’s something that I hope I have the foresight to avoid: at what point is it time to move on from a character? What you’re reading right now may not be fiction, but I do feel conscious of the narrative web I’m weaving week over week with this column. As I’ve said, I’m still figuring out what this column is truly about. I’m sure some of you might be lost, trying to figure out why I’m talking about TV shows from 20 years ago but, like, presumably, Amy Sherman-Palladino, I’m ultimately chasing what feels good to write about.

The beauty of writing a column for substack is: I get to write about whatever I want. I care about you, the audience, very much, but I don’t want to make something just because I think people will like it. In that way, I really do understand Amy Sherman-Palladino’s decision to end things on her terms. As I wrote about last week, I value the time you spend with me. It’s so cool that I get to produce my own “show” of sorts just like the TV shows created in a time gone by. There’s a beauty too that my only restrictions are self-imposed and I don’t have to stretch the story out just to satisfy a contract.

However, like the folks at Wistia have taught me, creative ideas are born out of constraints. One of the reasons I’ve challenged myself to put something out every Saturday at 5:05am PST is because it pushes me to get my thoughts out there instead of letting them fester and stew and ultimately result in nothing. If I didn’t set myself limits, who knows what this revival of an old favorite might turn into? I don’t know that any of us need to see what Slacker Stuff circa 2016 is if transplanted directly to 2026 without accounting for personal growth and the passage of time.

We’re probably not returning to a world where 22 episodes is the norm for a season of TV, but I’m grateful I get to go back and live in it for a while. Apparently Amy Sherman-Palladino and I share more in common than you might expect because I too have to end my piece on four words:

I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome back to Slacker Stuff, a weekly column for professional creatives, heads of content, or anyone else aspiring to be a creative leader.

In 2011, I went to the 2nd Annual VidCon in Century City, Los Angeles. I was 17 years old, and my parents encouraged me to go with the stipulation that I treat it like a networking event (I wrote a bit about conferences like this in a previous edition). I was in the midst of my daily vlog that I would continue for a full calendar year (It was day 70, I just checked). I was drawn to VidCon because of the opportunity to grow my YouTube channel. All I had to do was get over my crippling social anxiety….

As I opened up from my shell to talk with other people, I slowly realized that being at an event surrounded by other people who like doing the same thing you do is not as intimidating as going to a work-obligated event or an event required for school. Up until this point, making content to put online felt isolating. Sure, I would include my friends in the videos, and I would get some mentions of it in conversation with folks at school, but the process was lonesome.

Part of me enjoyed it being a solo endeavor because it meant that I was in charge of everything, and I didn’t have to compromise my vision by having others included in delivering my message. But attending VidCon reminded me that art is not something I want to create in a vacuum and never let it see the light of day. It confirmed for me the power of engaging with others, speaking with folks about a similar vision, and learning what works and what doesn’t work from those who’d already learned some lessons.

In addition to the joy of being around like-minded individuals, I also learned a harsh truth at VidCon 2011: no one is going to watch my thing if I don’t put myself out there.

There’s a habit that started around the same time I began my daily vlog. I would go to YouTube analytics and hit refresh over and over again, wishing for the view and subscriber numbers to go up. It’s a habit that’s become so consistent over the years that now if I just type “s” into my browser, “studio.youtube.com” auto-fills. The damn machine knows me too well….

But refreshing the backend page over and over again doesn’t increase the number of views. For a while there, I think you could refresh a YouTube video to see the count go up, but even then, it was an artificial number. The only person behind that is me, and I’ve already seen the video (several times, actually). Regardless, this obsessive checking and re-checking comes from a deeper place. It comes from a place of wanting my work to be noticed. To an extent, I believe that if I create a video or a column that is good enough, then people will see it and the algorithm of whichever platform will carry it to glory and earn me all the metrics I so desperately want when I hit that “s” on my computer keyboard.

I want the work to be noticed so I can figure out if people agree or disagree with what I’m trying to say. I want to know if the world agrees or disagrees with what I am saying, but I can’t just pick that out of thin air. I want the world to tell me. It’s pretty easy to do, you just hit a like or a dislike button, or, if you’re feeling crazy, you leave a comment.

Whether it’s a tweet or a post or a video, I think everyone, artist or not, just wants to be heard. I know from experience that having just one person mention that something I made resonated with them makes my entire day. And while I love to hear this from those I already know, it can sometimes mean more to hear this from a stranger: it confirms that even people I don’t know can have something in common with me.

Honestly, I also appreciate hearing when someone disagrees with something I wrote. A lot of my work, especially in this column, is me trying to work through different thoughts. I am trying to understand the work I put out there, and hearing genuine objections to it helps feed my worldview.

But it wasn’t until recently that I realized a “growth hack” that has changed my thinking on this. I have some trepidation talking about this because I don’t want it to be abused. I know all too well how tantalizing it can be to try anything possible to get more views on a video, and I know there are folks out there that have looser morals than me and might not care if those views are from real people or not. However, I believe that if you’re in it for the right reasons, and you want to form genuine connections with people, this “growth hack” can be quite beneficial.

This lede is disappearing under a pile of dirt, so I’ll put down the shovel and tell you: comment on other people’s stuff. That’s it. I started engaging with other folk’s work because I realized how much I wanted people to do the same for me. I realized that if I was hungry for others to tell me what they thought of what I put out there, other folks might feel the same way.

The most important thing to keep in mind when commenting for growth is: you have to give more than you get. If no one is commenting on my work, then it makes the job easy: I just have to comment once, and I’ve satisfied this quota. It helps to be genuine here too. Even if I want people to check out and comment on my work, I know that I don’t want a bunch of self-promotional comments saying, “Hey, check out my thing!” and I presume other creators feel the same way.

I only leave a comment if I have something real to say. For example, if I see someone post about how New Years Resolutions are BS, then I leave a comment that says “I agree! You can have a resolution on a random Tuesday! Or in September! Or on Flag Day!”. I’m not leaving comments that encourage someone to come back and check out my work, but commenting does naturally encourage folks to check out my profile and view my work. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t hope for that result, but it’s not something I feel promised with every mark I make.

I think knowing when not to comment is crucial too. When I’m engaging with any of the horrible algorithms (LinkedIn, Instagram, Substack, take your pick), I’m not just leaving likes and comments willy-nilly. There are some pretty awful things being said at pretty much all times, and I don’t think every thought deserves your precious time.

Showing up and engaging with others’ work is not something I do in order to hit a certain number, it’s something I do because I know it’s necessary. I definitely have “zero days” where all I do is put my work out there and don’t engage with anyone, but I know I’ll show up another day and tell people I hear them.

You may be reading this and feel like the mountain I’ve made should have just stayed a mole hill, but I really do feel meaning here. I desperately want the work that I do to be seen, and I want to know if it is reaching people or not. I don’t need to go to a conference like VidCon to figure it out, I can do so in the comment section of my favorite YouTuber.

It’s not really about the metrics and getting views and replies or whatever, it’s who is behind those numbers. One like means someone lifted their thumb and pressed into hundreds of pixels on their phone screen in order to say “I see you.” Suddenly, my solo endeavor is a lot less isolating. Yes, bots exist, but I know for certain one of those likes is my Mom, and my mom exists, so, checkmate.

It may feel like I’m feeding the corporate masters by encouraging you to leave comments so that screentime remains up and to the right. If that’s what you think I’m saying, then don’t do this in a virtual medium. Tell the artists whose work you enjoy that you love their work and why. Tell them in person, write them a letter, send a fax. Some people don’t want to be bothered. You don’t have to say or do anything you don’t want to. If you’re just enjoying the ride and don’t want to be perceived, that’s okay. Regardless, my usual sign off is more valid than usual:

I’m glad you’re here.

Welcome back to Slacker Stuff, a weekly column for professional creatives, heads of content, or anyone else aspiring to be a creative leader.

Last week, I told you about the practical reasons why I treat my work seriously. This week, let’s think a little more broadly and start with three seemingly disconnected thoughts:

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Arts and Culture accounted for $1.17 trillion in 2023, which was 4.2 percent of GDP that year. That might not mean much if you aren’t tapped into the national economy, but look at how much money corporations are willing to shell out to own a piece of the creative pie: as of writing this Netflix has offered $82.7-Billion to acquire Warner Brothers.

I bet you’ve heard of the “Writers Strike” or the “Actors Strike” of 2023. Each strike lasted over 100 days. Neither union, the WGA or SAG-AFTRA are the largest union in the United States, but I’m confident you’ve heard of them. I feel like more people heard about the Hollywood Strikes of 2023 than those who know that there’s currently a Starbucks workers strike (as of now, most workers are returning to work).

I think often about folks not as fortunate as I, the folks who want to make art but are stuck in a dead-end job. With all the resources in the world, we should be living in a post-scarcity society. We have the tools and technology to make sure no one needs to work just to receive healthcare. We should be living in a world where folks are supported by a robust social safety net without placing a means-test on receiving basic necessities like food, shelter, clean water, education… It’s disheartening to hear how much George Bailey’s question still elicits an aching feeling 80 years later. “Do you know how long it takes a working man to save $5,000?”

Percentages of GDP, labor movements, It’s a Wonderful Life… what does all of this have to do with Slacker Stuff, a column for creative professionals?

There’s this chip on my shoulder I’ve felt for quite some time. I’ve doubted myself constantly that what I do for a living is considered “real work.” Producing podcasts and making YouTube videos is by no means life or death, as we discussed last week. I’m searching for a justification in the work I do, a desire for it to be filled with meaning and, perhaps, altruism. Am I feeding into a system I disagree with? Am I wasting my energy on something that has little to no impact on the world?

The thoughts and statistics I opened with are top of mind because I thought I needed to build a case against someone. I thought I was writing this for someone who is out there that doesn’t believe working in an artistic field is “real work.” This is a person who scoffs at the notion of painting or songwriting being important. Even in my imagination, arguing with a made-up individual, I feel compelled to present a convincing argument (hence the data).

But it wasn’t until very recently that I realized who I was trying to persuade. It’s someone I know intimately and have faced off with similar psychological battles before: it’s me.

In my work and in my life, I’m chasing a feeling. I used to think happiness was a destination you arrived at, but I know now that it’s the byproduct of doing or achieving something. I can’t be happy all the time, just like I can’t be full all the time. To feel full, I need to eat a big meal. I feel happiest when I am creating, so create I must.

