Welcome to the Creative Economist
I’m a classically trained filmmaker (adjusts tie) who’s spent the last few years making social and branded stuff for companies like Walmart, LEGO, adidas, and Hilton - you’ve probably scrolled past some of it on the toilet. I also won an Emmy once, for a documentary I helped make, which I bring up more than is probably healthy.
This newsletter is the real-time, occasionally embarrassing record of me trying to run that whole business alone, without pretending it’s simple.
The throughline is Create More With Less: stay small, stay hands-on, use AI to kill the logistics and overhead, don’t let it anywhere near the point of view that makes the work mine. AI’s the loudest part of that story right now, but it’s not the whole story - plenty of issues are just craft, pricing, client psychology, and the general chaos of doing this by yourself.
What you’ll actually get:
Real workflows from real client work, including the parts where I got it wrong
Honest looks at where AI helps a one-person creative business, and where it just gets in the way
Craft and business essays that have nothing to do with AI at all
Actual opinions, not the hedge-everything LinkedIn version of an opinion
Why I do this:
I built a fully automated AI agency once. Then I killed it, because I’d never actually lived inside it long enough to know if it worked - turns out that’s an important detail to sort out before you sell someone else the system. This newsletter is what I do instead: building in public, in real time, receipts attached.
Why subscribe?
Most of what gets sold about AI and content right now is hype in one direction or panic in the other. Almost nobody’s just showing the actual work. You know what, just read a few issues. You’ll figure out if this is your thing.
Written and dictated by me. Formatted and edited with AI.
