But then I think of the question that’s been on my mind this Easter weekend: What Would Bob Dylan Do?

Maybe it’s the rust-orange steel stacks, or the sound of the graffitied cargo train, or the untouched architecture of post-war row houses lining the landscape, but the American songbook is my soul’s playlist at the moment.

I’ve had some profoundly spiritual experiences listening to Dylan’s music. He captures what C.S. Lewis calls “a longing for another world” — and a stubborn argument that we have a part to play in satisfying that longing.

With that, I’ve imagined what an Easter service might look like with Bob Dylan serving as our musical guide (Spotify links and covers included since I know his voice isn’t for everyone).

My hope is that no matter what you believe (or don’t) you’re reminded like I am of the simple truth that Winter brings Spring and our longing doesn’t go unloved.

CALL TO WORSHIP

Album: Oh Mercy (1989)

“Oh, the lines are long and the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance between right and wrong”

Cover: Sarah Jarosz turns this song into a sunrise.

PRAYER OF WAITING

Album: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

“When your rooster crows at the break of dawn / Look out your window and I’ll be gone / You’re the reason I’m a-traveling on /But don’t think twice, it’s all right”

Cover: Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau turn a monologue into a conversation…or maybe a dance.

GOSPEL READING

Album: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

“When your rooster crows at the break of dawn / Look out your window and I’ll be gone / You’re the reason I’m a-traveling on /But don’t think twice, it’s all right”

Cover: Marion Williams’ 1969 version listens like a communal protest

COMMUNION

Album: Time Out of Mind (1997)

“I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue / I’d go crawling down the avenue / No, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do / To make you feel my love”

Cover: Sleeping at Last’s phrasing kills me.

BENEDICTION/SENDING

Album: Saved (1980)

“Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack.”

Cover: Glen Hansard turns every song into a gospel song. He doesn’t need a choir. He is one.

A PS…

To be honest, God is still a big mystery to me and I don’t spend much time these days wondering about the details. However, there was a moment a few years ago when my wife Kelly was asked to sing a cover of Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love” at an Episcopal church we were frequenting.

I was holding our son Mack, a toddler at the time, in the pew. The second I loosened my grip, he bolted and “wobble-ran” toward his mom. She scooped him up in her arms and kept singing those beautiful, haunting words while holding him close.

No admonishment. No embarrassment. No pause in the plan.

If God exists, I’m pretty sure I saw Her that day.

(Got most of it on video)

What do you do when what you say isn’t what people heard?

Every organization has a story it tells itself about why it works. A myth, if you will.

It could be something like: “We’re scrappy. We figure it out.” Or “We move fast. We don’t wait for permission.” And for a long time, that story is true. It’s the reason it works. It’s what attracts the right people, shapes how decisions get made, and becomes the thing everyone’s super proud of.

The problem is that stories don’t stay still.

It isn’t because anyone changes them on purpose. It’s because as a company scales, the myth gets interpreted… then reinterpreted… then handed down…then diluted.

The result?

Slowly, what may have once meant “be resourceful and move with conviction” starts to mean something else entirely. Something more like: “Spend as little as possible everywhere. Commit to nothing fully. Don’t get caught holding the ball.”

Which, if you think about it, is like the time I was 5 and dressed up as The Hulk for Halloween but everyone thought I was the Jolly Green Giant. Two completely different stories. Same outfit. One sad little green child.

If you lead something that’s grown, you can relate. The language you hear still sounds like the company you built. People still say the same words in the same meetings. But underneath, the myth has quietly drifted. And the drift is almost impossible to name from the inside, because nothing looks wrong. It just stopped working and nobody can figure out why.

This is what I’ve started calling myth repair.

And once you start to notice it, you realize it’s everywhere. In products. In campaigns. In the way a brand shows up.

There’s a super successful skincare brand my daughter and her friends use. They makes acne patches. But instead of hiding the blemish, they turn it into something you can’t miss, something you’re almost asking people to notice—these bright, colorful little stars.

It’s a small thing. But it’s doing something deeper.

It’s taking the old myth (hide what’s imperfect) and rewriting it into something else entirely.

That’s myth repair too.

Not replacing the myth. Not burning it down. Just noticing that it hasn’t caught up with who you’ve become. That the story you’re living inside has gotten too small for the thing you’ve grown into. It isn’t wrong. It’s just unfinished.

Most of the leaders I work with don’t need a new strategy. They just need a way to recalibrate the myth underneath the strategy...the one that’s subtly shifted…in ways that are almost impossible to catch in real time. Because that’s what myths do. They morph, often without permission.

But here’s where it gets really interesting… This is the part I could give a passionate Jimmy-Stewart-style filibuster on for days…

Myths that are aligned are what make things scale.

Think about some of the world’s most proven and beloved brands—Disney, LEGO, Apple, Nike—or properties like Batman, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. The thing that keeps these from becoming one-offs and instead, transforms them into global franchises is the meaning system behind them…

…this legible set of values that gets embedded and passed down over and over again. At a certain point, these properties stop building the brand and start stewarding the myth.

Why?

Assets can be copied.
Meaning has to be carried.

This is the meat and potatoes of my latest podcast episode. It’s about how the myths we inherit can carry us for years and help us grow, what happens when they start to morph, and what it looks like to repair them without losing what made them true in the first place.

It starts with a sloth, passes through Rudolph…and ends somewhere I didn’t entirely expect.

Listen/ Watch Here:

▶ YouTube
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple Podcasts

There’s no shortage of messages right now.

No shortage of takes, reactions, content, commentary, or things asking for our attention.

And yet I think a lot of us still feel the same tension: we’re surrounded by language, but still trying to make sense of things in real life.

You probably feel this even more if other people look to you for direction. Maybe you’re leading a team. Maybe you’re building something. Maybe you’re raising kids. Maybe you’re just trying to live honestly inside a noisy moment without getting swept away by it.

That tension is a big part of why I started the Reculture Podcast.

In which CJ becomes self-aware: I realize launching a podcast technically adds one more message to the pile. But the hope is that this one helps us make a little more sense of the ones we’re already living inside.

It’s a place to explore better messages. Messages that don’t just tell us what to react to, but help us understand where we are. Messages that don’t just grab attention, but orient us, map us, and point us somewhere.