If you weren’t aware already, I have a YouTube channel where I have been creating 60-second short videos about whatever topic I find interesting at a given moment. My aunt Kara has taken to calling these shorts “Filler” which comes from newspaper writers having to “fill” inches on the page with trivia or fun facts when writing a column. The substack publication you’re reading right now is the “Column.”

There’s this bliss I feel when I’m creating this Filler content. It’s like all of the skills I’ve cultivated over the years have been built up to do this one thing. Writing, filming, editing, motion graphics, distributing… all of it coming from me, spinning up a story about something I find interesting (I do use AI here, more on that another time). The magic of filmmaking that I fell in love with as a middle schooler was something I knew existed, but didn’t feel equipped to do myself. I feel like that kid would be proud of me and marvel at the skills I’ve accumulated.

I’ve fallen in love with my creative process because it feels so satisfying to make a tangible asset seemingly out of thin air. Creating Filler content and writing this Column occupy so much of whatever the “desire” section of my brain is that it’s terrifying in a way. It’s all I want to do, it’s my passion.

That’s why, even though I make a few bucks a month off of creating Filler content, that’s not the main motivation. Eventually, it would be nice to get enough of a following to be able to help out with the bills, but my primary motivation is what carries me through the hard times: the feeling I have when all the creative pieces fall into place.

I used to base the success of these projects entirely on their outcomes. Would I get 1,000 views on a video? Would I get 10,000 subscribers on YouTube? Would I earn $100,000 from ad revenue? Those outcomes would certainly be nice, but building my process around achieving those outcomes and those outcomes alone will not bring about the blissful feeling I’m chasing. It feels different this time because I know that working on these creative pursuits is the goal. Just showing up and getting the work done is the entire blueprint to success for me.

Did I show up and work on Filler videos today? I won. Did I show up and work on my Column today? I won again. Damn, winning sure is easy, huh?

I have these arguments with myself about the validity of artistic work because I feel so protective of it. I will do whatever it takes to keep doing what I do. While I occupy a small slice of that artistic GDP pie piece, I’m grateful for my piece. And I know that larger piece is filled with so many different creatives, chasing dreams in other milieus, from Hollywood to Etsy to their father’s building and loan. All of us are doing real, economically valuable work, whether that matters to you or not.

I’m curious about the intersection of labor and creativity, so I don’t think I’ll stop searching for meaning in the work that I do. I don’t think I’ll quit having the fake argument with myself and finding facts that support my side. There will still be reflections on lessons learned and musings on how things are developing in the creative sphere, but in searching for meaning and shoring up my arguments, I’ll continue to show up here every week.

I’m glad you’re here.

Back to Basics

Six years ago, I moved home to my parents’ house so I could focus on being a full-time solo YouTuber. I gave myself 6 months, from September 2019 to March 2020, when I would turn 26 and be kicked off of my parents’ health insurance. By the time March 2020 hit, I hadn’t yet made it big, and I’m sure you remember a certain global event that culminated at the same time... like many people, the pandemic forced me to take stock of what I was doing and I realized that the dream of being a full-time solo YouTuber was fading. I started working again, part-time, for ProfitWell, the company I had left 6 months prior.

There was a brief transition period, where I was a part-time solo YouTuber and a part-time salaryman, still making YouTube videos but for a company, where I asked myself lots of questions like, “Is there even a full-time role for me to go back to at ProfitWell? Am I just giving up on my passion? Has all of this been for naught?” The entire world being shut down didn’t help the mental anguish.

In December of 2020, I basically got back the exact same job I had left a year earlier. It felt good that I could resume doing the work I had left, but the worry remained. Why was I helping other people tell their story when I could be telling my own? I missed the creative control I’d experienced doing my own work. I wanted to be the conductor of the orchestra, making sure all of the instruments were humming along together.

What happened over the next five years was a tornado of Ozian scale that I’m only coming to terms with now as I figure out where all of Dorothy’s things go.

As I found myself back in the throes of start-up life, working still from my parents’ home, I slowly built up an idea of where I wanted to go. If I wanted to be the one calling the shots, I needed to make sure I had my personal affairs in order first. For folks who have attended therapy or done any sort of self-improvement, you may be familiar with the oxygen mask metaphor. We’ve all seen those safety demonstrations on airplanes, the ones where they say, “Make sure to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.” Basically, if you want to be a productive member of society, or just at the very least want to not be a burden on others, handle your own shit first.

If I wanted to be the guy in charge of all the content, I had to make sure the content I was working on was in tip-top shape. I had to make sure I was mentally and physically well so I could accomplish what needed to be done. I built up a morning routine for myself and started working out regularly again, following the principle of “Just Show Up,” which you can read more about here.

I made sure that when I was working, I was working. I minimized distractions and gave myself the proper space to “get shit done.” Part of this is environmental (having a clean desk, organized computer, clear to-do list), but that environment had to be paired with a mindset, one where I took the work I was doing, no matter how big or small, seriously. My responsibilities at the time included cutting out the “ums” and “ahs” of dialogue, coloring the footage, adding in graphics, music, sound effects, and a bunch of other tiny little tasks.

My focus became making sure that the programming I was responsible for was as clear and effective as possible to help communicate the overall message of the company. Our goal was to convince the world of our expertise, to command an authority in our field. The moat that we built was largely through the content I had a hand in creating. Shows that focused on product retention (like Boxed Out) and product monetization (like Pricing Page Teardown) drove that authority.

Sometimes the work was monotonous; focusing on “ums,” “uhs,” and graphic treatments could make it feel like the episodes of the show I was editing would blend together. I would question why creating this content was even worth it. How did any of this help make money for the company?

In May 2022, ProfitWell was purchased by Paddle for $200m. Turns out putting my dream of being a solo-creator on pause was worth it. At the time of the acquisition, Christian Owens, Paddle’s co-Founder, said, “Having created the number one subscription metrics product in the market, and cemented its reputation as a renowned authority on revenue growth in the $400 billion SaaS industry, ProfitWell will add considerable value to our offering.”

Art does not need a monetary value assigned to it in order to be important. However, for someone like myself who does this for a living, it’s validating to see the work I do valued in such a way. I have personally been told that the content I helped create at ProfitWell had a major part in the decision to acquire the company.

I know in my soul that I do important work, but when I start to think about what really “matters” I certainly understand that there are more important things in life than making YouTube videos and writing Substack columns (we don’t have to list them but I’m sure we can agree that a doctor is doing much more important work than a videographer). I don’t say this to belittle my own work; I say it because it helps me keep things in perspective.

Today, my role is Director of Programming for Mostly Media. I’m not a full-time solo YouTuber, but my full-time job is to create for YouTube. I am paid a healthy sum each month, making more money than I ever had. I’m privileged to be in this position, I’ve been afforded many opportunities and had doors opened for me that I do not take for granted. That’s part of the reason I take my work so seriously. I’ve been given the opportunity of a lifetime to be doing creative work in a professional capacity and be compensated handsomely for it.

I know now that the small tasks that used to blur together, the “ums” and the “ahs” that I make sure are edited out of the videos I make, are not the most important work that I do when looked at by themselves. That sort of editing complements the music I add, the sound effects I put in, the graphics that transition topics and underline certain points. The clarity of the message that is being delivered is the most important focus, and if the little things don’t get paid attention, then the resulting lack of clarity means that all the monotony is for naught.

Perhaps someday I will be afforded the opportunity to create for myself full-time, but I am not in any rush to do so. It’s an incredibly valuable experience to help others tell their stories and create content that drives authority. I’m operating at a higher level than I was 5 years ago, and I’m still learning so much. I am now the guy who is in charge of all the content. I get to decide what we produce and how we produce it, but I only got to this point because I cared about the details. I didn’t advance in my career because I removed “ums” and “ahs”, I got promoted because I treated it like it mattered, because it does.

If you want to be the person in charge of content, you have to be responsible for outcomes. Authority comes from making other people sound smart, clear, and credible. Focusing on the details and making sure the product is good is the path forward. It’s not a waste of time to help other people tell their stories; it’s an effective way to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Treat your work seriously and others will too.

I’m glad you’re here.

After I graduated college in May 2016, there was an in-between period where I had to figure some stuff out. I had secured employment at a startup called CoachUp and I had locked down my first “Big Boy” apartment in the North End of Boston. The job began immediately, but the move wouldn’t be until September. I had roughly a quarter of a year to figure out the “stuff” one needed to be an independent adult. The greatest lesson I learned to help me get there?

Just. Show. Up.

I know what you’re thinking, “This guy is NOT going to figure out all that adult stuff in one quarter.” You’re correct, dear reader, but I think having that sort of lofty goal is what helped drive me to at least begin the process of becoming a responsible adult… and just beginning the process is the heart of “Just Show Up.”

Like I said, there was a lot to figure out, but I’m going to focus here on a fitness plan. I had finished my last year of Volleyball in my Senior year, retiring as a 4-Time Sportsmanship Team Award winner (turns out you just need to shake the ref’s hands after every game). But in completing my volleyball career, I was left without a regular workout routine to keep my body and mind in shape.

I’d like to pause for a second: I am cognizant that not everyone reading this may have the same sort of relationship I do with my body. In the rest of this piece, I’m going to talk about weight loss, calorie counting, and perhaps some body positivity. I’m not a doctor; do not take anything I share here as medical advice. I won’t be giving exact weight numbers, and my intent is not to shame anyone who does not have a fitness routine. If this still makes you uncomfortable, please feel no pressure to continue reading. I’ll catch you next week.

I’d had a glimpse of what a lack of routine was like during the two semesters I spent at my college’s other campuses. I did not like how I looked without a regular workout plan, but more importantly, I didn’t like how I felt.

The great thing about being a member of a sports team is you’re kind of forced to have a workout routine. Even when I returned from those semesters abroad out of shape, I could return to a healthy level of conditioning pretty quickly due to regularly scheduled practice and game times.

But here I was post-grad without any regularly scheduled practice or game times.

I decided to set a goal weight for myself. I didn’t have access to the school fitness center anymore, and I wasn’t willing to shell out the cash for a monthly gym membership. I decided I would track my calories. The weight loss method of “calories in, calories out” (CICO) makes a lot of sense in my brain. All you gotta do is make sure you burn more calories than you consume. So it was simple: I’d run a few miles, track my calories burned using a FitBit, and track my calories consumed using MyFitnessPal.

