The Spring Reset
It’s springtime, folks! And for those of you in the southern hemisphere, happy fall! Cold and decay! Hooray!!!
Regardless of your GPS coordinates, it’s a new season and it’s the perfect time to reset. If you’re off-track, let’s get on track. If you’re on track, let’s level up.
Remember, this can be about anything, not just work or creative projects. If you need to do better with your health or your family or relationship or social life or community or even hobby, a new season is a great opportunity to create change.
The Good
Here’s where I’m at. This is all about business because that’s my focus this year.
I’ve done decently thus far this year – or as I’ve said before, slightly good. Here are my wins, some big, some small.
I started the year with a bang and delivered a two-hour-plus video course about ChatGPT, on time, on Christmas Day. I executed a good launch. The course has been well-received and some well-known people took it.
I ventured into areas outside my wheelhouse, like Google Ads and targeted emails, and scored some small wins.
The Everything is a Remix newsletter was a priority and generated good growth.
I’ve met loads of amazing people.
After course income started to decline, I was able to quickly secure freelance work.
Consistency has long been a weakness of mine, but I’ve put out two articles every week all year.
I’m writing the most and the most easily I have in my life.
The less-good and what I’m going to do about it
Here are the struggles I’ve had and how I’ll address them.
Overall, after a strong start, momentum has dipped. Some of this is because I’m working on other projects, but that’s not the only cause.
Course sales dropped more than I would like. I need to refocus on sales and marketing and establish consistency.
My social media efforts have not delivered much and I’m occasionally making myself cringe with stuff I’m posting. (To be clear, selling stuff requires enduring some cringe.) I’m mostly shelving social for now and just posting updates about new stuff.
I’m gonna launch something new! This will be something I’m very excited about and I hope you will be too. It’ll be my biggest and best product yet.
But the biggest change I’m going to make is this.
Video returns to the center of my life
I’ve written a lot this quarter, more than I ever have before. I’ve really developed that muscle. But there are two problems.
It hasn’t amounted to much.
I don’t think I’m especially great at it.
Writing feels partial to me, like a prototype. With some exceptions, I often feel like something is missing from what I write.
Now, I don’t love every video I’ve made. But I love plenty of them and I like the rest. It’s easy for me to make stuff I like in video form.
I can’t escape video. I’m a lifer.
This might sound like an obvious conclusion, because, y’know, I’m a filmmaker. But this is a major change in my work.
The way I made videos before was insanely labor-intensive. Everything is a Remix, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, all the video-essay style stuff – each of those videos took months and there was no conceivable way to make them faster. They weren’t working well enough to justify that kind of investment. I had to let that kind of work go and try something more efficient, writing. Writing has gotten faster and easier for me and now I think I can adapt that material into easier-to-produce videos.
And I now have a business model. Before I only had videos. Video is possible again if I can make it in a reasonable amount of time and if it can serve the business.
So I’m trying that next! I’ve already launched a new video, which you can see below. (It’s a version of the ChatGPT course content.)
I’m aiming to publish a new video every two weeks, but the quantity-quality balance is not settled.
So that’s my major course correction. All of you will, of course, be the first to see how this goes.