Episode 1 is called Better Messages Send People on Adventures. It’s about why so many messages capture attention but fail to move people, and why the best ones don’t just inform us. They invite us into something.

You can watch/listen here:

If this feels like a conversation you’ve been wanting, I’d love for you to subscribe and come along for the ride. Over the next few months, I’ll be exploring themes like myths, artifacts, voice, and culture, along with conversations with people who are living these ideas out in the real world.

Let’s see where this goes.

Watch/Listen to Episode 1

▶ YouTube
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple Podcasts

In this opening episode of Reculture, we explore why the messages that actually move people don’t just inform or persuade. They invite people into an adventure.

Drawing on childhood stories, leadership dynamics, and everyday cultural signals, this episode introduces a simple idea: attention captures, but adventure forms.

In this episode:

• Why attention alone rarely changes behavior

• The difference between information and formation

• Why adventure is a leadership capability

• The hidden forces that move people: joy, awe, and courage

Reculture is a podcast about better messages. Messages that help us understand the stories shaping our moment and navigate the stories we’re becoming together.

Not just politically or culturally, but at work, in institutions, even in our own lives. There’s a low-grade fever in the air. A sense that familiar language isn’t landing the way it used to, and that old explanations feel thinner than they once did.

The best language I’ve found so far is this: we’re living through a season of myth morphing.

The stories that once shaped us haven’t disappeared. They’re still pointing at something real. Still carrying something we need. But they’re also not working the way they used to…at least not in their old form.

And it’s that in-between space, where a story still matters but no longer fits, that creates the friction we so easily feel.

In this reality, we’re attempting one of the hardest things humans ever try to do: hold onto what’s essential while letting the form evolve.

And through that lens, you start to see it everywhere. In institutions that feel caught between past and future. In brands carrying a message that once worked, but no longer lands the way it used to. In people who sense they’ve outgrown a way of being, but don’t yet have language for what comes next.

This tension isn’t always a sign it’s time to start over. Sometimes it’s a sign that the story is still meaningful. It just needs to be spoken in a way that fits the moment we actually find ourselves in.

PS. You can see this same dynamic play out at every scale, from democracy, religion, and companies all the way down to pop culture. One small example is The Muppet Show reboot last week. I shared a quick take that unexpectedly took off.

This is a longer piece than usual. It’s an attempt to make sense of why the current moment feels so tense, and why the stories we tell about Strength matter more than we think.

If you’re paying attention to culture right now, this is a pretty heavy moment to be responsible for…anything. A team, a family, how you show up in the world from day to day.

You don’t have to be an expert to feel it. You can sense that the world is more volatile and less forgiving than it used to be. The problems aren’t subtle. Geopolitics. Economic fragility. Climate stress. Systems that feel more wobbly than we were led to believe.

And still, when you listen to the array of solutions, something feels off, missing, or incomplete.

What makes this moment so disorienting is not that the problems are hidden. If anything, they’re pretty flippin’ obvious! What’s harder to notice though is the underlying tension that’s fueling them: the fact that we’re watching two very different myths about the meaning of Strength totally collide with each other, often without either myth actually being named.

While the same pressures are landing on all of us, what’s different is the story we each use to make sense of them…and how that story shapes what we do next.

So... let’s try to name both these myths. And what better way to do that than by using the nostalgic character archetypes of my youth (because if we’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of why things feel so weird right now, we might as well make it fun).

The 90s’ Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Hero Myth

The first myth we’ll call “The 90s’ Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Hero.” It’s the one that’s increasingly visible in America’s leadership right now and it begins with a pretty blunt premise: the world is becoming harsher. Cooperation is less reliable. Institutions move slowly and are widely distrusted. Volatility is the punchline.

From that starting point, its logic is straightforward. Simplify. Harden. Act early. Impose costs on others now so they aren’t imposed on you later.

Seen through this lens, a TON of recent decisions start to make sense. Pressure campaigns against places like Venezuela are more about leverage than moral posturing. Greenland isn’t so much a real estate fantasy as it is a signal that geography, resources, and chokepoints now matter again. Aggressive immigration enforcement focuses more on deterrence than on whether people see the system as fair or worth cooperating with. De-emphasizing our complex civil rights history (moments when people successfully changed policy via dissent) makes challenges to authority less visible during times of stress.

Taken in isolation, these moves all look super chaotic. Taken together, they reflect a coherent belief: in a fragile world, authority must act first, narrow the field, and accept backlash as the cost of staying ahead.

In this myth, Strength comes from both dominance and leverage. Borders matter more than norms. Control matters more than persuasion. Compliance is sufficient, even if belief erodes. The future is treated like a contest where hesitation is fatal and softness is a liability.

This myth resonates precisely because it doesn’t deny reality. It doesn’t pretend the world is kind. It doesn’t promise comfort. It promises preparedness. It’s 90s Arnold. Lots of muscle. Lots of camo. Lots of foreboding when it comes to artificial intelligence.

The Yoda-Jedi-Master-Mr.-Miyagi Myth

But there is another myth being told, albeit more quietly right now. It’s the “Yoda-Jedi-Master-Mr.-Miyagi” myth. It starts from the same diagnosis, but it reaches a different conclusion.

It agrees the world is volatile. It agrees shocks are compounding. It doesn’t pretend complexity is going away. Where it diverges is in how it fundamentally understands Strength.

This myth centers on something we’ve lost a good word for, so let’s name it with intention. Legitimacy.

Legitimacy isn’t just about being well liked or morally pure. It’s about whether people believe a system is worth participating in, even when it asks something of them (like taxes or laws). In mythic terms, legitimacy is a shared story that makes cooperation possible. It’s the kind of Strength you see in figures like Yoda or Mr. Miyagi: quiet, steady, and principled.

Legitimate systems move faster in crises because people comply without having to be coerced. They adapt better because dissent illuminates errors early. They recover more reliably because trust lowers the cost of coordinating people. In this frame, diversity, pluralism, and arguments aren’t things to tamp down. Instead, they act as a kind of sensing system. To quote the poet, M.C. Hammer, the Yoda-Jedi-Master-Mr.-Miyagi system is “too legit to quit.”