I figured I could reach my goal weight by the end of the quarter. I looked at that number as a beacon, the finish line I would meet after carefully tracking my ins and outs. I found it was pretty easy, and coming out of my last ever period of regular schooling, I enjoyed the normalcy I found in maintaining a schedule: wake up at 6 a.m. every day, run, shower, go to work, come home, chill.

Look at me, ma, I’m being an adult! I’ve got a schedule and everything!

It didn’t feel like a tremendous effort, and before I knew it, I reached my goal weight with some time to spare. But this isn’t a tale of me reaching my goals and living happily ever after… Once I hit my goal, my foot came off the gas. I had, afterall, reached my goal, so what’s the point in continuing?

This pattern repeated over the years. For myriad reasons, I would start a routine and stop a routine, sometimes meeting my goal and sometimes forgetting it altogether.

This went beyond just fitness. I’d start a new youtube channel with the goal of “I’m going to get to 100,000 subscribers by January,” or I’d try to learn a new language in one month. (for more on the YouTube Channel Graveyard, check out this piece)

Looking back, I feel like my post-grad life was filled with a lot of confusion. That period stretched on for quite some time, taking up new projects and then forgetting them when the finish seemed impossible to reach.

I started to wonder what the point of it all was… If I were to reach my goals and then just give up and backslide once they were achieved, why bother trying in the first place?

But something changed just a few years ago: I realized I had a fundamental problem with my goals. The problem wasn’t having unrealistic goals; it was having goals just for the sake of having a goal.

If hitting the goal becomes the whole point of doing the work, I’ll either quit early or lose momentum after I get there… That is, unless I actually believe in what I’m building.

The change I made was simple: the work became the goal.

For a while, I still kept an endpoint in mind (lose this many pounds, lift this much weight), but the real goal is broken down to the simplest step: show up where the work happens. If my ultimate goal is to lose weight, then I am going to consistently show up at the place where that happens.

I feel like I’m perhaps being a bit too vague here. Let’s fast forward from post-college 2016 to 2021. I was living at home with my parents in post-Covid Los Angeles. I was re-emerging into the world after isolating at home in the same bedroom I grew up in. It felt like I was starting all over again with the process of becoming an adult.

Once again, I wanted some sort of fitness routine that would help me onto a healthy path. There was a small gym about a 10-minute walk from the house. I had grown an affinity for weight lifting; running was in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t set out to lift a whole whack of weight or grow my biceps by a certain number; I just decided to show up and lift weights at the gym on a regular cadence.

On a basic level, I told myself that I didn’t have to do anything once I got to the gym; I could just walk there, clock in, and leave if I wanted to, but I had to show up.

A funny thing happens when you push yourself to simply just be in the place where work happens… you end up doing work.

I don’t think there was a single time where I walked to the gym and then immediately walked back. There were definitely times where I only did half a workout instead of a full workout, but I’d say I had a 100% success rate at doing a workout when I simply just showed up to the gym.

There’s absolutely additional structure and discipline needed for a successful fitness routine. I didn’t just show up and then suddenly lose body fat and gain muscle. If you’re curious, I follow the principle of progressive overload: basically every time I do a weight-lifting routine, I increase stress on the muscles in at least the slightest way possible. I’ll add more weight, do more sets, or even just do one more rep.

I went back to look at where I started, and with my bench press alone, I’ve increased the weight I lift since then by 33%. Not bad! And it wasn’t even my goal to lift that much in the first place.

“Just Show Up” has helped me get through a lot in life, not just build healthy routines. It’s helped me with relationships, it’s helped me with meeting new people, it’s even helped me go to the dentist.

I feel driven to write about it this week because that’s also the philosophy behind this column. If I set out to get to 10,000 followers on substack or to earn $100,000 by a certain date, I think I would have already given up.

I won’t lie to you: I do want my audience to grow. I want the silver play button on YouTube. I want the recognition. But if my primary directive is to hit a number, I know I will fail. In my experience, the numbers only come when work is the focus. And making work the focus is as easy as showing up.

My goal for this column is to show up with an email in your inbox every Saturday at 5:05 a.m. Pacific Time. I do that by making sure that I show up at my computer every day and write just a little bit. Hey, I even wrote for like 10 minutes on Monday right before I went to bed. None of that was usable, by the way, but it was helpful to get rid of some bad ideas. And knowing that I contributed just a small amount the day before helped push me to show up again the next day, and the day after that.

Thank you for showing up today.

I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see ya next time.

“I hate to be a wrong generation guy but I really can’t believe I missed safe cocaine, car phones, and buying pitches in the room.” - My friend Ben who makes movies (not me, different guy)

In the house I grew up in, there is a “room” we lovingly referred to as The Loft. The Loft is this oddly shaped platform that sits in the back half of the house above the hallway and laundry room. Two sides of The Loft are open to the floor below, the only thing that stops one from falling overboard on these two sides is a railing. A, presumably, custom built ladder drops down into the hallway below with an entrance to The Loft blocked off by a gate.

When opened, the gate makes a bit of a creak and when closed there’s a distinct click. The Loft has served many purposes over the years: storage, cat shelter, and my favorite one: play room. The Loft was a dedicated zone separate from my bedroom where I could play with legos, build block towers, lay down toy train tracks, and so on… It’s where I made my first foray into video games. It’s where I had sleepovers. It was a sanctuary of fun.

I was not permitted to go into The Loft to play willy nilly. I had to meet certain benchmarks in order to be allowed to open the gate. Had I done my chores? Was I on my best behavior? Was I doing well in school? My parents served as the gatekeepers. There was no lock on the gate, but as you’ve now read, it was not easy to sneak past the noisy entry.

That physical space represents a haven of creativity for me. It was a place where I would let loose and build without purpose, creating plans for empires I would rule over and then topple because wooden blocks are fun to topple. In a way, The Loft was the first place where I experienced the flow state: a creative zone where time and meaning falls away and all that matters is the work in front of me. Distraction-free, worry-free, bliss. My dad reminisces fondly of this time because I would unknowingly whistle a tune while I played. It was a reminder to him that I was safe and okay, because I was.

My playtime evolved over the years, especially when I discovered computers. I filmed some of my early videos in The Loft, but I edited on a computer. My passion drifted slowly from the physical Loft to the virtual world. I’m not making block towers anymore, it’s videos for the internet that has consumed my creative attention.

I often day dream about the path I’ve taken to this moment. I knew early on that I liked making videos - I know I knew as early as The Loft Days. I am so fortunate to have had the realization of what I wanted to do for a career so early in my life. It came from following my passion. I kept trying different ways to tell different stories. I experimented with my parents’ Hi8 tape first before I graduated to MiniDV tapes and eventually digital cameras. I had permission to try and fail over and over again.

I no longer have to be on my best behavior, or do well in school, or do my chores for the metaphorical gate to open, but I’ve realized that there are still gatekeepers in my life represented by people and situations.

I saw firsthand what it took to make movies and television. I saw through my own father how much work had to be done on one facet of the production. A Location Manager, simply put, is responsible for… well…. managing the locations (shocking, I know). You can’t make a movie if you don’t have somewhere to shoot it. Not only do you need locations to film movies and TV, you need places for the cast and crew to park. If you’re not familiar with the job, there’s a fantastic piece of media that explains the whole thing here (my dad is Tim Hillman, he’s kind of the star)

I decided in High School that I would not follow the traditional Hollywood path. I had the support system and nepotism working in my favor to go that route, but it was kind of because of it that I zagged instead of zigged.

My personal experience in making movies involved one person: me. I would often be the star of my own movie, the cameraman, the editor, the distributor. I found (and still find) such joy in being involved in the entire process. I was not interested in joining a world where one plays only a small part in a big production.

It looked like it would take a lot of dues paying before I could move up the ranks enough to be able to tell the stories I wanted to tell. I saw Hollywood as Gatekeep City, preventing me from going into The Loft even though I had done all my chores, schoolwork was not an issue, and I was on my best behavior. I love that world, I celebrate it, I want it to thrive and flourish, but it’s not the world for me.

It’s not like I could have just kept playing in The Loft, creating for creating’s sake, without a care in the world. Benny’s gotta eat, Benny’s gotta pay rent, Benny’s not comfortable with people calling him Benny unless he feels super close to you so unless you’re going to pay my taxes, dear reader, it’s Ben.

Since no one was employing block tower builders and I shut off the entertainment business option, I left the door open to whatever else would let me make movies on day one of my post-college career. As luck would have it, I found a place like that in CoachUp, a startup in Boston focused on athletic training for youth and adults. So there I was, making my own worlds, living my dream, getting paid to make movies, and I didn’t have to slog my way through the Hollywood machine.

But just because I escaped the traditional gatekeepers did not mean the work I created was without new ones.

While I’m grateful to have been able to create movies right away, it still has taken me a long time to work on exactly the kind of media that I want to create. There were still dues to be paid. I had to sacrifice the kinds of stories I wanted to tell because my job required me to tell other ones. I don’t begrudge this. It’s logical, it makes complete sense for my labor to be given in service of another’s vision. I also sort of like the challenge of it.

My second job out of college was for a company called (at the time) Price Intelligently (It’s not managing location level of obvious but I’m sure you can figure out what we did). I remember I ended my last interview with:

“I don’t know what does it, but I’m definitely interested in figuring out what makes pricing sexy.”

I don’t know if saying that is what got me the job, but it definitely didn’t lose me the job. And it represents the challenge I had for my early career: I had to figure out how to take topics that weren’t inherently interesting and make them interesting. I wasn’t telling my own stories, I was working with other people to tell their stories.

Yet lately, I’ve been itching to get back into The Loft.

I often wonder what would have happened if I didn’t choose this path. What would have happened if I tried to become a member of the Hollywood elite and make my own movies. There’s no way of knowing what making the other decision would have looked like (the butterfly effect and all that). However, I can imagine I would have found similar frustrations with the gatekeepers over there.

Many of my friends are still in “The Biz”, one of whom, Ben (again, not me), is a creative executive for a production company. I’ve learned from him that telling stories there still requires lots of waiting, people, and, of course, gatekeepers. And if you can tell by the opening of this piece, it has only gotten harder. I wouldn’t know what makes safe cocaine good for getting movies made, but perhaps it would make “buying the pitch in the room” a more impulsive and easy decision.

I feel fantastic writing this column, dear reader (hi Vinny!). Perhaps one day I could do this full time, but that’s only going to come if I continue to show up and earn your time spent reading. I feel like I’ll do that if I continue to get better.

