Thought Leadership

In my early 30s I began to consider the mythic as a novel ‘aesthetic’. Calling myself “a wizard” was infinitely preferable to calling myself a “thought leader”, a “futurist” or a “consultant”. The archetype of wizard was much more enlivening and expansive; the mythic quality to it that appealed to me. And still does.

Here's the bottom line: building a podcast audience is hard. I'd argue it's the hardest audience to build, but it's also the most valuable audience you can build.

Artists are agents of invention who attempt to change the dominant conventions (although many individuals operating under the rubric of "artist" have much more pedestrian and commercial goals.)

1.9.1 The avant-garde exposes, devalues, and alters existing conventions in search of new cultural arrangements that could provide new aesthetic experiences... See more

Here’s a stunning stat: more than 39,000 accounts on TikTok now have at least 1M followers. This creates “niche fame” where within a specific following, a creator may be a rockstar, but more broadly, that same creator may be completely unknown.