1. Dan Oshinsky of Inbox Collective was nice enough to feature 15 of the 49 lessons from my book, Principles for Newsletters. I really love the community Dan has fostered around newsletters. Subscribe to his newsletter – the newsletter of record for newsletter publishers — and check out his keynote at The Newsletter Conference on May 3 in New York City. I also posted a behind-the-scenes look at the book to answer some of your FAQs.
2. 10% of Icelanders will publish a book in their lifetime. They claim it’s due to their love of stories, the long winters, and a love for physical media over digital. This lends some credibility to benefits we don’t often consider of physical media — like encouraging creation, project execution, and leisure time (the basis of culture) across large populations with constant, visible reinforcement.
3. I’ve tried to avoid being the typical middle age dude who gets too into physical media. I’m not a gamer, so I never experienced the anger of buying entertainment digitally and having it deleted remotely. That would have prompted a rant much earlier. The issue hit closer to home these past few weeks, though. A few of my favorite albums were pulled from digital services or ghost-edited to include new instruments, different track orders, and terrible “remastering.” I’m deep-diving on how bad this is getting, and writing my next way-too-long essay on the subject. Until then, take it from an audiophile or two — we still don’t appreciate how good we had it before the streamers took over.
4. Speaking of physical media that lasts, what were writers thinking about 2000 years ago? According to a scroll that’s being deciphered, they were pretty much just blogging — contemplating ideas and talking sh1t about other writers.
5. I see so many creators obsessing over the format and design of their newsletters, instead of publishing. I checked back in with one of the most successful and respected tech newsletters. Yep, it's still as basic as hell. It's been for around for almost 700 weekly issues. There are no excuses.
6. The off-the-grid, floating-in-a-forest, backyard design studio of Mike Matas deserves a place on our list of best garden offices. (via Ugmonk)

Thanks for reading! – CJ

Like any book, there’s bound to be questions about the choices made. This should answer most of the big ones.

Why is the book a set of principles?
Admittedly, it would be a lot easier to have written a how-to book for newsletter publishing, but there are countless books and courses out there on that. I was looking for a higher-level set of guidelines. With principles in place, you can avoid taking most courses and reading most books on the subject, if they have nothing to do with the path you’re on as a publisher.

This quote from John T. Reed puts it pretty well:

“When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles – generally three to twelve of them – that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.”

Why is it just an ebook?
I’m a deep-diver. I don't need to solve for research or organization. I need to solve for execution. In order to make sure this book got published at all, I needed to do it in the fastest possible way — no excuses. In the near future, it will likely be a print book as well. I’m looking into book designers for a proper cover. But for now it’s published, and that’s the biggest hurdle for a brain like mine.

Why publish on Gumroad and not Amazon?
All of my other books have been sold mostly from Amazon. But the whole reason I’m even making this newsletter book is to get to know the community better, and to build relationships with like-minded people. I lose all that contact when I publish on Amazon. I have no idea who my reader is or how to serve them better. When I make updates to the book, I don’t know who to alert with: “Hey! There’s a new version of the book you can download for free.” Sure, I can sell 100x more books by launching this on Amazon rather than my own site, but knowing my customers is far more valuable to me than the few extra dollars (and it is just a few) I’d get from Amazon. I highly recommend creators prioritize relationships over royalties.

So, why isn’t the book free, then?
No one reads a free ebook.

What’s with the title?
There were dozens of clickbait-y titles I could have gone with, but “Principles for Newsletters” was the most honest title. Plus, it’s what I had titled it in my own notes. My long-term readers know I keep a set of principles on just about every subject I cover in my essays. This is just the one I assembled for newsletters. In the future, you could see Principles for Personal Publishing, Principles for Creating Daily, etc.

What did I use to make the book?
I used all of the old tools I’ve been losing to build books for years, including Scrivener, Vellum, and MindNode. However, I encountered some new obstacles I hadn’t in the past with these tools and I tried many others. I was shocked to learn how easy it was to create an ebook in Apple Pages. It was taking me hours to compile the book properly in other tools and only minutes when I experimented with Pages. I had no idea it had gotten this good. I work in Word all day for clients, so I hadn’t had much experience with Pages. I was impressed. Plus, Apple sneakily added a feature to their Notes app this past year for handing-off larger pieces to Pages for formatting and publishing. This handoff will introduce many to the features of Pages that I’ve just discovered.

