๐ค๐ผ What It Really Costs
Hey Reader,
How much are you spending to avoid paying someone?
Stay with me... because I'm not about to tell you to outsource your entire life. I came across this piece about George Clements, a fourth-generation mover who turned the chaos of moving day into an award-winning docuseries and a modern brand in one of the oldest industries in the country. One slide said, โYour everyday work is your best marketing.โ
YES.
Nobody looks at a stack of boxes, somebody's sectional wedged sideways in a stairwell, and three grown adults arguing about whether the piano will fit through the door and thinks content gold... unless you're not a mover. Then suddenly, this shit is fascinating.
The stuff that bores you to tears is often fascinating to people who don't know how your world works. Somewhere inside that gap is media that can build trust, demonstrate expertise, attract an audience, and yes... make you money.
Which brings me to something I've been watching play out all quarter:
Everything costs something. The question is which currency you're going to use.
Everyone needs media. Not everyone needs a media machine.
And I really do mean everyone. The plumber, the therapist, the accountant, the tarot reader, the author, the consultant, the political candidate, the person selling a $27 download, and the person trying to become the next Amy Poehler all need some form of media.
If you operate a business in 2026, understanding what media needs to do for that business belongs in the same basic toolbox as knowing how to send an invoice. That does not mean everybody needs a podcast, a YouTube channel, a Substack, three posts a day, a videographer, or Sunday afternoons spent whispering hooks hooks hooks into ChatGPT.
You need the media that does the job your business needs done.
And this is where people get themselves into expensive trouble.
Borrowed blueprints can cost you years.
You see somebody whose business is killing it. They have 400,000 followers, a gorgeous YouTube channel, famous podcast guests, sold-out launches, and seemingly endless visibility... so you start reverse-engineering the visible parts.
Except you don't know their margins, team, ad spend, existing audience, partnerships, backend, production budget, goals, or whether the flashy thing you're copying makes them any fucking money at all.
Just because somebody got rich while doing a thing does not mean the thing is what made them rich. And it definitely doesn't mean it'll make you rich.
I'm seeing this from a particularly weird angle right now because I'm producing media for political campaigns heading into the November election. I'll share the full case study once the dust settles, but candidate media is a fantastic example because it absolutely shares principles with your coaching practice: strong hooks matter, message discipline matters, camera presence matters, repetition matters, and calls to action matter.
The actual media jobs, however, are wildly different.
You can study the tactics. You cannot blindly transplant the operating system. Your media has to fit your business.
And sometimes... your business is a hobby.
I can hear somebody getting offended already. ๐ Don't.
Hobby is not a dirty word.
I've said before that visibility for visibility's sake is a hobby, and I stand by it. The problem was never having a hobby. The problem is running one while expecting it to perform like a livelihood.
My definition is simple: if the money is delightful but your roof doesn't depend on it, you have economic room to treat the thing like a hobby. That doesn't mean it isn't sophisticated, serious, or profitable. People make BANK from hobby YouTube channels, newsletters, podcasts, and social accounts, including plenty that quietly feed much larger businesses.
Meanwhile, somebody with 1,200 followers may desperately need their media to generate clients because this month's revenue pays this month's rent.
The size of your audience doesn't determine the stakes. Consequence does.
Once your livelihood depends on the machine working, your relationship to the machine changes.
You may not want the big leagues once you see the invoice.
I've been watching this up close with my candidates. High-visibility media looks glamorous from the outside, but behind the camera it's image, wardrobe, presence, charisma, performance, message discipline, scripts, hooks, CTAs, production, editing, distribution, community management, rapid response, and analytics... and then you do it again.
And again.
And again.
There are no cute six-week disappearances because Mercury is in the microwave and you aren't feeling Instagram right now. ๐ The machine requires feeding.
Eventually you're hiring people because no human being is simultaneously world-class talent, strategist, producer, writer, editor, designer, publicist, community manager, salesperson, and distribution department. That's true in politics, entertainment, and the influencer economy because scale has a labor cost.
Which is why I think some creators need permission to want something smaller.
Welcome to the luxurious middle.
For the rest of us mere mortals, there are hall passes. You can make a podcast in seasons and disappear between them, publish an excellent newsletter without doing it five days a week, use Instagram inconsistently because Instagram supports your business instead of being your business, or build a weird little YouTube channel for 8,000 people who are exactly your people.
You do not have to turn every spark of creative ambition into a media conglomerate. And you especially don't have to build the infrastructure required for a million-person audience when 500 right people could materially change your business.
That's not thinking small. That's understanding the assignment.
Fast. Cheap. Good. Pick two.
In my Disney days, we used this triangle with executives constantly: you can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have it good... pick two.
And I watch creators try to negotiate with this law of physics every damn day. ๐
Most of you want cheap + good. Great! You can absolutely have it, but it probably won't be fast because... congratulations... you're the cheap.
You're going to learn scriptwriting, editing, storytelling, marketing strategy, camera performance, lighting, audio, distribution, analytics, design, email, and maybe sales while simultaneously doing whatever the hell your actual business is. Those are entire professions, and you're going to learn several of them yourself.
You can become very, very good. But you're going to need reps. A lot of them.
That's what you're paying instead of money: time, energy, attention, frustration, and practice. Cheap isn't free.