Welcome back to The Loft.

I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see ya next time.

I’ve managed to keep this up for one month! I’m thrilled to have you here. If you’re new, make sure you check out some of my recent work too:

If everyone’s super, no one will be

Wistia: Don’t forget the people

One constant I’ve found while writing this has been that, no matter what happens, every week I end up having something I want to write about. It’s kind of the whole point of the “exercise” that is Slacker Stuff.

The etymology of Slacker Stuff comes from the tried and failed brand names I’ve adopted over the years.

Some favorites include: JaminVlogs, WhiteBreadBoi, BennyHillmanTV, Not Funny or Creative…

I’ve been obsessed with labeling the thing that I enjoy doing, sometimes even letting that get in the way of doing the “thing” itself (making YouTube videos). I think this comes from my obsession with systems: I want to figure out a repeatable process to create things and I want that process to have a name.

JaminVlogs was a system in which I made 100 videos in 100 days (and then for 265 days after to make it a full year).

Not Funny or Creative was a system in which I made recurring series with my friends in college and adopted this moniker so I wouldn’t feel too self important.

Slacker Stuff is a similar sort of humility, but it is in more ways a challenge to myself. I sort of see being a “slacker” as the default mode that my body wants to exist in.

I love nothing more than having a Slug Day, where I just sit on the couch and binge whatever show or YouTube series has my attention. These Slug Days are all-consuming in that I don’t worry about what I’m eating or drinking, I don’t worry about obligations or appointments, I just focus on the slug.

Slug Stuff isn’t a bad name either if you think about it, but I gravitated towards calling my current system Slacker Stuff for a different reason.

Back to the Future is inarguably the greatest movie of all time. There’s a reason they still study the script in film school, because it’s impeccable. Marty McFly, the main character, is labeled by his principal, Mr. Strickland, as a “Slacker” whenever the two meet throughout all three movies. To Mr. Strickland, Marty meets this definition: a person who avoids work or effort. Marty is constantly late for class, accrues unexcused absences, and I can only assume his grades are not up to snuff.

Because this movie was heavily featured in my personal rotation, my whole family was subjected to it (sorry, not sorry). We would quote the film amongst other classics like Galaxy Quest, School of Rock, or one of the other greatest films of all time: Buckaroo Bonzai.

My dad fixated on Mr. Strickland’s “Slacker” insult, but he absolutely didn’t use it in an insulting way. Whenever I would get a good or decent grade in school (let’s say an A- or a B+), he would jokingly call me a Slacker.

As I’ve pointed out, I can fit the traditional definition of a Slacker when I have those Slug Days. However, I take ownership of the term as more of a challenge for myself. The work I do under the umbrella of Slacker Stuff is antithetical to the name.

I feel incredible when I get in the groove writing, I feel incredible when I get in the groove making YouTube videos, I feel incredible when I get in the groove doing slacker stuff.

It’s easy for me to get lost in the labeling of the systems (hence all the failed brand names), but it’s also easy for me to get lost wondering what I should be working on. I worry about what will perform the best or if I’m speaking to the right audience.

I worry that I’m not focused on the right things and that by spending my time writing for this publication, am I wasting time that I could spend on things that will be more lucrative?

I guess I end up calming the worry by reminding myself that all that really matters is if I’m working on that “stuff” where I feel in the groove. If I’m focused on Slacker Stuff, in its myriad of formats, then I’m focused on the right stuff.

I’ve had various attempts at formats and mediums. There’s no guarantee that the publication you’re reading right now will be the thing I do forever or even that it’s the thing I’ll be doing next week. There’s definitely a chance this is the last issue I write (I doubt it, but it’s possible).

I’m going to leave you with a quote that struck me, and I feel like it’s set me on a good path. Josh Johnson was on the Colin and Samir podcast and said the following.

“Everyone is the same in that, if I, essentially, was given everything that you have and I had your background, I had your genetic makeup, and I just had your life, I would be you. I wouldn’t be me being a better you.”

If I had everything you had, I would be you. But I don’t, and I’m not. That’s what makes me me, grooves, slug days, and all, and that’s what makes Slacker Stuff mine.

I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see ya next time.

“If everyone’s super, no one will be.” said by the late, great (okay not so great) Syndrome in objectively the best Pixar film: The Incredibles

A prescient statement to make as we find ourselves deep in the A.I. era. I’ll be honest with you, I do not love devoting so much of my writing to A.I. The initials have lost any semblance of meaning.

However, that’s the world we exist in today. As much as I would prefer to ignore it and just make stuff, it’s easy to see a world where everyone will be considered “super” eventually.

It pains me to admit it, but I see the path we are headed down: the ability for individuals to create whatever they can imagine with the type of a few key strokes; a chatbot-enabled service where you “create” your own programming in lieu of logging onto a streaming service.

I thought part of the promise of A.I. was to create efficiencies where humans struggle, like making X-rays easier to read or smart contracts that eliminate red-lining. It feels as if that future is a dream of yesteryear, while the future in front of us is an A.I. world of entertaining slop.

Maybe you think things are headed in a different direction. I hope you’re right, but this direction is something I have to take seriously because (if it’s true) it will directly affect my livelihood.

I have built a career out of making things. I’m grateful that I get to sit in my spare bedroom and just… make stuff that people enjoy. It’s the dream job for a kid who just wanted to make movies for a living.

I’ve struggled, and I continue to struggle, to tell meaningful stories. There’s a big part of me that believes that the struggle is necessary. If I want to say something that has an impact, I feel like I need to test the narrative with others, write and rewrite until I end up with something that feels rock solid. I feel certain that rough drafts are a universal occurrence, unless you don’t care about what gets out there.

We’ve all written out a text and corrected a typo or smudged some writing on a sticky note that we have to write again. Don’t we all make mistakes and correct them to preserve the image of ourselves we project into the world?

I’ve grown this audience to just over 50 people. One of those people is Kara Lindstrom, my aunt who desperately wants a shoutout and is someone I speak to regularly about my writing. An accomplished writer herself, she helps me figure out what I’m trying to say. As we talked about last weekend, this is something I also do with a chatbot.

The first draft of most of the work I do here involves me word vomiting into a microphone, creating a transcript in Adobe Premiere, and then uploading that transcript into ChatGPT where I ask, “What the fuck am I trying to say?”

As you can tell, while there’s a distaste for A.I., I still find it useful.

But Kara GPT differs from Chat GPT in ways that are invaluable. Behind Kara is lived experience, an immense power that strengthens what I write because it comes from a real place.

I can hear the opposing argument here already: “Well, ChatGPT is trained on a lot of lived experiences, and you can set up the parameters to make it tell you what you want”.

While I find ChatGPT a useful tool to figure out what I am saying, it’s still going to do exactly what I want it to do. The difference in speaking to a human is the restraint a person has to share everything, and as much as I might persuade, that person isn’t obligated to share anything.

Kara is only going to share what she wants to share. It’s meaningful because it improves my writing by challenging what I have written, not agreeing with every word I put on the paper (which ChatGPT does profusely).

While Kara is an audience of one, I think this is applicable to the masses as well. Due to the commodification of the critics, as I spoke about last week, everyone’s sharing their opinion all the time.

Does everyone want to be super? Should we only allow the elites to be super? This isn’t a veiled attempt at getting you to believe in the works of a hack like Ayn Rand. We don’t need to gatekeep being smart or creative. I just want to know if there are others like myself.

I don’t want to consume stories of my own design. I don’t need entertainment to fit my every thought, conscious or subconscious. I want to consume media that reveals things I may not know or challenges the beliefs I hold dearly. I don’t think you get there if you have the ability to make a machine give you the exact stories you want.

Does anyone really want to just type something out into a prompt bar and get that thing? What does instant gratification do to us?

It’s perpetuating what we see online already, the idea that social media is designed to be instant gratification. The barrier to entry to publish one’s work is in the fucking basement. Perhaps there should be some constraints on that?

If everything went the way I wanted it to, it wouldn’t be interesting. I like watching things and consuming things that I’m familiar with (Lord knows how many times I’ve watched and re-watched The West Wing). But if I never consume anything new, I’m just rehashing the same thing over and over again until I rot away and die.

I think about my existence a lot and what that says about individualism. I was born in 1994, only so many humans can say that. I was born in 1994 in Los Angeles, the bubble gets smaller. I was born in 1994 in Los Angeles as the second and final child of my parents. The bubble continues to shrink (you see where I’m going). While I have experiences that are similar to those in my various bubbles, when you get down to the individual, there are experiences that can not and will never be replicated.

It’s the thing that honestly gives me hope in A.I. dystopia. If we create machines that experience everything a human experiences, you’d think that’s the end of it all. But it’s not. You can’t speed up the growing process that gives us our souls. The moments that make me “me” include the banal time sucks on top of the exciting experiences. It’s the good, it’s the bad, it’s the whole enchilada.

You can’t replace Kara - the value she brings with her lived experience and restraint in sharing every facet or detail. The things that make Kara a “super” resource cannot be distilled into a replicable machine. There’s no equation in the world that, if followed perfectly, equals love.

If everyone’s super, no one will be Kara.

I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see ya next time.

Creative ideas are born out of constraints.

In 2018, Wistia, a video marketing platform, released a life-changing docu-series called One, Ten, One Hundred (or OTOH). It was written, directed, produced, and hosted by Chris Lavigne and Dan Mills, both of whom are still employed by Wistia and making videos for them to this day. Each episode opens with the line that opens this piece: creative ideas are born out of constraints. The premise of the series is that Wistia is paying a production company called Sandwich video for a $1,000 ad, a $10,000 ad, and a $100,000 ad in order to see what increasing budgets do for creative ideas.

The series was life-changing because of what it meant for me, who I am, and what I do. My career path has not been that of a traditional individual who wants to make movies. I am, effectively, a professional YouTuber, and I have been for quite some time. I am driven by the opportunity to tell stories and make videos entirely on my own. In my journey as a solo creator, I’ve welcomed tools that help me create more efficiently. If I can visualize my idea as quickly as possible, it helps tremendously in getting to the final result.

Until watching this series, I don’t think I fully realized the importance of putting down the blinders and letting other creative voices in.

This is why One, Ten, One Hundred resonated so much with me. I was able to see what money was able to afford: people. As the sliding scale of the budget increased with each ad, you could see how the people involved increased. More people meant more eyes, not necessarily more opinions changing the creative vision, but expertise that helped inform the entire creative process and ultimately tell a cohesive story.