What’s next?
I plan to keep a change log of any additions or updates to the book. It will appear in my newsletter. If you buy the ebook version, these updates will just appear automatically. You can download the latest version of the book whenever you want. When there’s a print book, I will update it as well. It just won’t be as often. It’s my hope that I can do this kind of updating to all my books as I move ownership of the publishing process over to my site. As always, I'll keep you informed of every failure and success along the way. Thanks again for reading!

There's no fancy launch, special editions, courses, or workbooks. Just $5 for the ebook in every popular format. Square deal.

WARNING! This book is not for creators who want millions of subscribers. This book is for creators who want a sane number of lifelong readers.

From Patrick Rhone:

"My friend CJ Chilvers has a new book out. He has 37 years of newsletter publishing experience under his belt — both personal and professional for companies you know. Well worth the $5.00 if you have any interest in this stuff at all."

From Jamie Thingelstad:

"I’ve followed CJ Chilvers writing for years now. His newsletter is one that I learn from and find inspiration in. He just released Principles for Newsletters that brings his 37 years of newsletter experience together in 49 lessons. Just $5. Instant buy for me."

From Claire Zulkey:

"was just reading an excerpt of @CJ Chilvers book on newsletter best practices. The brevity, insight and philosophy are aspirational—def worth the $5 on Gumroad."

1. Thinking about how AI will change your world? No worries. I gathered a list of principles for creating with AI this year based on your input and what we’ve all experienced so far. The predictions seemed to have held up. Other lists of principles (or manifestos) this year included: why (against all market trends) you should still write a book, why “personal brands” still matter, why you need brainless tasks, and truly useful creative constraints.
2. Some of my favorite things to share this year were garden offices, the notion of solitude deprivation, the importance of namedropping, and the wisdom of bankers boxes.
3. My favorite internal revelation of the year was how to solve the personal vs. professional newsletter conflict and what it means for the process of newsletter creation. In short, everyone should try both and even though everything is an essay, curation will be the future for creators. How can you combine these ideas and create more valuable experiences for your subscribers? (I like lists. Judging by replies, so do you.)
4. My favorite book of the year was Kevin Kelly’s Excellent Advice for Living, because I love “no excuses” books. It’s a perfect constraint. I can’t wait until Merlin does something similar with his Wisdom Project.
5. In the marketing world, we re-learned why social proof is overrated and personalization is creepy.
6. In productivity land, we re-learned (again) about the folly of the external brain.
7. I loved sharing the work of personal newsletter publishers and their processes. It reminds me of this post from Austin Kleon.
8. Your favorite post (most visited page on my site) was a post from last year: 35 Lessons from 35 Years of Newsletter Publishing. I’m glad you’re still into that kind of thing because there’s a book coming based on that list. Hit me up if you want a sneak peek.
9. I don’t understand why, but the post with the most replies was: Some Idiot Wrote This. The one I revisit the most is: The Workspace of the Future Is a Workbench.
10. There were so many possibilities for quotes that defined the year (for what we do), but I think this one sums it up the best.

See you all in the new year! – CJ

P.S.  Derek Sivers could have won best quote with this. “Do whatever interests you now, no matter how uncharacteristic. Refuse to assign yourself a purpose. There is no plot. You are not a story.” But he edited it on his site.

P.P.S.  My personal favorite quote (showing up in my notes multiple times) relates to the above and is from the hilarious and thoughtful journalist, Michael Moynihan. “None of the tribes want you. They want you to be tribal. Tribes are boring. Who cares? Read books that are interesting. Read books that are bad. I was once attacked for ‘platforming’ somebody. How did you know that person was ‘bad?’ Because somebody ‘platformed’ them before. We used to call it reporting. Read what you want. Believe what you want. And never call yourself anything. It’s a dead end.”

From Tim Stoddart’s personal newsletter:

"I love newsletters. They are great businesses, I enjoy writing them, and they are lucrative. However, I’m still unsure about the format. I have two options…

Do you prefer the lighthearted and more entertaining style of the curated newsletter? Or do you like the more meaningful, more educational, and more intensive writing of the long form article?"