Control and Capacity are Not The Same

This difference between both these myths often gets framed as Pragmatism versus Morality. That misses the point. What’s actually at stake is a choice between control now and capacity later.

Dominance works, especially at first. The tradeoff, however, shows up over time. Fear doesn’t compound. Compliance without belief is expensive to maintain. Systems optimized for control perform well under stressors they’ve gotten used to, but kind of poorly under new ones when they inevitably pop up. When loyalty starts to outrank competence or information is hoarded, mistakes travel farther before they have a chance to be corrected.

Legitimacy, on the other hand, is Yoda energy. It’s archaic and inefficient…and then suddenly it becomes indispensable. It’s what allows societies to absorb loss without tearing themselves apart. It’s what lets organizations make hard moves without triggering internal collapse…and turn complexity from a liability into an asset.

Making Sense of the Mismatch

The uncomfortable reality is that the hardest challenges ahead aren’t clean conflicts that can be solved by force alone. They’re cascading failures, climate events, economic volatility, technological disruption, and social strain—problems that don’t care much about borders or hierarchies. In those conditions, adaptability matters more than uniformity.

The dissonance many people feel comes from sensing this mismatch. But it also comes from a third myth, a “tale as old as time” if you will (ok, last 90s reference I promise).

The myth: You must always choose between two blunt binaries.

If there is an invitation for us in any of this, it’s that we can acknowledge that the world is getting harder and still question whether narrowing our imagination, flattening our history, and thinning checks on power will actually serve us in the long run.

We can accept the failures of institutions without assuming that hollowing them out leaves anything sturdy behind when control falters.

This moment can feel like whiplash everywhere because stories told at the top of the mountain don’t stay on the mountain. They travel downward, shaping expectations along the way. For leaders, founders, and organizations, the tension shows up close to home. Many of us are stuck between reacting to pressure and articulating a coherent path forward. We feel the volatility but lack a shared language for what kind of Strength we’re actually trying to build.

In those moments, the work isn’t persuasion or performance. It’s sense making.

It’s not to choose a side in a culture war. It’s to choose which kind of Strength story we’re preparing people to live inside.

And that’s not an abstract choice. It shows up in how we lead, how we build, and how we decide what kind of future we’re rehearsing for…often long before anyone realizes it.

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I know someone who, for as long as I’ve known them, has seemed trapped in a cycle of isolation, heartache, and a crippling lack of self-worth. Just this past week, he was introduced to the work of James Baldwin from an Instagram post. It was a clip of him explaining how suffering can be a bridge.

You go through life for a long time thinking, No one has ever suffered the way I’ve suffered, my God, my God. And then you realize—you read something or you hear something, and you realize that your suffering does not isolate you; your suffering is your bridge. Many people have suffered before you, many people are suffering around you and always will, and all you can do is bring, hopefully, a little light into that suffering. Enough light so that the person who is suffering can begin to comprehend his suffering and begin to live with it and begin to change it, change the situation. We don’t change anything; all we can do is invest people with the morale to change it for themselves.

He told me it made him weep. He told me he saved it every place he could as a kind of safety net for himself. This guy who, after years and years, I’ve simply come to accept as permanently stuck and impenetrable, was broken wide open in an instant by the voice of a prophet from 55 years ago. Excited, I quickly recommended he read “The Fire Next Time,” and to my surprise he bought it.

There’s something in particular, however, that’s got me a bit tangled when it comes to all this. I can’t stop thinking about what his point of discovery was.

Instagram.

Yes, the same Instagram with the addictive dopamine hits.
And the AI slop.
And the body shaming.
And the opinion ranting.
And the ability to process daily atrocities in real time.

The paradox, the contradiction, isn’t lost on me.

We are just a few days into 2026, and it already feels like a lot to carry. If you’re navigating a team, a family, a venture, etc., no one would fault you for wondering, “Why does it feel like we’re living in a world full of contradictions? And how, in this contradictory world, do I even begin to move through it… let alone anyone I’m responsible for?”

And while there are no simple answers, I’m struck by the gift Baldwin seems to have given my friend, something viral in the most sincere sense of the word: a small sense of agency.

My friend’s realization that even in the midst of despair and depression, he has the ability to move did, in fact, move him. The illumination of a bridge and the whisper of reassurance that it was within reach dislodged something so stuck that, over time, I too had come to believe in its permanence.

Myths are stories we tell each other about the world we want to live in. This year, may we remind ourselves that we get to choose what myths we believe.

If you ask me, I don’t see the contradictions going away. If anything, they’ll continue to become more complex. We can either determine to shut it all down, (always an option) or take up the task of sorting through those contradictions to find the narratives that wake us up, shake us loose, and send us across the bridge on an adventure we were made for.

To be still is a gift. To stay still is to miss out on a birthright.

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Some HouseKeeping

Reculture: Live in LA is fast approaching and you’re invited!

One of my New Year’s resolutions has been to try and enter more spaces where communion can happen offline and in-person. If you’re on the West Coast (or have means to travel) I’d be honored if you joined us for what we’re calling “an experiment in collaborative curiosity around some of our culture’s biggest challenges.”

It’s an intimate, in-person dialogue with leaders who are thinking about culture differently, from Fr. Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries and Latif Nasser of RadioLab, to educators, writers, and producers from shows like The Problem with Jon Stewart and The Michelle Obama Podcast.

Together, we’ll explore the story we currently find ourselves in and consider what it might look like to step into a better one. It’s a space to listen, reflect, and, if you choose, actively participate in the dialogue. I’d love to see you there!

And tucked inside it is this strange, beautiful phrase:

“And a little child shall lead them.*”

*”Them,” meaning the wolves, lions (pretty sure a leopard joins the mix)…basically, the kinds of carnivorous creatures you definitely wouldn’t trust around your kid.

What I love about that image is that it’s not a commandment telling us what to do. Instead, it’s a picture meant to help us imagine what’s possible.

So many of the stories that have shaped me, especially around Christmas, work this way, whether it’s Charlie Brown, The Muppets, or Dr. Seuss.

They don’t argue their way into meaning. They show it to us, simply enough that a child could carry it.

This year, I had a small, unexpected Christmas gift.

I realized that Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, lives about two hours from me.

That discovery did something strange. First, it made me wonder where the line is between stalking and, you know, just lingering around a neighborhood in close proximity waiting for someone to show up.