My professional journey began as I soaked up the stories and experiences of my family as they navigated the film business of Los Angeles. My father the Location Manager, my aunt the Set Decorator, my sister the art department coordinator. The people I see in OTOH are the same kind of people who came to my birthday parties, family barbecues, and holiday celebrations. I see my family in One, Ten, one Hundred.

The docu-series ended up centering on one individual: Claude. Claude directed all three ads. As they say in the series: if you watch the story in reverse, as the production budgets get smaller, the common denominator is Claude. With each influx of cash, Claude was able to focus on the story, handing off the more technical elements to other experts.

While Claude is the main character, the story doesn’t come together because of him but because of his trust in other people to help him pull everything together. We see Megan, the Director of Photography come in at the 10k spot and lift the burden of operating the camera which helps tell the story.

We see Dawn come in at the $100k level as the Assistant Director, an incredibly crucial position that makes it possible for the entire ad to be filmed. Keeping the crew on task and making sure they get all the shots. Dawn’s work isn’t technically seen on the screen. You don’t see a set she laid out, you can’t blame her for something being out of focus. Dawn keeps the trains running on time and if there’s creative wiggle room, she’s there to figure out if they can make it work and when it’s time to move on. You don’t get the $100k spot without Dawn. You don’t get the $10k spot without Megan.

Before watching this series, I had this expectation for myself that if I just had enough money, I could actualize my own creative vision without any help. It sounds silly to say now, but I saw people as obstacles, not helpers.

I was wrong.

Through showing the audience the importance of people in OTOH, I trust the team at Wistia to tell a story that emotionally resonates with me. Above all else, the story had something to say. The reason the narrative moved me is because of the characters I became familiar with. It wasn’t because folks like Claude or Megan or Dawn told me that they were important, they showed me through example why their labor costs the amount it does.

Chris and Dan clearly recognized this too. You can tell from their explicit takeaways in the final episode. I found them true but almost unnecessary to state due to them being proved to anyone with basic media literacy.

If you run a company and you want to invest your capital efficiently in creative.

Invest in creative people.

More creative hands on deck improves the quality.

Video gear has diminishing returns.

There was something else I noticed on my second watch-through. I don’t feel convinced that the Wistia crew believes that last point wholeheartedly. I saw a fascination with the tools they were using and at times elevating them above the people who expertly used them. Marveling at the technology of the camera used in the $100k spot, fixating on the monitor used in the $10k spot which even drove them to purchase one of their own.

But perhaps most egregiously, the end of the series results in a fascination with a tool that had no bearing on the story whatsoever. As the credits roll we see Dan and Chris retrieving a drone that crashes into Walden Pond.

I found it disappointing that the denouement is not a focus on the people who made the story happen, but on the equipment that wasn’t technically required. A drone is an instrument that can elevate the simplest story, but lacking intention results in a default screen saver you might find on a Windows XP era desktop computer.

There’s another reason this stood out to me.

We’re 7 years removed now from the One, Ten, One Hundred series. Wistia is still going strong, Chris and Dan are still with the company, still experimenting.

This year, Wistia released another project. The project is billed as a Million Dollar Pixar-style short made with AI in one week. They wanted to make an AI Animation which was Pixar quality that was fast, cheap, and emotional. It’s a story about Lenny the dog, Chris Lavignes personal pooch (and Wistia’s mascot), and how Lenny is tasked with delivering a VHS tape to Wistia HQ. I encourage you to form your own opinion on the video in lieu of taking my word for it. I’ll share a link to it here.

There’s a number of problems I have with the short. I’ll try to be brief, but for some context: at one point the article you’re reading right now was 9 pages long (shoutout to my Sister and Aunt for offering copyediting services for free).

First of all, there’s plenty of evidence that the tools to create this project were not developed with ethical means. If the goal is to strip back the labor required to create a project like this, the bar was certainly close to being met if not outright achieved. This is where a lot of the hate appears in the comment section. I don’t disagree here. At the same time I also recognize that automation is not something novel.

Efficiencies have been found in movie making and jobs have been eliminated in the century since the technology began. With digital cameras, film processing and print labs no longer exist. But this is a change that happened over decades. Perhaps the reason the reaction to AI filmmaking is so visceral this time around is the speed at which the efficiencies are coming. If the Pixar-inspired short is possible today, why should Disney employ animators in a year?

In the U.S. in particular, our existence is tied to employment. We lack an adequate social safety net to catch the folks who are let go. This is a major issue in our current epoch. It is also an issue that the Wistia crew is not responsible for on their own. I don’t expect them to change the world, but this is why criticism of the craft is warranted.

But there is a solvable problem here that the Wistia crew can control: What’s the story? While a project like OTOH has characters you can relate to, situations that underline key takeaways, this Pixar-style short lacked any sort of conflict with consequences. Who am I supposed to feel for? Don’t get me wrong, I have and have had pets, I’m not emotionally vapid, but if you’re telling a story it’s gotta have some sort of situation where if the hero doesn’t succeed, there are ramifications.

I also bring this up because Chris himself is selling this project as being emotionally resonant. I believe him because it’s starring his dog who is getting to an age where this kind of acting isn’t as possible as it once was. I don’t fault him for feeling this way, I just invite him to see the bigger picture here and why folks unfamiliar with who Lenny is might be disassociating.

A two hour docu-series is easier to land this kind of connection than a 2 minute short but time does not get in the way of Pixar. Just give a short like Paperman a watch: they tell an emotionally resonating story with minimal color and zero dialogue.

The only development that happens in Wistia’s version, is the vhs, a tool from yesteryear, continually gets destroyed. I feel nothing for the tape. Lenny, the main character, does not endure a struggle or suffer any consequences. The delivery of the destructed tape has no ramifications for the recipient. If the world is headed in the direction of prompting a chat bot to cook for us, let’s at least have the taste to expect flavor.

I don’t think the Wistia team was wrong for trying this experiment. I’m proud of them for trying something different and challenging the status quo. I just think something has been lost here, something that is unsurprising due the complaints I noticed with One, Ten, One Hundred, but disappointing considering the series’ lasting legacy.

I know I’m not alone in criticisms here, lord knows the folks over at Wistia have been hearing a lot of inflammatory comments. I don’t mean to stoke the fires here at all. Do not take this piece as an invitation to spew further vitriol to Wistia or any of its employees. If you’re considering doing business with Wistia, this piece is not intended for you to write them off.

This video was created with the same thought that was in mind when telling the story of retrieving that drone out of Walden Pond: look at how marvelous this tool is? Isn’t the story about this tool fascinating? Don’t you hope this tool isn’t broken and we can use it again? I’m not sure I care about any of those things.

Chris Lavigne posted a follow-up BTS video about the Pixar-short. I got into the comments on this one and he essentially confirmed my suspicions.

There are far fewer gate keepers to creativity than there were when I first started making videos twenty years ago. There are even fewer gate keepers than just 7 years ago when Wistia made their award-winning One, Ten, One Hundred.

It’s a blessing that making media is democratized so much, and we should welcome more competition, not shake our fists curmudgeonly.

It used to be that successful media was determined by its critics but now the critics are democratized as well. It’s more so the People that have a say in what is good or bad than a writer for the New Yorker or Entertainment Weekly.

I think this is to be celebrated, it’s meaningful that the collective makes up the tastemakers instead of elites in their ivory towers. We owe it to ourselves to ensure good stories are elevated and bad ones are demoted.

But recognize what is lost. Quality is not driven by subjectivity alone. Experts are experts for a reason, they have the experience in what works and what doesn’t work and should be trusted when alarm bells go off. Take your work seriously because no one is stopping you from making the wrong decision. If creative ideas are born out of constraints, and the barriers to executing the work itself ceases to exist, we must put the scrutiny on the work to ensure the story resonates.

The tools used to tell this Pixar-inspired story, Midjourney being one of the primary ones, are a modern marvel. I see the point that a solo creator like myself could use it to fulfill my creative visions with minimal obstruction. I see the point that eventually these tools will be good enough that you won’t have to fill in the margins and the “prompting” will be good enough to technically achieve the style that Pixar has.

I’m confident in the crew at Wistia and their ability to develop their own style in lieu of ripping of the Mouse. I’m sure they will figure out the technical requirements to truly be able to tell a story in as little time as possible.

Decisions are made by those who show up. If the people who show up are skilled with the art of story telling, they can use whatever tool they want to. If we are truly headed for this future, I want the people at the helm to recognize what good work is. I don’t want to navel-gaze at the shovel that digs the hole, I want to care about the hole and why it was dug.

I believe if anyone is capable of holding the mantle of telling a great story through video, it’s the team at Wistia. They’ve attracted many talented people over the years and it’s a testament that both Dan and Chris are still gainfully employed. Wistia, as a collective, is good at what they do.

I hope Wistia remembers the people. The people like Claude, Megan, Dawn… even the people like me.

I’m not a hater. You guys changed my life. I’m rooting for you, but remember I’m also watching you, thinking carefully about the stories being told.

I’m glad you’re here. I’ll see ya next time.

I cringe at the idea of someone reading this and thinking “What the hell is this guy talking about? Does he think he’s some kind of self-help guru?”

I believe advice is commoditized. Just go to LinkedIn, podcasts, other newsletters, anywhere and you’ll be drowning in mass-produced wisdom that doesn’t consider the individual.

So, remember, while you’re generously dedicating your time to reading this, I do not expect these traits, this story, to be the antidote to all of your problems. If anything, since most of you reading this are friends and family and not miscellaneous fans, I hope this colors in what you know about me.

There are three things I believe have helped shape who I am today. They are not conscious goals I continue to try to meet, but they are important in defining what I believe is a complete life. I believe, in particular, this trio is what gives me a strong work ethic.

Rhythm. Connection. Direction. Finding each of these took some time, but once I did, everything clicked.

I had an unshakable melancholy in my teen years. Yearning for a future where everything fell into place yet pining for a past where I had nothing to be responsible for.

I struggled socially at this time. I had the same friend group for much of my primary education years. I have fond memories of those pals, but I think our personalities clashed as all of us got older. Our friendship was based on teasing and light-bullying. I take ownership here, I wasn’t some innocent bystander, but as a foundational principle of that friend group, it wore on me.

I had a class schedule, so there was definitely a routine of sorts, but the rhythm of my day was usually dictated by how quickly I could get through it so I could get to volleyball.