I think this is a false choice.

First, it’s always been my experience (whether for clients or myself) that a properly curated newsletter is much more difficult and time-consuming to publish than any other format of newsletter.

Second, the length of the article is not a good predictor of meaning, entertainment, or engagement.

That’s why, especially in the case of personal newsletters, I say go with the “essay” format first. If that succeeds, and if you have the time, expand to a curated newsletter.

It comes down to what you’re trying to solve for in the moment. Most newsletters need to solve for consistency more than anything else. It’s the thing that eludes even the best publishers.

When solving for consistency, of both quality and quantity, your best friend is the humble essay. Why?

• Anything can be an essay. It’s the most versatile format of publishing. Link posts, quotes, photos, videos, a Q&A, or just plain-old paragraphs of ideas — it can all be formatted as an essay. Essays can be a sentence or book in length. Whatever length keeps you creating, and your subscribers reading is the perfect length.
• Every time I look back through my archive, I’m disappointed in anything that wasn’t an essay. That doesn’t mean that I was thrilled by every essay, but only the essays seemed to have any real shot at staying power over the years.
• It’s less work than curation. Curation is the most successful way to format a business-based newsletter. But for personal newsletters, it takes a different level of work, time, and experience to do well. You need to be beyond the consistency problem. You can do both formats, of course. You should aim to eventually do both. But curation is a bigger boss battle than you’re likely fighting right now.
• It’s ingrained in the way some CMSs are structured now, and the way newsletter readers have been re-trained to read, by Substack and the like. My stats and replies are confirming the obvious: readers increasingly expect a newsletter (especially a personal newsletter) to look like an essay. Instead of fighting that, figure out how to make it work for you.
• Essays are crucial for any products, podcasts, videos, books, courses — any other direction you want to go in the future. Essays are so much easier to compile into products years from down the road. Trust me. I made a book using the content from my first 800 personal blog posts. 90% of the usable material ended up being from the essays.
• It’s human. We’re in the generative AI era now. Establishing real human-to-human relationships has always mattered, but since early 2023, it’s been getting more valuable by the day. Mediocre curation is well within the capabilities of AI. Essays will be too, but they’ve got a little more time. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll all need to move to video as a last stand. But even videos can be a part of an essay newsletter.
• It’s fuel for established curation newsletters – starving week-to-week for a good essay or two. They’ll send some subscribers your way.

This is nothing new. Blogging started out like this too. Everyone overthought the formats, but the most successful bloggers made their content malleable and consistent. The same was true for podcasting, video, and previous generations of newsletter publishing.

I would’ve written you a curated newsletter for today, but I didn’t have the time.

– CJ

P.S. This is the ultimate writer’s studio. Dream big.

P.P.S. Yes, technically those three links did make this a curation newsletter. It was also an essay. This is why writing is an insane activity (that sometimes leads to sane results).

I’ve been privately updating my 2022 post 35 Lessons from 35 Years of Newsletter Publishing with new lessons, revisions, and research. It’s a straight-up “why” piece.

So, why not make it a book?

This is what the book looks like right now in MindNode (before it transitions to Scrivener and  Vellum).

Folded within the title of each branch, are the links, updates, additions, quotes, and other backing materials that make up each small chapter.

Yep. Tech really helps. This is just another reason why there’s no excuse not to write a book.

— CJ

P.S. The Focused podcast turned me on to Getaway houses as a personal retreat/quiet place to work for a day or two at a time.

P.P.S. Want more subscribers? Give away more content.

P.P.P.S. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a home screen this handsome.

I’m feeling a bit silly — optimistic in a very contrarian way. I see nothing but pessimism in the press right now, and nothing but opportunity for creators with an indie spirit. That’s the tone for this issue’s set of truly odd links.

– CJ

“Don’t stay home.”
It’s tempting to stay inside as the temperatures get colder and the days get shorter. Here’s why that impulse should be battled from time to time. I got to meet the ultimate indie creator in the weirdest way, which is just his style.

The Wisdom of the Bankers Box
What?! It’s totally normal to post a mini-book’s-worth of research on why the Bankers Box is an underrated miracle of technology. Old man wisdom at its finest!