But secondly, it sent me back.

I grabbed the Complete Calvin & Hobbes Anthology sitting on my shelf (every house should have this) and started rereading the strips to my son before bedtime.

One night, one panel from a single strip jumped out and has since lodged itself in my heart.

It’s Calvin and Hobbes running into summer, a flag in hand, a shovel over their shoulder, charging into the great unknown of their own backyard.

Pure adventure.

That image has become this quiet little symbol for me. Of childhood, yes, but also of the kind of life I still want to live, especially lately.

This week alone, the world felt unbearably heavy. So many unnecessary losses. So many headlines competing for our attention. It feels like every morning requires a small, exhausting decision about which tragedy to hold first.

In these moments, I’ve begun to notice something in myself. I don’t long for more information. I long for formation.

For reminders of who we are. And who we could still be.

If Advent is the ache for a new possibility, Adventure is the act of stepping toward that possibility with courage, becoming someone new in the process.

There’s something about Calvin and Hobbes that feels kind of like that ancient Christmas text. A boy and a tiger. A kid and a carnivore. Innocence and danger, somehow learning to run together.

A child leading, not because they know more, but because they see differently.

Maybe that’s why the stories that stay with us don’t necessarily shout, tell us what to do, or demand certainty.

They just remind us of some kind of possibility.

As this year closes, I don’t have resolutions to offer.

Just a possibility.

That in a world very good at capturing our attention, we might make room for the things that shape who we’re becoming.

That we’d tell the kinds of stories that help us see again. That bring joy, courage, and wonder back into reach.

And that, every once in a while, we’d let the child lead us.

PS. Reculture: Live in LA is fast approaching on Jan 22 & 23, and there are still tickets available. I honestly haven’t been this excited about something in a while. This is a rare opportunity to gather for an intimate, in-person conversation with folks like Latif Nasser of RadioLab, Father Greg Boyle, and other reculturers to explore the story we’re in and consider what it might look like to step into a better one. It’s a space to listen, reflect, and, if you choose, actively participate in the dialogue. I’d love to see you there!

What I’d really like to tell you, the message I think a lot of us need to hear…is that what you’re feeling right now is normal.

If you’re feeling a blend of hope and existential dread, it’s normal.

If you don’t know how to parent your kids with screen time, it’s normal.

If you’re not sure who or what to believe anymore, you’re no different than anyone.

So as we gather around this holiday season, can we attempt to do so with a kind of virgin grace for the fact that we’re living through one of the weirdest times in history where simultaneously we’ve never had it so good…and everything also feels massively uncertain. Can we bring that uncertainty to the tables we share and be grateful in the assurance, that at the very least, we have each other?

I’m hosting a gathering.

One way I’m trying to model this is by bringing people together to talk about how weird things are and what normal people can do about it.

On Jan 22 & 23, I’ll be hosting something we’re calling Reculture: Live in LA — in search of a better discussion about what divides us. And you’re invited!

We’ll be looking for signs of life across issues like education, democracy, media, technology, and faith… and we’re determined to have fun doing it (The whole thing will actually end in a comedy show featuring the brilliantly funny Aparna Nancherla who you’ve seen on Netflix, Conan, etc.)

Here are some other reculturers we’ll be in conversation with:

To be clear, this isn’t a conference. It’s more of a retreat-style gathering. If you attend, you’ll be able to actively participate and ask questions. For that reason (and the fact that our venue is cozy “aka” small), we’ve only got spots for 40 people. Admission is only $30 so, if you’re interested, secure a spot now.

Confusing times ask us to listen more carefully—to the messengers, the makers, the ones wrestling meaning out of the chaos. Every dark age gives way to a renaissance.

If you feel that tug in yourself, and you want to learn alongside others carrying the same torch, I hope you’ll join us.

He would talk openly about his flaws in meetings with a kind of charming resignation. He would say things like, “I know I’m impatient,” or “I can get controlling,” in a tone that suggested, “Can you believe it? Even good looking people aren’t perfect!”

People admired it. He seemed honest. He seemed self-aware. And after all, he was good looking.

Over time, though, I noticed that nothing ever changed. His updates about his growth began to feel like reruns. Eventually the organization’s board put him on a six-month probation. Like God delivering instructions to Adam & Eve, they told him he had to refrain from doing just one thing in those six months, one thing he was known for always doing. He had 180 days to prove he could NOT do that thing, that he was capable of change.

He couldn’t do it.

All that vulnerability, all that transparency, none of it had any muscle behind it. It was authenticity without architecture. The moment other people pushed on it, even gently, it collapsed.

Raw Isn’t the Same as Real

That experience comes back to me whenever someone insists that the age of the millennial-inspired polished, well-lit, carefully curated brand is dead and “authenticity” is now the secret to modern branding.

“Young people don’t trust polish, so throw everything out and replace it with ‘authenticity.’ Add some lowercase captions. Throw in a little chaos. Create a sense that nothing was rehearsed, including the lighting, the script, and the basic emotional hygiene.”

It sounds noble, but without some structure, authenticity is just…well…raw. It’s flour without dough. Dylan without Adele. An onion that might make you cry, but for the wrong reasons.

We think the choice is between polish and vulnerability, but let’s consider my old boss. He was both authentic and good looking. Ultimately, neither was strong enough to save him.

The thing we humans seem to respond to, the quality that sticks out against a never-ending vortex of hype, is actually something else entirely...a message with enough design and intentionality to hold itself together, and enough integrity that other people can touch it without breaking it.

In a word, resilience.

Resilience vs. Shrink Wrap

Look at Mamdani’s campaign. Let’s be honest: that thing looked good. The colors worked. The typography worked. The story worked.

It wasn’t allergic to design; it just didn’t use design to barricade itself off. The team opened the floodgates and let supporters see themselves as fans, creating their own riffs and remixes. The brand didn’t panic. It didn’t feel threatened by amateur Canva jobs. It had a center of gravity, and people naturally orbited around it.

Compare that to Cuomo’s AI-generated material, which had the strange quality of looking both polished and lifeless at the same time, like a stock-photo-laden church brochure with the tagline, “Community matters here.” It was as if no human fingerprints were allowed anywhere near it. Call it the branding equivalent of shrink-wrap.