But it was in my high school physics class in Sophomore year where it all seemed to go wrong. I loved my teacher, she was clearly dedicated to the subject. You could feel her excitement, her passion reverberating in odd catch phrases and memorable quotes. She’d often say “heavens to murgatroyd” which I associate with her more than the cartoon cat who made it famous (I even had to google that to confirm).

Unfortunately, there was a loophole in our home assignments that let me skate by academically. You could just turn in a piece of paper, any piece of paper with scribbles and nonsense on it, and get a “stamp” of approval. At the end of the semester, our teacher would just count the stamps, and that would go towards your grade. I struggled immensely to find direction as I aimlessly passed the time in class with glazed eyes.

For someone who identifies as a huge Slacker (hence the namesake), this was the dream. However, as you can probably imagine, being so aloof with actually completing school work meant I had no knowledge of the subject when examinations came to pass. For me, the tests didn’t so much come to pass as they did come to fail. I was not eager to ask for help. The class was fun, and it felt easy, so what was wrong?

My parents invested in tutoring, and we had many arguments over my educational performance. I probably would have been better served with a few therapy sessions rather than tutoring. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the school work, I just had a disconnect from the subject. I felt lacking in direction, in rhythm, in connection…

This class was sort of a microcosm of my high school career. I didn’t fail every class (I didn’t even fail that class, surprisingly), but I rarely found joy in school. It served as a duty, required by the state, not something I believed in.

If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have gone to college. Fortunately, with much persuasion and a generous donation, my parents insisted.

The solace I found at that time was not completely in failed volleyball teams. The true routine that worked for me was in my fledgling YouTube career. I was a fan of daily vloggers of the time, ShayCarl and Charles Trippy, to be specific. Here they were, just sharing their life, one day at a time, no matter the circumstances. I thought to myself: Why not me?

I set a goal to make a video every day for 100 days. After that, I went for a year.

Those videos still exist somewhere. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll share them with you. I look back on them fondly, not due to their content, but due to the rhythm I found that worked.

Make a video. Every day. No matter what. It taught me a valuable lesson in showing up and getting the work done. Even though I couldn’t find the rhythm in schooling, I found it in my passion. This wouldn’t fully materialize until much later.

The first few years of college were not too dissimilar to my high school years: some shitty volleyball teams and that familiar yearning to move both backwards and forwards. I was still searching for connection and direction. Fortunately, college courses came much easier to me than high school, and part of the reason has to be because I got to focus on, essentially, getting a degree in YouTube.

It felt like things really started to take a turn when I saw the school counselor. I had never been to therapy. I thought it was something reserved for “broken” people. To go would be to admit that I, too, was broken.

Even though I no longer believe you need to consider yourself broken in order to get help, believing I was a member of that group is what finally pushed me to go.

Finding myself in a similar place to 4 years ago, once again a sophomore but this time in college, I broke the pattern by asking for help. The school offered a service for free, so I figured I’d give it a go.

It wasn’t in a single session or even over multiple visits, but by going to therapy, I was able to do the work and figure out what I was really missing. It happened at the exact time I needed it to happen. I didn’t want to finish my college career without finding some sort of purpose, a career marriage between something I like doing and something I’m good at. As luck would have it, I found that at the end of my college career (more on that later).

It was also around this time that I found the second of the three resources I needed. I had just returned from a study abroad program in Europe, meeting people at a volatile time when I was feeling very open to new friendships. Skipping ahead a bit, the people I met there are still my closest friends to this day.

I found people who thought like me, were open like me, and had the same sense of humor. Most importantly, it wasn’t a friend group rooted in teasing one another. There was an admiration I found, an unspoken “hey, I’m glad you’re here” in our camaraderie.

Boy howdy was this the perfect blend. I found my people right around the time I was finding myself. With therapy and openness, I landed in a tribe that is supportive and kind. To top it off, the connection I built here also had relevance with my passion. We all wanted to make movies to varying degrees. I found friends who were editors like me, producers like me, filmmakers like me.

Granted, I mentioned before how I decided to essentially major in YouTube. That’s not what my degree says, but I was able to cater my classes to get a holistic understanding of the filmmaking process. I truly wanted to make YouTube videos for a living, my friends wanted to make films. So while I found connection with friends with a similar interest, there was still a directional piece missing that would not materialize for another couple years.

Cut to the second semester of my senior year. I was fresh off of a stint at home where I attended Emerson’s Los Angeles program. While there, I interned for a YouTube Multi-Channel Network (or MCN). An MCN is about as close as you can get to being in Hollywood without actually being in Hollywood. I learned a lot about optimizing YouTube videos for the platform, but I definitely realized this was not exactly the direction I wanted to head. Many of my friends graduated a semester early, I went back to Boston for one last ride…

I had interned at a sports startup called CoachUp the previous summer. I managed to secure part-time work with them during my last semester, where I got to focus on making sports YouTube videos. We’re not phoning in physics homework anymore, folks! I found the direction I desperately needed.

This part-time job would eventually be my full-time job after graduation. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would work for a start-up directly out of college. I didn’t plan it that way at all. Boston was supposed to be the stepping stone on my journey back home to L.A., but now it seemed like the ticket to everything I had worked for.

The materialization of the direction I found came about in a miraculous way. I don’t discredit the work I did on myself to get there, but I’m grateful for the situations and people that said yes to me in the same way I accepted them. But here’s where it all clicked:

While many seniors would take their last semester easy, the work I had done over the past few years meant I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I would not be skating by.

My schedule sounds pretty, in hindsight, grueling. Most days, I would leave my apartment in Allston at 7 am only to return by 11 pm. But I didn’t feel like it sucked at the time because my day was broken into focusing on subjects I enjoyed. It filled my cup and then some.

I had the rhythm down with school, work, and sports, each day rotating between classes, my job, and volleyball practice. I found connection with the people in all those places. I found the direction with a career opportunity that let me focus on making YouTube videos professionally without begging for subscribers while building a personal channel (which, as you can see by this Substack, I still keep going on the back burner).

Rhythm. Connection. Direction. They are what I only just recently defined as the things that keep my engine moving.

When one of them is lacking, it brings the others down, and I tend to overcompensate, thinking focusing only on one of them will bring me peace.

There have been times when only focusing on the rhythm of my life has been a disservice to me. I can’t tell you how many routines I’ve started just to say I did have led to nothing. Building up routines just to have a routine is not the answer to happiness…

I’ve also found that when I only focus on connection, I have not been complete. There’s a relationship I had in my life that became my entire focus, the wounds of which I’m still recovering from. I’m in a good place now, but being obsessed with and fixated on connection is a dangerous concoction.

And, of course, when I am only thinking about the direction I am headed in, the blinders cause me to miss the routine and connection that I so desperately need. That’s been my number one contributor to burnout. The best way to solve burnout, in my opinion? Do less. Simple, but it’s true.

I hope this piece has helped you. Whether it’s a simple reflection on the times these three things have impacted your life, or maybe you disagree wholeheartedly and decided to unsubscribe, that’s fine, I’m glad you’ve been moved, which is all I can hope for.

I’m enjoying writing this. I’ve started to figure out the rhythm of this project: the goal is to show up every Saturday at 5:05 am PST. I’m not so much sure on the connection, but I’ll keep searching for it. (your response to this in the form of a comment or reply definitely helps)

I also feel the direction of this project could use some work. Ideally, it’s got some sort of monetary benefit in the long run, but above all else, I enjoy having an outlet to see my thoughts laid out in the open.

Let me know what you think. I’ll see ya next time.

I’m glad you’re here.

I ultimately find that what helps me move on from failure is recognizing the lessons it teaches me. I try to construe the results into something I can learn from. What can failing to cook my pasta properly for my homemade spaghettios (real story) teach me? Probably that it’s best to recognize that themodernnonna.com may not be the best teacher and I should jazz up the instructions a bit. Cooking disasters aside, there’s a failure from my life that is not only my greatest teacher, but one of my fondest memories.

I played competitive volleyball for 9 years from middle school through college. I’ve got the misshapen bones and sore shoulder to prove it (I found a photo of my ankle that looks like a grapefruit, but I’ll spare you that one). I was on good teams, bad teams, medium teams, but my favorite team I was on was the worst of them all.

2010, I was a sophomore in high school, struggling with physics homework and who to ask to Winter Formal. I had a year of high school volleyball under my belt with an eccentric coach, as well as some additional club experience (if you’re familiar with AAU for Basketball, it’s the same sort of thing for volleyball). We lost several Senior Players. To my count, for the 2010 season, we only had 4 seniors and a smattering of juniors. Pickins’ were slim, and injuries decimated our already thin depth, which meant I was thrust into a starting position that my height and experience did not justify.

We were Bad. Really REALLY bad.

There were 8 regular season games. We lost all of them. I recently checked back with our overall record, and we won four out of twenty-nine games. To make matters worse, There was one game we played that nearly broke me.

For those unfamiliar with the sport, volleyball requires 6 players on the court. After you win a possession, you “rotate” clockwise so that each player on the court ends up in each position. There are substitutions and designated front row and back row players, but that’s where I’ll end explaining this silly little game I used to play to avoid boring you with the minutiae.

My position was Middle Blocker, a specialist position in the front row, responsible for blocking… in the middle… you get it.

On this particular Friday, at a high school tournament in La Crescenta, we were playing as poorly as we usually did. So poorly that we were relegated to the practice gym, where the losers bracket would go. Our last opponent of the day was a team that, on the surface, looked sorrier than ours. The 6 people required to play? They only had 5.

Our team sucked, but we still had pride. We could have taken the artificial W, as they didn’t have enough players to field a team. But we needed to earn a Win. It had been far too much losing.

I don’t even remember if the tournament officially counted the game; they surely were not concerned about the results of the garbage bracket. But how it worked was the 5-person team would have a “ghost” player. They would rotate the 6 positions just like a fully constructed team, but when that 6th fake player had their turn to serve, the team would lose a point, and the possession would become ours.

Easy win, right?

Nope! But it gets worse.

The game went horribly. As a group, we underestimated our opponent vastly. Silly, considering my band of losers had yet to prove we could eke out a victory anywhere else. Why were we entitled a W here?

The absolute trough of failure happened on the last possession. In Volleyball, you win by two. It was the last set of 3, we were tied 1-1. Amazingly, despite our numbers advantage, we were down 15-14. Game point.