Social proof is overrated.
From an underrated technology to an overrated tactic. Social proof is helpful, but there’s a time and place. Use it wisely.

Enjoy collaboration…or else!
I posted this last week, but it’s already been backed up by several articles and new research. You can’t escape demographics, but that won’t stop many businesses from trying. This is a huge opportunity for indie creators.

I miss blogging.
It’s that season again, when we all lament the loss of the slower, saner, non-algorithmic world of media we used to live in when blogging ruled. Besides the above article from Josh, there’s Jamie’s incredible article on blog gardening, that will keep me busy for years to come, and Austin’s re-linking to his article, 15 years of blogging (and 3 reasons I keep going). Jamie also linked to a project called the internet used to be fun, which I can’t wait to dive into, but also can’t wait to rebut. The internet has always been fun and will always be fun to those who publish and read whatever the hell they want, without the expectation of immediate rewards.

When my mom died, and we had to move my dad out of his home of 50 years, I was tasked with salvaging as much of their documents, photos, and keepsakes as possible.

They had done the same for their parents, so I had to salvage all of that as well.

Add all of that to my family’s own collection of stuff and there was a big enough pile of obligation to last a lifetime.

I think this is another mid-life right-of-passage achievement to unlock. I’m hoping my solution might help others when they reach this right-of-passage.

I had to confront the idea of what all this stuff really meant, what could be done with it, and how could I possibly store it so it wouldn’t get in the way of our daily lives or cost more than it was worth.

The answer for most people in these situations is to grab whatever kind of container they have lying around, fill it with stuff, and never revisit it (a metaphor for life?).

Our brains say, “Don’t deal with it! Just pass it along to your kids and they can throw it all out if they want.”

I decided the generational buck was going to stop with me.

But it was going to be a lot of work. It was going to be emotional. It might take years.

Where do you even start?

First things first. What is all of this stuff? We need a definition.

I call it “inactive reference.”

There may need to be actions taken with it, but not right now, and maybe not this decade. Lots of our stuff fits this definition: one-off tools, photos, tax records, replacement parts, etc.

As you get older, this stuff builds up. It may also include stuff you don’t have the right to throw away. Being a minimalist is something you can choose for yourself, but not for your family, and often not for your government.

I was starting to feel like the plastic tubs we had collected over the years were not a good long-term solution (you’ll see why).

But it seemed like every video I watched on YouTube, and every article I read, looked something like this:

It just didn’t sit right.

The more I researched, the more I realized that — as usual — my grandparents and great-grandparents had it right all along.

The pre-greatest generation loved the Bankers Box (that’s apparently the proper name and spelling). Invented in 1917, here in Chicago, these boxes became a hit for record-keeping after the U.S. created its first income tax and workers had to start collecting receipts.

Buckle up. You’re about to get nerdy and find out why the Bankers Box makes so much sense, especially when compared to plastic.

They’re a standard.

This is huge if you’re trying to plan a space for long-term storage. The Bankers Box has remained the same shape and size for a lifetime and won’t change for at least the rest of your life. You can know exactly how much space you’ll need now, and how much space you might have available in the future when taking on more stuff from relatives.

This is predictability injected into the least predictable time of your life. Embrace it.

This means you can plan shelving and spacing to be comfortable — no moving or fighting with stacks of boxes to access something.

Small businesses often prefer this kind of standardized cardboard storage too, because cardboard boxes aren’t tapered at the bottom like plastic storage. That means more surface area can be covered on a shelf with a single box. Over the course of dozens or thousands of shelves, that adds up to huge cost-savings and process efficiencies.

They’re writable, sticker-able, and post-it-able.

There are endless ways to enhance a box filled with information with additional contextual information.

Think about that technology: layered, contextual information on top of a file system. That’s hard to implement with digital files. It’s trivial with 1917 tech.

Inside the box, there’s files and folders with their own surfaces for metadata, but on the outside, you can add any kind of visual or textual information to convey more meaning about the information within the container.

Or you can just label the box.

This metadata idea helped a lot when I was hauling in the 25+ large, moving boxes of my parent’s documents and photos. I had to index the contents, determine the actions needed for them (scan and shred, scan and keep, just keep, or just shred), and prioritize them based on contents (boxes with photos are always the top priority).