Shrink-wrap is what killed the Kamala campaign. The Democratic establishment tried to curate her public presence so tightly that any oxygen in the room felt like an accident. They wanted control so badly that spontaneity became a liability. When Joe Rogan didn’t leap at the chance to bring her on (how we got to that point is another story), it wasn’t because she had nothing interesting to say. Allegedly, it was because her terms were too narrow. The atmosphere around her felt sealed, the way museums seal off artifacts that can’t be exposed to light. People sense that. They wonder what happens if the curtains get pulled even an inch.

The trouble starts when authenticity stops being a byproduct of resilience and starts becoming a strategy. You can practically see those team meetings. “Can we make this appear more real?” “What if the CEO films this on a sidewalk so people know he’s the kind of guy who walks?” The whole thing becomes another layer of choreography.

If anything deserves a funeral, it’s that version of authenticity. Not the real thing, but the glossy, commercially viable imitation. Authenticity Inc.

“What do you think our approach should be?”

A few years ago, the head of a brand that had gotten huge on Instagram called me in a panic. Someone had created a parody of them, a gentle, clever send‑up of everything they were known for: the immaculate photography, the aspirational influencers, the tagline that promised “authentic community.” The parody wasn’t mean‑spirited. It was wry and playful, a lighthearted jab at just how overly polished and self‑serious the whole aesthetic had become. But it spread everywhere. For about a month it was unavoidable, showing up in the press, people’s feeds, group chats, you name it. And despite its lightness, the founder was rattled.

“What do you think our approach should be? he asked me.

I thought about it for a moment. “I’d lean into it.” I replied. “Laugh at the joke. If you respond negatively, you’ll look like you deserve to be parodied. If you have fun, you’ll prove any skepticism out there about your brand wrong.”

Ultimately, he decided to go the opposite direction than what I suggested. Their success dissipated within a few months.

Be The LEGOs You Want to See In The World

We know resilience when we encounter it:

A brand that knows itself well enough that it doesn’t disintegrate when the public starts interacting with it.

A message that doesn’t fall apart when someone asks an unscripted question.

A story that can hold its shape even when fans reinterpret it, parody it, borrow it, or even gently abuse it.

Resilience requires form. A point of view. A design language that doesn’t apologize for being designed. Think of it like Lego: intentionally shaped, thoughtfully constructed, sturdy enough to stand on its own…yet meant to be taken apart, reassembled, expanded, reimagined, and occasionally turned into something no one ever planned for. A message that invites that kind of creative interference isn’t fragile. It’s generous. It’s confident. It knows that being remixed is part of the point.

The next generation isn’t rejecting good branding. They’re rejecting fragility masked as good branding. They want the confidence that comes from a brand being genuinely itself, not because it’s trying to be relatable, but because it has nothing to hide.

So instead of announcing the death of millennial branding or authenticity branding, or any kind of branding, maybe we should announce the death of pretending that any one thing alone can carry a brand anywhere. The future belongs to the identities that can survive multiple kinds of contact—from supporters, creators, critics and disruptors alike.

Authenticity is nice. Resilience is better. And the brands that last will be the ones that let people in without losing themselves in the process.

☝️This should NOT have worked.

When Reculture was asked to create a music video directing third through fifth graders to call 988, the suicide prevention lifeline, the first thing out of my mouth was:

“There’s no way we can pull that off.”

Not with our characters Crumb and Unk, an uptight alien and his goofy robot friend. Not with that age group. Not with that topic.

But John, my creative partner, reached his hand out, looked at me, and said, “Hold on a minute.”

And thank God for “Hold on a minute.”

Because what followed was one of the most surprising creative breakthroughs I’ve been part of in a long time. It taught me, again, what all great messages have in common:

They meet people where they are.

Even if “where they are” is fourth grade.

The Simplicity Ceiling

Most people think smart messages are supposed to sound smart.
But the best ones sound simple.

Think about “Just do it,” “You’re not you when you’re hungry,” or “Think different.”

We don’t process messages with a red pen; we process them with our nervous system. And our nervous systems love simplicity.

I’m not saying this is ideal, but the average American reads at about a seventh-to eighth-grade level. On top of that, studies show that when we’re under stress, we tend to revert to simpler language processing. In short, when we’re overwhelmed, distracted, or emotional (so, always), we reach for what’s easy to digest.

Which means if your message only makes sense to a C-suite, Ph.D., or policy wonk, it might be smart…but probably not very effective.

Crumb, Unk, and the 988 Challenge

Back to the project.

The ask was clear but daunting: Make a song that tells 8-to-11-year-olds that 988 is the number to call if they, or a friend, are struggling.

At first, I balked. I didn’t even realize that kids that young struggled with suicidal thoughts. But the data says they do. And once that sobering truth settled in, it made the challenge feel all the more important.

We went to work.

We knew the sensitive directives we had to communicate.
But we started the way we always do: with story, with characters, with hope. We refused to make this thing feel like a downer. Instead, we wanted to ground it in positive feelings like joy, courage, and—dare I say—even a little fun. We teamed up with friend & music producer Chris Cron, and together…

We made the message so simple a fourth grader could understand it.
Because that was literally the point.
But also, maybe, because all of us need it that simple, too.

How to Communicate on a Fourth Grade Level (Without Sounding Like a Fourth Grader)

Here are a few handholds I learned from projects like this that I trust are helpful to you too.

1. Bake the veggies in the mac & cheese.

Kids don’t need five bullet points to pay attention, they need a reason to care. Adults are no different. Joy. Curiosity. Fear. Surprise. Humor. Offer those things up first…the things we all naturally get excited about. Bake the more substantial stuff inside.

2. Don’t confuse gravity with heaviness.

Just because a message is powerful (like gravity) doesn’t mean it automatically has to feel heavy. The more important we feel a message is, the more likely we are to weigh it down in one way or another. Resist that urge and see what happens.

3. Talking down doesn’t work. Bending down does.

When Yo-Yo Ma was seven years old, he played for Presidents Kennedy, Eisenhower, and a room full of other famous people praising the young boy with platitudes and pats on the head. But the person he remembers the most? The actor Danny Kaye (White Christmas, Hans Christian Andersen). Why? Here’s what Ma says:

“He came down to my level in order to be an equal. He extended himself, met me at the crucial edge that divides adult from child, and won my heart. I subliminally internalized that gesture and that attitude, and I’ve tried to be mindful of this in everything I do—to meet people at eye level, at the edge that divides one person from another.”