And here you have me: Scrawny Benny with his oversized kneepads, loose-fitting jersey, and mop top haircut. My job was simple: just stop the ball from coming over the net without touching the net.

After they served, we send the ball back over. They bobble it around a bit but manage to keep the play alive. They send an easy ball over towards our side, right towards me. I wasn’t experienced enough for my role, but this task was simple: put up your hands and prevent it from hitting our side.

I failed pretty spectacularly. For whatever reason, my nerves or perhaps blind confidence, I couldn’t stop the easy floater. I think I made contact, but I did such an amazing job of avoiding the penalty of touching the net that the ball fell between my hands and the net and landed right at my feet.

We lost on the last game of the day to a team that had no business being there, and it was all my fault.

Fortunately, this was the low point of my volleyball career that would continue for another 7 years…

Yet despite that year filled with athletic despair, I think about it often as one of my favorite teams. From a numbers perspective, we were dreadful. There is no denying that. However, I miss the guys who endured the defeat with me. Despite our circumstances, the camaraderie was high. We had dedicated every day of the week to wear a certain piece of clothing to practice.

Muscle T Mondays, Tank Top Tuesdays, All-White Wednesdays (I promise this was merely matching the alliteration pattern and not a stand for racial supremacy).

We had our inside jokes, impressions of our coach, and characters on the team that offered comic relief.

Beyond that, it taught me the old Edison principle of what doesn’t work. Don’t put people in a position to fail when building a competitive team. When playing an opponent with a disadvantage, don’t take it for granted, but exploit it instead.

I know that leadership plays a part in this as well. I looked towards fellow players to lead the team. We had a captain that kept cool despite the losses, but we really could have used a coach that better understood our strengths and weaknesses in order to scheme against our opponents properly.

I think a lot about that five-person team, how great a day it must have been for them. They had suffered the same losses we did that day, up until playing us. We found ourselves in the same place on the bracket.

Circumstances on that specific day led them to only having 5 players. I wonder how the team felt once they got back together with a full squad. Did they go on a winning streak? Was it a one-and-done?

I’m not entirely sure, and I’ll never know the answer, but getting stuck into what-ifs brings me nothing but a sink into the quicksand of cognitive dissonance.

I’m grateful for that shitty team. I’m grateful for the silly rituals. I’m grateful for the camaraderie we built through the suck. It helped me get through a difficult time in school, one that felt like I was a loser who couldn’t figure out basic physics problems.

That team taught me that even when everything sucks, I can still find the routine and techniques to make it suck just a little bit less.

This is not the only failure I’ve experienced in sports. It’s not the only failure I’ve experienced in life. The failures and losses I have experienced in life are minuscule in the grand scheme of the struggles of the world.

I continue to practice gratitude every day of my life.

My inbox is littered with reminders of the ghosts of things I’ve tried and failed before: the domains purchased for businesses that never materialized, the youtube channel ideas that don’t exist. Hell, you’re reading a newsletter that’s built upon the grave of two separate failed attempts that came before.

I promise that you’re going to get my best effort in these pieces. I don’t promise to be here forever. I don’t promise that you’ll always like what I have to say and that every post will be a viral success.

I promise to give you my best, and my best comes with the baggage and feelings of my current state of mind.

I want you here, and I want to hear from you. I’d love it if you’d share how you’ve learned from failure and especially what it has helped you process in your career.

If you’ve read this far, you should subscribe. I’ll see ya next time.

I’m glad you’re here.

‘tis the season to watch the pets of your loved ones. My sister and I live in the same town so that makes things easy... so easy that I decided to ride my bike over (What’s a few miles?). What ensued was a good lesson in the incomplete capital plan for my town and the harrowing experience for someone just tryna save money on gas and maybe help out the planet.

My sister and I are separated by the 5 Freeway. This is true of many Burbank families; the deadly concrete wall that travels people but divides cities. Crossing it is possible but difficult. Doing so on a bike is harder still.

The most straightforward is to use one of the car specific bridges. Burbank, Magnolia, Olive, or the Underpass of Alameda

The problem with these bridges, is they’re not that friendly to someone on a bike (or pedestrians but that’s for another discussion). The only sorta kinda bike lanes that exist are on the Burbank Blvd bridge but this is merely paint on the pavement. Technically this is a bike lane but more akin to me painting a shirt on, do you want me showing up at your Christmas dinner donned only in paint? Gross.

I like to look at Google Maps in my free-time. I like seeing how the streets connect and imagining the old Red Car train tracks that defined the initial fabric of so many cities. I also like to find potential routes that I could ride my bike in the safest way. Don’t worry, if you’re one of my friends or family reading this, I’ve absolutely already figured out how to get to your house only by bike (even if I have yet to try).

Google Maps will tell you that the quickest way for me to get across the 5 is either taking Olive or Magnolia, but both are not fun options on a bike as you have to share space with cars.

But I’ve found a better way…

If you take the bike lane along Verdugo, it eventually turns into a shared, low traffic street. Then you find yourself along a short stretch of the Burbank Channel Bike Path, and then you find yourself under the Olive Ave Bridge and at the Train Station. Then you cross the train tracks and use the Front Street protected bike lane to get across the freeway. From there, it’s another smattering of painted bike lanes and sharrows (for those who are unfamiliar, sharrows are the bike symbol I’ve shared below indicating that the road is to be shared by bikes and cars. Wonder who usually wins that battle?)

By now you probably understand the issue. There are technically safe routes to traverse the freeway but look at how much longer it takes? This route also has some tradeoffs, it’s not perfect. Bear with me, I tried something else out:

I mentioned the Front Street Bike Path before and I knew from this piece that there were plans to connect it to the Burbank Blvd Bridge. It’s not TOO far out of the way for me and it’s less than a mile from the Chandler Bike Path. Not too bad if you use some surface streets to close the gap.

So I decided to try that way instead of the Verdugo route… boy was that an interesting experience… Below is the space allotted for someone riding a bike. To the left of all those cars. A tiny little sliver of approximately 3 feet with 40mph vehicles wizzing by you.

What made it worse is that I didn’t realize at the time but the bike lane isn’t actually finished yet. It’s currently under construction (and for some reason has been for 6 months???) So I was bombing down the hill trying to avoid construction traffic.

I made it to the train station and the bike lane started. I made it to my sister’s house unscathed.

Ben. Where the fuck are you going with all of this? Honestly, I’m just trying to show how difficult it is to make the decision to take alternative transportation. My sister and I live 3.5 miles away from one another. Too far to walk, and driving is super easy. Public transportation is kind of viable, there’s a bus that connects us but it takes twice as long as a car.

I don’t need you to get out of your car and huff it so I can ride my bike everywhere. I don’t even think that driving is all that bad. I love driving. It’s fast. I’m in control. No one can bother me in my bubble. But driving has a massive price that I don’t want to risk paying every time I get behind the wheel of a car.

Did you know that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death of children?

I bet you didn’t think a meandering story about feeding my sister’s cats would get this dark. This is what drives my passion. It’s not just the environmental impact, it’s not just the fun of owning an e-bike: it’s life or death.

Do you want a child riding alone on any of the bike routes that I mentioned?

There’s some great bike infrastructure in Burbank, and there’s great potential. I’m happy to see that my town is making some sort of progress towards a safer future. I’ll be honest: it’s not enough. The network is not adequate and the slow pace is unecessary. Yes, there’s a bit of a plan but it’s really not moving fast enough.

If you ever wonder why you don’t see people using a bike lane, remember this story. Remember that a high quality bike path exists in the Chandler Bikepath and remember that the end just kinda looks like this:

And many other examples like this exist throughout the city.

As you can tell, this was a stream of consciousness post. I’d like to make an effort to speak about these issues even more because it’s something I’m always thinking about. I’ll catch you next time.

- BHillz

When I first heard about Goldenhour, an in-person conference sponsored by AudiencePlus, I felt the need to push myself to go. I’m glad I did, and if you work for AudiencePlus and are looking for support on hosting future events: you have mine. I’ll be back next year if I can manage it. For a first-time event, it went as well as one could expect. However, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling of what was missing. I believe if it is addressed, there’s potential for this event to be even better than it was.

(These thoughts are my thoughts alone and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of my employer, Paddle)

OG YouTube

I’m by no means one of the first YouTubers, but I have been contributing to the platform since I was in middle school (2006ish). I’ve made sketches, vlogged, and now I make video essays about things like hot-dogs. I’ve had more failed channel ideas than candles on my birthday cake. I also had the fortune of attending Vidcon’s second ever conference.

I went to Vidcon three consecutive years, 2011, 2012, and 2013. I saw the transformation from a smaller intimate experience to the massive convention it’s evolved into. I was just as much an introvert then as I am now. My parents encouraged me to go under the stipulation that I treat it like a networking event. I’m grateful they pushed me to get me out of my shell.

I made videos with my friends but for the most part, I would make videos in my room by myself. I’m pretty much still doing that, to tell you the truth… Going to Vidcon was an opportunity to network, yes, but also an opportunity to do something much more transformative:

Collaborate

In the almost 20 years of making videos on the internet, no advice has permeated more than this. “If you want to grow your YouTube/Vine/TikTok, you have to collaborate with others.” Each time I got a shoutout or made something with someone else, my audience grew every so slightly. At Vidcon 2012 I made a video* with folks I met online…

*If you really want to find this video, I’m sure you can. It’s too cringe for me to unearth myself.

But the coolest thing I got to do was attend a panel with two, at the time, major YouTubers (Joe Nation and Ethan Newberry) and make a video with them. The premise of the talk was that we would write, film, and edit a video in one hour. It wasn’t anything crazy cool, but if you’d like to see an 18 year old Benny Boy, I found the video (look for the picnic table blue shirt).

Was this video good? Debatable. If anything, it’s a time-capsule of 2010s fashion. It’s also a cool archive for me to reflect on and see where I came from. But the experience was unforgettable. It’s an impossible task to make something good with a hundred people and not a lot of time and yet we managed to pull it off.

While this experience was lead by Joe and Ethan, I felt an ownership over being a contributing piece to a greater whole. They had the resources to make videos with other large creators any time, but they didn’t have regular access to a room full of willing participants. In a way, we all needed each other to make the video happen.

I got to see how these guys made videos. I got to see that it wasn’t too different than my approach and figure out where I could make improvements and get rid of inefficiencies. It was a lesson in doing, not in listening to a lecture with a selection of interesting slides.