With labels, writing, and post-its, I was able whittle it all down to 13 or so Bankers Boxes (at the time of writing this) in my spare time. Then, it was easy to transfer all of that contextual information to a spreadsheet, where even more efficiencies were discovered.

This helped me also realize that I needed to do the same with all my own records, so my son doesn’t have to go through the same, long, emotional process when I’m gone.

Don’t worry about needing to correct anything you’ve labeled the box with — this is cheap cardboard after all, and easily replaced. And since the boxes standardized and templated, you can just turn the box around and restart on the identical blank side.

They’re breathable.

For all of its pluses (which we’ll get to below), plastic off-gases chemicals inside and outside the container. Sometimes, the safer your plastic solution is from outside elements, the more harmful it can be to what’s being stored inside.

The Bankers Box is just cardboard. One of the first changes I noticed after switching from plastic to cardboard was how much better my basement smelled (no more off-gassing).

You can get more expensive archival-safe cardboard, free from any acids used in the paper-making process. But I’ve just opened a Bankers Box from my grandfather, and his WW2-era maps of the South Pacific were in pristine condition — gleaming-white. So, I think my tax receipts from 2019 are going to be just fine in regular old cardboard.

Cardboard protects the items inside from light (unlike clear plastic) and breathes away a lot of the gasses. Remember, the items inside your box may be off-gassing too. Don’t bottle that stuff that up and hope for the best.

Just like a good house for people, a good house for your stuff needs to breathe to stay healthy.

They’re cheap.

In ridding my basement of plastic containers, I became more aware of the cognitive load of plastic, as well as the expense. In less than a decade of use in this house, my plastic boxes were weathered, scratched, cracked, and near-impossible to dispose of responsibly or efficiently.

I couldn’t easily break them down to clear them out.

They took up large amounts of space, even when empty.

Because they were (in some cases) 10-30X the cost of a cardboard box, I didn’t want to get rid of them, even when I didn’t have reasons to keep them.

I did the math and decided that freeing up the huge amount of space in my basement by getting rid of them was worth the few hundred dollars I was (theoretically) losing from their original worth.

The view was worth it.

I replaced all of that with an initial $30 in Bankers Boxes, and a backup $30 in boxes at-the-ready. Now, if there’s damage to a box, if I need to re-label a box for the fourth time, if I need to consolidate or split up boxes, I don’t worry about it. I go over to my flat-folded, vertically-stored stack of new boxes, create a replacement, and recycle the old with the rest of the paper.

I can’t stress the peace of mind it gives you, to be able to change make quick decisions about weighty things so freely, especially when sifting through your deceased relatives’ personal belongings. I’d rather concentrate on what’s best for those items, not what fits in my plastic containers’ random shape and condition.

Changes will always need to be made on-the-fly for unexpected family-related storage. Inexpensive boxes give me far more options as my needs and responsibilities grow.

They’re unassuming.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire or thousandaire, everybody uses Bankers Boxes.

They’re almost invisible.

Let’s say you’re a burglar. You break into my basement. There are dozens of boxes on shelves with everything from replacement parts for my door handles, to my grandfather’s tribal ax, gifted to him during the Pacific campaign in WW2.

Good luck trying to find which box holds what. Clear your calendar.

They’re not transparent. They’re all indexed in a password-protected spreadsheet. The boxes have a label, but it’s usually something like “Parts 25,” or “Travel 13.”

It’s equal amounts of security through obscurity, and security through…security.

I’ve never understood people who label their storage in great detail, on clear containers, as if it’s a menu for thieves. It’s not your job to streamline their process.

They’re not transparent.

This one is big for my brain, specifically. My brain gets easily confused by clutter.

Clear plastic is my Kryptonite.

I need solid-colored containers with clear, simple labels or I’m lost and stressed, even when I know where something is.

My brain is also able to make much clearer decisions about projects and outcomes when there’s a separation between the items in storage and the index of those items, like in a spreadsheet or text-file list.

I look at my box of old guitar pedals and see memories of my youth in garage bands. I look at them in a spreadsheet, see their inflated value on the market, and I know it’s time to sell them to someone who can get more use out of them.