There’s a subtle difference between talking to people and talking with them. I’ve found that subtle difference often leads to paradigm-shifting results.

If we can bend down, if we can lean into gravity without always succumbing to our own heaviness, if a fourth grader can get what we’re saying, everyone else has a fighting chance too.

We’ve conquered sight, sound, and soon, smell.

While machines focus on perfecting all that, the job every creatively maladjusted leader, every nihilism-bashing educator, every wonder-preaching parent should be focused on is the remaining two senses:

Taste and Feel.

Taste

…as in that uniquely human ability to see something, hear something, or even smell something and respond by saying, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The recipe may call for a pinch more salt, a color outside the palette, or a note that bends just a little to catch your ear. It’s the bulletproof ritual of bringing our intuitive selves to whatever story we’re faced with and understanding we can change it for the better.

Feel

Of course, you can’t have Taste without Feel—without building a résumé of experience learning what’s true, or good, or beautiful in the first place.

Without developing a vocabulary for groove.
Without having your heart broken.
Without knowing it can be repaired by the company of another’s broken heart.
Without rolling down a window in favor of a skyline that’s un-tinted and un-air conditioned.

Forget soft skills. Feel is perhaps the roughest of them all. The kind that can withstand wind, get close to suffering, and hold fire.

While the landfill of artificial-everything keeps growing, Taste and Feel are the intelligent tools wielded by those smart enough to realize that people’s attention isn’t the end goal; it’s whether that attention moves them to care enough to do something about it.

Best friend to the creator,
worst enemy to the mediocre,
are these two less-talked-about senses each of us are born with.
May we come to them, keep them close, and cultivate them in others.
They matter even more now than they used to.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire. — Charles Bukowski

It’s fair if you’re a creative person and you’re exhausted right now. I mean, I am.

Here I am writing with the audacity of a seven-year-old doing lines of Pixy Stix, about how Joy, Wonder, and Courage have the potential to beat out messages based in fear and division. Meanwhile, it’s full-on 2025 out there! The government is shut down. Violence is filling my feed with a ferocity only outmatched by Hims ads. And in a plot twist NO ONE saw coming, AI seems pretty bent on doing more soul-sucking than life-saving.

So I understand if you don’t want to hear my schtick… that your message is meaningful, that in a world of false narratives, you hold the pen to change the story, that messages like Joy, Wonder, and Courage are worth fighting for.

You might be puffing an imaginary cigarette right now and rolling your eyes while saying in your best French accent, “cliché.”

And I wouldn’t blame you.

But for one moment, before you flick your imaginary butt on the ground and reach for the unsubscribe button, may I suggest there may just be a method to my madness?

I’m trying to do something. Imperfectly. Inconsistently. But I’m trying nonetheless.

Dr. King used to say a phrase that didn’t get as much airtime as lines like those from “I Have a Dream” or “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” This was more of a deep cut.

“Human salvation,” he said, “lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

I’m a big fan of that term…creatively maladjusted.

We all know what it means to be “well-adjusted.” It’s something we learn from the time we’re kids, from saying “excuse me” after burping at the dinner table and taking standardized tests, to eventually allowing the last appetizer to sit there on the table even if nobody else takes it. Broadly, it means to conform successfully to all of our society’s norms.

But King argued that if those norms themselves become inherently unjust, good people should refuse to adapt…not by mere rebellion or chaos, but through a kind of creative refusal, one that builds a better order.

To break it down even more:

Maladjusted = refusing to accept injustice, inequality, or violence as normal.
Creatively = finding nonviolent, constructive, imaginative ways to resist and reform those injustices.

I am trying to practice creative maladjustment. To not roll over to cynicism or complacency and just let the whirling chaos win. To possess, as Sister Ruth Marlene Fox put it, enough foolishness to believe a difference can still be made.

If that’s you, know that you’ve got a friend.

Creatively Maladjusted people are all around us.

I believe people like us are everywhere. Every company has them. Every school. Every government. They’re the ones who can’t quite adjust to processes that have gone stale, who speak up vs. tune out when messaging starts to sound tone-deaf or the story starts losing its soul. Rather than “quiet quitting,” they’re quietly fighting—burnout, disruption, and uncertainty—to make things more joyful, honest, and thoughtful. The wisest institutions listen, mentor, and learn from these folks, understanding that they are cultural antibodies. They keep sacred institutions human…and keep humans sacred institutions.

So I’m planting my feet stubbornly in the soil. I’m going to keep writing, speaking, and creating for anyone who will listen…not because I’m pretending things aren’t a mess or that we’ll walk through the fire unscathed, but because I believe that our creative maladjustment, that small voice whispering “this isn’t how the story needs to end,” can help author the building blocks of a different chapter…even if all we add is a single sentence, word, or punctuation mark.

If that resonates, I made something small for us to remember why we’re here:

The Creatively Maladjusted Manifesto

We believe human creativity is an act of moral resistance.
We believe beauty still has purpose.
We believe honesty scales.
We believe wonder is not naïve or cliché… or any other French words that sound snobby when said while waving an imaginary cigarette. Wonder is necessary.
And we believe the next chapter of culture belongs to those maladjusted enough to love it back to life.

We stopped for a quick bathroom break at a gas station in Kentucky. Standing in line for some trail mix, I noticed the skinny gentleman in the white t-shirt behind me, a jelly donut in his hand and a Glock G19 candidly brandished on his hip.

The North had officially stopped Northing.

We got back into the car, casually merged our way back onto the concrete path covering the ghosts of men who once bled for what they believed, and, as if thinking “Now is as good a time as any,” my friend decided to DJ the next leg of our road trip conversation. “So, what do you think of this guy, Charlie Kirk?” he asked.

I’ve had that conversation many times since with multiple folks, especially after his tragic and unnecessary killing a few weeks ago. If we tend to hit an impasse, it’s usually around Charlie’s messaging strategy. But before we get to that, let’s talk about one of my favorite words.

Nuance.