Or you can change currencies.
If you want good + fast, somebody else is probably joining the equation: an editor, producer, strategist, videographer, copywriter, designer, or somebody whose 10,000 reps mean you don't have to spend the next three years accumulating your first 10,000.
Now you're paying in dollars.
Neither choice is morally superior. DIY isn't more authentic, and hiring isn't cheating. They're different ways of paying for the same outcome.
Which brings me to the pile of clips I've been quietly hoarding for the last quarter...
The receipts
As you go through these, pay attention to what these providers say their work costs... not because I want to convince you to hire everything out, but because I want you to understand what the labor you're absorbing yourself would cost if somebody else were doing it.
Then ask yourself: Which currency do I have more of right now... money, time, energy, or attention? And which one can my business afford to spend?
You can pay an editor, or spend twelve hours editing. You can hire someone to develop the strategy, or spend six months experimenting until you understand it yourself. You can hire a producer... or you can become one.
All valid choices. None of them are free.
That's the part I want you to remember the next time somebody tells you how easy it is to โjust start creating content.โ
Your everyday work really can be your best marketing. Your boring little corner of the world really can become fascinating media. You can build the thing yourself, or hire people who are better at pieces of it than you are. You can build for 500 people, or 5 million.
Just know what game you're playing... and know what it really costs.
๐ซ It's weird until it works. Check out what's new in the studio... โคต๏ธ
๐ฒ Meanwhile, back at Sasquatch...
๐ Your media is a search tool.
One of the biggest lessons I've taken from producing political media this quarter has almost nothing to do with politics.
Your media isn't a vanity project. It's part of the infrastructure that makes you findable.
Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa recently shared a statistic that stopped me cold: only 25% of the open internet remains open, while more and more discovery happens through social platforms and AI. Then she asked the important question: where are those systems getting their information? From the original sources underneath them.
THIS LIBRARIAN WOULD LIKE TO CONNECT THE DAMN DOTS. ๐ Keep reading...
Every time you publish your ideas, expertise, interviews, videos, newsletters, case studies, or body of work, you're leaving evidence about who you are and what people should come to you for. Ghost the internet, and you leave fewer breadcrumbs... or worse, leave somebody else to create your narrative for you.
We've had a lovely influx of new Dojo members as the founding membership closed, and my intake form asks one deliberately ridiculous question: Do you want to be famous?
I'm less interested in fame than the infrastructure underneath it. I want to get you: KNOWN โ FINDABLE โ BOOKABLE โ PAYABLE.
Because AI-assisted search makes this considerably more urgent. You don't have to like AI. You don't have to use it. The people searching for you will. Those systems need source material... so give them something worth finding.
The goal isn't internet fame. It's becoming authoritative enough that when somebody (human or machine) asks, โWho knows about this?โ... your name has a reason to come back.
The Dojo has officially graduated from founding membership, and the standing rate is now $497/month. You can see all the updates here.โ
๐๏ธ Gossip from the creator trenches...
๐ฌ $80 Billion Says Play It Safe
Skydance officially swallowed Warner Bros. Discovery this week, putting Paramount, Warner Bros., HBO, CBS, CNN, and a truly bananas pile of IP under one roof... along with roughly $80 billion in debt. Whatever happens creatively from here, that's one hell of an invoice. For indie creators, the lesson is simpler: money changes how much experimentation you can afford. Spend everything making yourself look fancy, and don't be shocked when there's nothing left for the weird idea that might have worked. This was part of Project 2025 and you need to be aware as we head into Midterm elections.
โDon't even get me started on the impact to journalism โโ
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๐ Your Computer Has Ears Now
Apple's newest AI features push us further into ambient computing, where devices can continuously process what's happening around us. Apple says the raw audio stays private, processed locally and continuously overwritten rather than stored... which is genuinely important. But I'm fascinated by the sales proposition underneath all of this: our devices increasingly promise to pay attention because we can't. AI can remember what you missed, retrieve what you forgot, and notice what slipped past you. Useful? Absolutely. A little dystopian? I have questions about your attention span...
โYou really don't want my f-bomb transcripts โโ
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๐บ YouTube Wants Your Next Episode
Creators have been making series forever... YouTube is finally making the interface behave accordingly. Its new Shorts Series feature lets creators organize Shorts into seasons and episodes with sequential playback, which feels less like a content revolution and more like the technology catching up with how humans already consume stories. Fiction readers know the drill (Dungeon Crawler Carl, anyone?). Give us a world, make us care, and give us a reason to need the next installment. Spice levels optional! Turns out the algorithm likes a good โto be continued...โ too.
โThe secret is to tease them with a cliffhanger โโ
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Something For Sale
I released a 90-minute Astrology and Tarot forecast covering July through December 2026 for $47. The second half of this year has a lot going on energetically and I had an absolute blast recording this. Several of you grabbed it immediately which tells me we are onto something here. This is my first experiment in bringing readings back in a sustainable way and it will not be available forever.
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Something For Free
You Don't Have a Production Problem. You have an architecture problem. My free white paper breaks down what creator studios actually sell, what most creators actually need, and why those two things are rarely the same. Includes a self-audit to find out if you are ready to launch or ready to build. ๐ Download the white paper for FREE.
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