That’s space I can clear from a box and money I can use to make more memories. I can’t get my brain to understand that when I’m looking directly at the item in the box.

They force weight limits.

If you’ve ever moved, you know the impulse to overload a container with too much weight, and the feeling of severe back pain from misjudging that container’s weight later on.

It’s really hard to overload a standard Bankers Box. It’s really easy to move and carry a standard Bankers Box. Your back thanks you in advance.

They fit for the vast majority of what you’re storing.

You’re never going to find a single storage solution for everything. Let go of that notion right now. That myth is why The Container Store has such a successful business model.

Shoot for 80%. I figured that’s what I would find in Bankers Boxes, and everything else would get a box of a bigger size (or mailing tubes for large prints, and photos).

For my inactive storage, it turned out Bankers Boxes covered 95% of what I needed.

We tend to exaggerate the outliers.

Bonus tip: You can use a Bankers Box as temporary storage for actively-used items (like tools, your pantry, your gardening gear) to calculate the amount of space and budget you’ll need for permanent storage (tool chests, cabinets, shelves, etc.). It will give you 3-D insights a tape measure alone won’t.

They’re timeless.

I laugh when I see a professional organizer buy hundreds of dollars of plastic boxes to organize someone’s space because they all have to be a uniform size and color.

Never mind the fact that those plastic boxes all have proprietary sizes and locking mechanisms that change the minute the patent expires, so you’ll never find replacement tops when yours cracks or additional boxes when your needs increase.

The timelessness of the Bankers Box means never having to think about keeping up with the organizational Joneses. Plus, even though we’re all used to seeing Bankers Boxes at their worst, piled up floor-to-ceiling by lawyers in dingy back rooms, cardboard’s timeless looks can be made beautiful and functional in the right hands.

Consider the downsides.

This only real downside to cardboard for long-term, inactive storage is that the contents have an increased risk of exposure to fire and flood damage.

That wasn’t a problem for me for a few reasons.

Fire isn’t stopped by plastic. Plastic is made from petroleum.

Water also isn’t stopped by plastic, unless the containers include water-resisting elements like o-rings. But even then, those elements often (usually?) fail in a flooding event. They’re just increased protection.

My solution for that downside was to keep any still-unscanned-but-important materials in a plastic, o-ring-equipped container on a top shelf. Only non-paper-based items that could survive flooding were put on bottom shelves.

There hasn’t been a serious flood in my area of town in recent memory. I assume the worst anyway and prepare.

Now you’re ready to think outside the box.

Work your process.

Digitize, process, and scale it all down to size that’s manageable for those you’ll leave behind.

Don’t leave your family hundreds of little projects in a pile of ill-defined obligations.

Leave them good memories and a minimized, well-organized archive that will serve them, not require service.

There’s so much bad advice in content strategy, that no one bothers to talk about what is merely overrated advice.

After decades of email marketing, copywriting, and content strategy, I’ve can confidently say that “social proof” gets too much attention. It’s important, but it’s overrated.

It’s a favorite topic among 20-something advice-givers on social media, because it solves a lot of the writer’s problems (but often ignores the reader’s and/or client’s problems).

What is social proof?

To the advice-givers, it’s a magical, evolutionary hack that convinces customers to buy into something because others have. It should be plastered all over your email, landing pages, bios – all above the fold (and there’s never a fold).

There’s an actual definition for social proof, but I’ve come to define it as, “reassurance for an already-made decision.”

That’s all it is to the reader.

They’ve arrived at a page, or opened an email. That takes a reader all the way from attention and interest to decision and action within 5 seconds. 

They’ve read a headline and chosen to read more. They’ve clicked a button. Those are all incredibly important, and telling, decisions and actions.

Social proof is what comes after those critical first decisions. You can’t build trust in a solution if the reader doesn’t know (or care) what the solution is.

So, why is social proof such a popular topic for the advice-givers, versus getting past that first 5 seconds?

To the writer or business owner, social proof isn’t only reassurance copy. It’s a psychologically satisfying way to battle imposter syndrome, convince higher-ups that you’re doing a good job, and convince your workers that they’re helping to solve problems in the real world.

It feels really good.

But to the reader, social proof is primarily a way of reassuring themselves about their initial decision. Then, it’s about reassuring themselves that this solution has solved a problem like their own, for people like themselves. 