Check out the behind the scenes video here to see how it went down:

A Golden Opportunity

Goldenhour is not a creator economy conference. I recognize that the attendees of Vidcon 2012 and Goldenhour 2024 are not the same demographic. I’m not even the same person I was in 2012 and I attended both. I gather that the audience is more akin to be a marketing leader than an individual who is in the weeds creating like myself. Like I mentioned at the top, I will go back next year if they’ll have me. I met folks I didn’t plan on meeting and I connected with individuals I only knew from the other side of my computer screen. (James Carbary and I had a wonderful conversation).

Anthony Kennada and co had the unenviable task of making something from nothing, only able to use what they observed before to base their vision off of. I don’t think it would work if every session was “let’s make this thing together” but I would like to see some form of it.

To be honest, I don’t know as I would want to do that experiment from Vidcon again. I wasn’t sure if I was going to share that video with you out of fear that you might find my older, less refined work. If you do, Mazel Tov, breathe in that anxious guy throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I admire the Benny Boy of the past, I think he felt more inclined to put himself out there, well beyond his comfort-level of the time.

I’d like to see future iterations of Goldenhour provide the space for collaboration. Don’t get me wrong, I think the spirit of this was intended. The 20th floor live-stream space was a neat idea and there was a small room with a couple of interactive activities. I also might have just completely missed seeing the space for these opportunities that already existed.

Having a “camera for every 20 people” is a great way to capture content on the AudiencePlus side. I’m sure this material will pay back dividends over the next few years. As one of the folks who pioneered “filming a season of a show in a day”, the value of this is not lost on me. This brings me to the crux of something I cannot get past: if the talks I’m attending are just going to be available after the fact, why am I spending my time listening in the moment?

Broader Industry Implications

That sounds more aggressive than I’d like. I recognize being in-person experience something is better than viewing it virtually. I wouldn’t be able to have intimate conversations with folks like I did and the opportunity to ask questions and interact with speakers after the fact is much more enticing than it would be online. AudiencePlus also advertised that anyone could attend the free virtual conference that was being simultaneously live-streamed. This choice was clearly intentional.

I feel there’s a larger issue at play here, one that goes beyond the scope of this conference. In my experience, learning by doing is the best way to approach it. We have phrases like this that exist like “building in public” or “product-led growth”, two ideas that evoke the feeling of observing a virtual experience before trying it yourself. The experience I pine for is not the responsibility of AudiencePlus or any other entity, but I hope that sharing these ideas challenges the sameness I see in the B2B world today.

Ideas are cheap, execution is everything, so here’s some inexpensive thoughts: what about a 24 hour film festival? Basically, one would be teamed up with other folks and you’d work together to see what sort of creative you can come up with in a specific amount of time. Think of the hackathons of other conferences, but apply it to video. The winner gets a free ticket to next year’s conference or a gift bag of equipment donated by a sponsor. If that’s too aggressive of a time commitment, hosting a film festival competition from B2B creators would also be dope.

A collection of creative minds is a wonder to behold. I loved seeing folks like Derick Rhodes show examples of work so I could believe what he was saying rather than a “trust me, bro” talk with data and memes. It was an excellent affirmation to be surrounded by folks facing the same problems I am. It was a privilege to talk about what I’ve learned like sharing the ProfitWell content playbook with Josh Spilker.

If anything, I was inspired to start this very newsletter because of my experience at Goldenhour. I wrote for 3 hours straight on my flight back, typing away on my phone until my thumbs were sore. It is incredibly easy to make content today, I’m lucky to be alive at this point in time. I don’t need other people to make, but I make better because of them.

What’s next?

The spectacle of my career is not lost on me. If I could tell the Benny Boy of yore that I am a full-time video creator, I know he would be thrilled. He would actually be incredibly jealous, but I’m confident he’d figure out mindfulness and perhaps go to a little therapy to get over it.

As you can tell, I feel insecure about sharing my unsolicited thoughts about an event, the process into which I have no insight. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll reach out to further the conversation. I love to talk process and see the behind the scenes of how stuff gets made. Imposter Syndrome sort of defines me: who am I to question the hard work of other people? Why do I get to be here? Well, I’ve been doing this a while and I think I should challenge the notion that I’m some sort of phony.

Also, I bought a ticket.

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I make YouTube videos for Paddle and one of the things we do is help folks understand how to price their product. I believe this makes me uniquely qualified to chime in on the recent debacle with the YouTube channel Watcher and the controversial launch of their own subscription streaming platform.

(If you’d like the full context, check out the video yourself).

This announcement was met with massive controversy (80,000+ comments to 36,000 likes. Dislikes are not viewable).

To paraphrase, this video was a goodbye to YouTube, aptly titled “Goodbye YouTube”. The Watcher YouTube channel would not continue to function as initially promised. Ryan Bergara, Shane Madej, Steven Lim, were featured in the highly produced video discussing the reason for this decision. They launched an OTT streaming platform, like Netflix, Hulu, etc, where viewers could consume future Water content for the price of a monthly or annual fee. Fans would no longer be able to view future Watcher Content in its entirety unless they passed the paywall. There was no warning, the decision was effective immediately.

As someone who has been a YouTube creator for over a decade, and now working at a company that helps folks understand subscription pricing, I feel obligated to offer my insight.

I won’t beat around the bush, I believe this decision is tone-deaf and disingenuous. I recognize that individuals who post to YouTube are not necessarily seeing that as their end-goal, rather they see it as a gateway to future opportunities, just ask Justin Bieber or more recently, Emma Chamberlain. I don’t think it’s wrong to see the platform as a stepping stone… just be careful with where you are stepping: avoid your fans’ vital organs, namely the heart.

The criticism I have seen is that fans of Watcher (including myself in this group) feel like this is a decision motivated by money and not necessarily done with fan interest at heart. In the initial announcement video, Steven Lim, says this about his early content:

I would argue that this is why Steven, along with the rest of Watcher, garnered such a massive following. I love to see myself in creators, I love to see creators grow and get access to pursue their craft at the level that makes the most sense to them. Sure, creating alone in your bedroom is not an end-goal shared by the masses, it is seen as a gateway to more opportunity. But you can’t forget why you are doing this in the first place as well as who is responsible for getting you to where you are now.

In the economic system we participate in, we are forced to make decisions that give us the best shot at survival. As much as I enjoy making YouTube videos, I can’t just keep making videos in my bedroom forever if I’m not seeing a financial return on them. I need to do something to support that effort. I’m lucky that I’ve found a space for myself to be paid for doing my craft and I also recognize that I must cater my message to the audience that supports it. It’s because of this that I don’t believe the Watcher team is wrong for looking for financial security to pursue their craft. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to explore this route? Do we fault Netflix or Hulu or Max for making us pay to get access to their content?

I disagree with the execution of the decision, but I do not disagree with the decision itself.

Learning from Dropout

Recently, Dropout, another OTT product, announced their rebrand from Collegehumor, a funny website/YouTube channel that has existed for over a decade. There’s a long story to how they got there but the design of what Dropout and Watcher are is effectively the same. The launch, however, went differently. Dropout did not just decide one day put their content behind a paywall, the launch was done while content on Collegehumor was still available to the masses.

Try Before you Buy

Over time, the financial situation at Collegehumor meant they had to cease much of the content created for free and the Dropout site became the cash cow. If you haven’t seen them before, they make a lot of this content available for free in the form of YouTube shorts. You can see clips from full episodes that stand on their own, bites from the full apple but satisfying without needing to indulge further. This trickle of free content paired with the occasional full-episode posted to their YouTube channel  gives them a sort of “try before you buy” model where the option is given to purchase more if so desired. Their numbers are not available to the public, but even just looking at the number of subreddit or discord subscribers tops the hundreds of thousands, communities in which you have to know what’s on the paid site to be able to contribute.

But let’s bring it back to Watcher. In the Goodbye YouTube video, the sentimental tone and words of leaving the platform for good don’t carry the weight that the nostalgic clips and depressing music imply. I hear that you are sad to leave this platform, and you’re telling me that you need to do this for financial reasons, but the action that you’re taking means that I do not have a choice in the matter. Fans who have followed them since their buzzfeed days are being told “hey, you know how you like this thing? Well you can’t have it unless you pay me. And, by the way, it’s not actually that expensive so you should just do it.”

This was another major component of the outrage, an arrogant statement that not only was this decision being made without consulting you but it’s really not that big of a deal and you should not be upset about it.

This is where my experience with subscription pricing comes in.

Pricing is Hard

We’ve got plenty of in-depth resources over at Paddle but as a short explainer, there are many different kinds of pricing but let me go through three of the big ones: competitor-based pricing, cost-plus pricing, and value-based pricing.

• Competitor-based pricing is crafting your pricing based off of your rival in the space “Oh, Netflix charges $15 per month? We’ll charge $14 so we can beat them.

• Cost-plus pricing means pricing based on what it costs to manufacture your product plus whatever profit you intend to make “it costs us roughly $3 per user to make this thing so let’s charge $10 so we can make a healthy profit.

• Value-based pricing is pricing based on what your customer believes the product is worth. Simple to explain, difficult to execute.

I couldn’t tell you what Watcher used to price their product, but I have a pretty good guess that they didn’t use value-based pricing. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in to ask your audience to give you more money for your product, unless you’re providing more value in that ask (or demonstrating the value is larger than they might realize).

With this announcement, it is clear that the Watcher crew did not do their homework when it came to figuring out what their audience believed their product was worth. They already have a dedicated audience of paying customers in the form of their Patreon, might be a good place to survey the value of their product if you ask me. It’s not wrong to want to produce higher-quality content, pay your staff more, and live a comfortable life, but it feels slimy to position this ask as an ultimatum. Your access to resources is given by your audience.

There’s a world where this announcement goes much smoother and is perhaps seen as a step towards empowering independent creators that other folks can eventually follow, I know this because the Watcher crew actually published a follow up video where they changed tact. I admire their humility in recognizing a mistake and the tone of this video is much more genuine than the first.

Asking for more is good, great even if you can demonstrate the return on investment. None of this is easy and I let most of the leg work be done by folks more knowledgeable than me. I hope Watcher finds success. I love seeing more opportunities given to folks who are trying to make their own creative corner of the internet. I hope this is a helpful learning exercise for Watcher. I’m excited to announce the launch of my own OTT service: Benville for a mere $60 a month to read further than this sentence.

(Kidding).