I used to think nuance was the thing that would save us. More subtlety. More complexity. More patience to understand each other. As a messaging strategist, I like nuance. I’ve built my career on it. Good messaging is rarely blunt; it’s careful, crafted, surprising. The best messages don’t shout; they whisper just loud enough that you lean closer. And I still believe that.

But there’s another side of nuance. It can just as easily be a Trojan horse. It can bring in the very ideas we’d never allow through the front gate if they announced themselves honestly.

Before we get back to Charlie Kirk, I should say this: a lot has been written, tweeted, and shouted over the last few weeks about him and about what his death means. I’m not trying to solve all of that here. I just want to take one small slice of it, one angle I feel qualified to speak into, and explore it for what it might teach us.

Most of the time, my conversation with folks who don’t see the harm in Charlie Kirk’s message goes something like this:

“Sure, he said that thing, but he clarified later.”

“Sure, that clip looked bad, but you have to understand the context.”

“Sure, people on the far right loved him, but that doesn’t mean he was one of them.”

Here’s the trap of that line of thinking.

When you want to persuade someone toward something ugly, something as ugly as white supremacy, you can’t come right out and say, “I hate Black people.” That won’t work. It’s too sharp, too crude, too easy to reject. The smart move is to wrap the idea in words that sound respectable. You talk about “values,” “tradition,” “freedom,” and let the listener fill in the rest. You build a message so layered that, when someone calls it racist, you can shrug and say, “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”

That’s the genius, and the danger, of nuance.

So when I look at Charlie Kirk’s work, and the movement he helped grow, I don’t just see sound bites. I see careful strategy. I see the way a message is sanded down until it’s just palatable enough to pass. And I think that if we want to have honest conversations about what we value, we have to be honest about that too.

This isn’t just about one voice. The pattern is bigger than him, and bigger than politics. Anytime an idea that would be rejected outright tries to find a foothold, it learns to speak in a softer voice. History is full of these moments: segregationists talking about “states’ rights,” misogyny dressed up as “family values,” isolation-machines masked as “online communities,” anti-vaccine campaigns presenting themselves as “health freedom” movements, or common-sense gun reforms pitted as “anti-Second Amendment.”

And that’s what makes this hard. Because I don’t want to live in a world where we lose our appetite for nuance. Without nuance, we flatten everything into caricature: good guys and bad guys, winners and losers, until all we know how to do is shout.

But I do want to live in a world where we recognize that nuance can be used in bad faith. Where we get better at asking not just, what was said? but what work is this message doing? Who benefits if I nod along? Who loses?

I still love the whisper more than the shout. But lately I find myself listening closer, not just for what’s being whispered, but for what it might be hiding.

“Our new CMO just said, ‘We need to move away from emotional branding.’”

A friend of mine, who runs social media for a mid-market consumer brand, told me this over the phone the other day.

“Like…what does that even mean?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I replied. “Did he give any additional context?”

“No, not really. I probably should have asked, but I was so confused I just froze.”

We both stood there, our phones held up to our ears, thinking in silence, “What kind of bizarro world are we in now?”

So this is where we are: In a weird economy overrun with AI bots, where the new marketing guy comes in trying to prove his pay grade by saying things like, “let’s cut the emotion out of branding”… as if branding could ever be anything but emotional.

If you’re a smart, strategic, creative leader who’s also a little freaked out, I get you. Allow me to inject some hope.

I can’t tell you where AI is going (The experts don’t even seem to know). I’m not an economist (Apparently data is negotiable now anyway). What I can do is offer a prediction based on my own work for what the future holds when it comes to the relationship between creativity and commerce. One that’s challenging but hopeful…and if I’m right, just over the horizon. But first, another story.

Puppets & a Pub Table

The whole thing started as a side project, a kind of creative itch I needed to scratch. About six years ago I wondered what would happen if I took my skills as a media professional and applied them to kids. Not to consumer brands or political campaigns, but to children.

So I made a series of short videos. The stars were an alien and a robot puppet, which made sense because I grew up obsessed with Mr. Rogers and The Muppets. The mission was simple: teach kids urgent skills like kindness and creativity.

It worked. Sort of. The series won a couple of awards. It ended up in classrooms. It even gave my production company, Reculture, some unexpected visibility. But after three years I was worn out. Producing it was a lot. I remember sitting at our local watering hole with my friend John, who voiced one of the characters, and telling him I thought I was ready to move on.

Two weeks later my phone rang. A company that created social and emotional learning curriculum for schools wanted to license the videos and commission more. Suddenly this quirky side project I was ready to close the chapter on became one of Reculture’s largest clients.

Which is funny, because most people assume our main business is helping comms, marketing, and brand departments. And while that’s true, here we are also getting in pretty deep with an education company that exists to teach people how to be more human.

Art Isn’t Dead, It’s Displaced.

My puppet side hustle-turned-major focus might be a kind of signal flare for the future of creative work at large. If creativity still has a place in a world where machines are learning to write copy and generate graphics, maybe its most important place is not where we expected.

We all know creative belongs in marketing departments. That’s where the brainstorming happens, where clever slogans are born, where campaigns are designed to break through the noise. But marketing is also one of the first places AI has started to inch human creativity out.

A few years ago, the big consulting firms were already saying it: marketing was going to be one of the earliest business functions disrupted by AI. Gartner predicted that by 2025, 30 percent of outbound marketing messages from large organizations would be AI-generated. In case you missed it, that’s now. And if you’ve played with any of the new AI tools, you can see why. They can write email subject lines, produce graphics, and generate video.

For CMOs, this is efficiency. For creative professionals, it’s displacement. The same skills that once made you indispensable are suddenly being automated.

But while this kind of creative work is being displaced, another kind is being quietly elevated.

Art Is About to Look a Lot Less Like Social Media and a Lot More Like Social Work.

When a school system invests in social and emotional learning, it isn’t about efficiency. It’s about survival. Teachers have seen what happens when kids aren’t taught how to regulate their emotions or resolve conflicts. They struggle to learn, to connect, to thrive.

The same thing is now happening in the workplace. Companies are realizing that if people are going to work alongside AI, what matters most are the skills AI cannot provide…things like decency, kindness, civility, and patience.