You can’t get a click before an open. You can’t get interest before attention. You can’t close a sale before there’s a real customer.

You don’t need reassurance about a decision before the decision.

There’s a reason books have traditionally put their social proof copy on the back cover, or inside flap. It’s not what turns heads in a book store. It’s what reassures the reader that they’ve decided on and acted on the right book.

Social proof is important, but it’s nowhere near the importance of getting that initial attention, interest, decision, and action.

I think it’s an opportunity for indie creators.

From The Street reporting on JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon’s threat to his employees:

“Dimon doubled down on his hard-line stance in July, saying, ‘I completely understand why someone doesn't want to commute an hour and a half every day. Totally get it... Doesn't mean they have to have a job here either.’”

And Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy’s threat to remote workers:

“It’s probably not going to work out for you.”

And my hometown’s own Crain’s Chicago Business:

“Employers across the country are making the unofficial end of summer the official end of full-time remote work.”

Sure. The office is welcoming, collaborative, and mentoring — but you must be incarcerated within the walls of some arbitrary location (no matter how much less productive you are there) or else!

Here’s the truth.

In a healthy business, if the work can be remotely, the business will enthusiastically choose to be open to remote work. This ensures they can have their pick of the best talent across the country, or around the world, at the best possible prices.

An unhealthy business, looking to rid itself of pesky employees as cheaply as possible, will demand in-person work. JPMorgan is great example of an unhealthy business, as is Amazon (along with most tech companies who raise tons of cash, but struggle for real profits and positive employee experience).

As the skilled workforce continues to evaporate with the retirement of the boomers and the decline in work-age population, it’s the remote-minded businesses that will succeed long-term.

This is good for independent creators. This is time to make a name for yourself as a trusted expert.

Unhealthy businesses are about to jettison millions of employees who will need to make a name for themselves in the market too – starting from zero. Creators will have the upper hand.

Unhealthy businesses usually assume workers will be available to hire after government bail outs make their businesses healthy-ish.

But they won’t be this time. The demographics aren’t there.

More importantly, after knowledge workers get a taste of the indie lifestyle and (typically) higher pay, why would they ever want to go back to the scolding taskmaster and the beige cubicle?

We’re about to experience a once-in-a-century shock to the system of work. Regional banks will fold. Skyscrapers will empty.

Creators are in the best possible position to weather this storm.

This happened last weekend. Consider it for your weekend.

I had tickets to a movie premiere for The Road Dog, starring Doug Stanhope, but I had worked hard all day and I didn’t feel like I had the energy to go.

That song started playing in my head. I decided not to stay home.

If you don’t know, just like there are band’s bands in music, Doug Stanhope is the comedian’s comedian. He’s the natural successor to George Carlin. Even Joe Rogan has to pester him into coming on his show, because he wants more people to know about Stanhope.

He’s also fiercely independent.

Ever since he had a bad experience hosting a show on Comedy Central many years ago, he’s been determined to own and control everything he creates. He films and owns his specials. His wife, Bingo, sells his merch at shows. He lives in an Arizona border town instead of LA. He buys his clothes at thrift shops, which have given him his trademark look.

There’s a lot that independent creators can learn from Doug – worts and all.

The movie itself is sort of what the life of a road comic is like — depressing but honest. It’s got the same kind of issues most low-budget indies have, but I totally understand why Doug won a best actor award for it.

Sticking to character, Doug and Bingo took an Amtrak to the movie premiere, signing autographs at stops, and bartering for booze when they ran out.

I arrived at the premiere by walking through an alley next to the theater.

To my shock, there they were! Doug and Bingo were taking a casual stroll through the same alley — no helpers, no fans, no pomp of any kind.

I said something about his socks. They both chuckled.

The “don’t stay home” tune in my head results in just as many failures as successes. This time it resulted in me making the comedian’s comedian chuckle. I consider that a “tell the grandkids”-level event.

Life achievement = unlocked.

— CJ

“How I write the best newsletter in the world” 
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar details his newsletter-writing process, which is a lot like the processes of top-tier online writers we’ve heard from before, like Dave Pell, Austin Kleon, and Seth Godin. They just read a lot, think a lot, and create over MUCH longer periods of time than you think.

4 hidden events in your calendar
Always account for the margin. If you’ve ever had to track your time, you’re very familiar with the feeling this image evokes.

We don't need a new twitter.
Cal is right again, but while he mentions that the old Internet (non-algo consumption) is trending and that it’s the obvious solution, I think we need to liven it up a little. The “design playground” of RSS apps is giving me a lot of hope. The losers in this trend? It’s hard to imagine how ad-dependent podcasts, especially Spotify’s acquisitions, survive when younger generations discover the benefits of RSS. Just listen to these popular podcasters on the increasing demands of creepy, anti-RSS advertisers. It doesn’t work for the audience or the creators. Open wins. We solved the social media issue 20 years ago. It’s time to speak up about it.

On the link between great thinking and obsessive walking 
I’m revisiting this idea again as we’re seeing the rise of walk ’n talk channels on YouTube like Peter Zeihan’s — a trend I love because it shows the power of constraints in creativity. Even if you’re not on board with the creating part, your brain could always use a walk. Even Darwin and Kierkegaard agree.

Never meet your heroes?
Hogwash. Meet everyone. I have maybe two or three bucket-list icons I still want to meet. I checked one off this past week. He’s had an enviable creative process I’ve been following since 1989. No one thought it would lead to the year he’s had in 2023.

“Working remotely is a competitive hiring advantage again.”
Once again, DHH is several steps ahead of his competition. All I’ve seen in the business press for a month is articles slamming remote work. This is an obvious real estate ploy. Owners hire (remote) freelancers, who pump out articles (often in pay-to-play business publications) opposing remote work, which buys the owners enough time to dump their holdings before the market bottoms out. Demographics don’t lie. The workforce has kept shrinking significantly since the boomers started retiring and there aren’t enough skilled workers to begin replacing them – even with remote work. It’s not even close. DHH knows what’s up.

P.S.  Our friend Patrick Rhone reminds us of the heroic choice of getting up in the morning. 

Never meet your heroes, they say. 

Well, I met Nuno Bettencourt last week and he turned out to be a nice dude. Plus, he’s also the template for a well-lived creative life.

For those who don’t know, Nuno is one of the last guitar gods still performing. You most likely know him from hits he had as far back as 1989 with Extreme, Janet Jackson, and Rhianna – or from my guitar design idea that turned into an actual product last year.

But I know him as the uniquely-percussive, founding-father guitarist of the funk metal genre — metal that will have you banging your head and dancing at the same time.

His relentless creative process took him from being labeled a “one-hit-wonder” in the 1990s, to recording and touring constantly throughout the 2000s – no matter what size the crowd.

Imagine everyone’s surprise when he scored viral-hit song in 2023 after performing at the Super Bowl. Is there such as thing as a two-hit wonder spanning four decades?

This is what a daily creative process looks like. It’s not even. It’s not about constant audience growth.

There’s a lot to learn from Nuno.

— CJ

P.S. Thank you Abe, for catching this pick and slyly putting it in my pocket as a souvenir. Guitar players will notice the striations in the side of the pick from the unique way Nuno plays. 

P.P.S. The opening act was Living Colour. I have no idea how they retain this level of energy and swagger.

The point of the segment is not (usually) to pick on the writer of a bad take, unless the take is egregiously error-prone. It’s just a jumping-off point for the three to discuss the correct way to approach, research, and write an article on whatever the topic may be.

This has always been my most productive creative prompt. It works for any creator:

• For writers and podcasters, see the above.
• For photographers, it may be about an overall photographic idea you love, but the composition was so bad, you feel forced to create your own version.
• For musicians, this is a daily thing already. You hear a great drum track with horrible bass, or cringy lyrics. It’s motivation to prove there’s a better song out there.

Whatever it is, it’s usually best to express the better take in your own way, rather than just criticizing someone else’s work. See it from the all angles. Then, fire away.

With this prompt, you’ll have an endless supply subject matter, especially from social media, and no excuse not to consistently post about something — with passion.

— CJ

P.S. I’ve been on vacation this week. The many places I’ve found to sit and work are a reminder of why remote work isn’t going away — or even waning in popularity — at least for the rest of my lifetime.