For decades, the hierarchy was clear. Marketing got the best creative talent because marketing had the budget. HR was seen as administrative, focused on compliance, payroll, and annual reviews. If you were a designer or writer, you wanted to work on Super Bowl ads, not onboarding manuals.

But the hierarchy is shifting.

The Global Work Well-Being Report, developed in partnership with the University of Oxford, correlates high workplace well-being with better business outcomes. Companies ranking high in employee happiness, purpose, and belonging have outperformed major stock indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.

These aren’t perks. More like survival strategies in a labor market where retention costs and burnout rates have become bottom-line issues.

And what does it take to create belonging? It takes story. It takes design. It takes people who can translate cold information and make it felt, creating experiences that make people feel connected to each other and to a shared purpose.

In other words, it takes creative professionals.

I think it’s possible that the next great arena for art and creativity may not be designing ads for consumers, but shaping experiences for workers, crafting the very stories institutions tell themselves about who they are and how they want to treat one another.

If the past two decades were defined by customer experience, the next decade will be defined by employee experience. McKinsey recently noted that companies investing in employee experience see higher productivity, stronger retention, and greater resilience during crises.

Soon, the challenge won’t be posting content for social media. It will be creating conditions where people remember not to treat one another like the robots they work with. Where the daily rhythm of work still leaves room for dignity, care, and even wonder. This, as we know, has always been art’s pendulum swing…from cultural catalyst to commercial commodity and back again. The only thing that changes is how advanced the robots are.

Culture Is the New Competitive Landscape.

The new competition is for culture. Companies that figure out how to build trust, belonging, and resilience internally will outperform the ones that don’t. Gallup has found that highly engaged teams show 23 percent greater profitability compared with disengaged teams. That’s not because of better ad campaigns. That’s because of better human connection.

And no, this may not be the stuff most creatives dreamt about when they entered the field. It isn’t likely to win a Cannes Lion. But it may be the most consequential creative work of our time.

Because as AI takes over more of the mechanics of communication, the job of humans will be to design the moments that machines cannot. The moments that remind us we’re more than robots.

That is the open water.

Which means the opportunity for creative professionals is actually expanding, not shrinking. It’s moving out of the advertising agency and into the HR department. Out of the consumer campaign and into the culture campaign. Out of what we used to call branding, and into something more like belonging.

Executives who see this shift will get ahead of the curve. They will invest in storytelling, design, and art not just to attract customers, but to sustain culture. They will understand that teaching emotional literacy and human connection is as valuable to their bottom line as the next viral campaign.

This is not theory. It is already happening. And soon, institutions in every industry will face the same reality. And the leaders who invite creatives into the heart of their culture will be the ones who build ones that last.

So we made what felt like a high-stakes parenting decision. We gave him an iPad. Not just an iPad...we gave him an Apple Pencil and access to Procreate, the same tool professional illustrators use. Our logic was simple: if he’s going to lean into these gifts, let’s give him a real and relevant canvas. We set up time limits, locked down the internet, drew the lines we thought we needed to draw. Then we stepped back.

At first, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Would these tools be over his head? Would he need someone constantly holding his hand? Would he get bored, frustrated, and eventually just beg us to install Minecraft like the other kids in his class? We braced ourselves.

What actually happened surprised us. One day he was sketching with the pencil, the next he was layering colors and showing me features I didn’t even know existed. He didn’t wait for instructions. He just dove right in.

Then he wandered into GarageBand. Suddenly he’s composing little songs. Not just random button mashing, songs with rhythm, with beginnings and endings, with surprising little hooks. He’d play them for us with a grin on his face like, did you know I could do this? And the honest answer was no. We didn’t know.

It was never about the iPad.

It wasn’t the iPad that made him more creative. It was his curiosity. The tool didn’t create the spark. It gave the spark room to breathe. That’s the thing we forget. We get hung up on the technology, as if the right app or the wrong screen time limit will decide everything. But the real deciding factor is whether the curiosity is there. Because if it is, a child will turn Procreate into a playground. If it isn’t, the same device just becomes an endless scroll of YouTube videos.

And of course this isn’t just about kids. Adults do the same thing. We’ve been handed the most powerful tools in history, machines that can learn, adapt, generate, explore. And what do most of us do? We watch AI-generated videos of world leaders as babies. Which is fine. Baby Trump vs. Baby Putin is a chef’s kiss meta scenario worthy of our love and attention. But if that’s where we stop, we’re missing it. Because the big shift of our era isn’t about how smart the machines are. It’s about how curious we’re willing to be.

Curiosity is the singular skill. The rest will follow. Industrial-age tasks? Automation will handle them. Information recall? That’s what search is for. But the instinct to wonder, to chase the “what if,” to explore instead of consume. That’s the thing that makes all the difference. That’s what separates empty entertainment from discovery. That’s what separates noise from better messages.

Make Curiosity Great Again.

So if curiosity is the message, what does it actually look like in practice? How can each of us practically push toward realizing a curiosity-first culture? Here are some thoughts:

For parents: The challenge isn’t just whether to hand over a screen, it’s navigating a culture that sells kids distraction before they can spell it. Every parent I know feels torn: you want your child to have the same tools the pros use, but you also know Silicon Valley is designing those same devices to be addictive. The call isn’t to throw the tech away, but to stay awake at the wheel, matching real tools with real interests, curating the environment so curiosity doesn’t get drowned in noise. It’s less about screen time minutes and more about cultural fluency, helping kids see that our culture packages distraction and creativity in the same box, and giving them the tools to tell the difference. The same screen can be a piano or a slot machine.

For educators: Schools are under pressure to test, to measure, to standardize. Meanwhile, the creative programs get cut, and the moments of wandering are squeezed out. Ironically, the handful of schools that do embrace “open space” often stop short: they let kids wonder, but they don’t equip them when lightning actually strikes. The bigger challenge is systemic, how to resist the culture of endless metrics and instead create classrooms that notice when a kid is obsessed with sound engineering, or graphic design, or robotics, and then connect them to tools, mentors, or projects that make that obsession matter in the real world. Wonder without a bridge to application becomes another form of neglect.

For companies: Does your brand message reflect curiosity? Not just tacking on a “learn more” button, but in the deeper sense of inviting your audience to pause, to wonder, to chase a question. Lately, it seems a lot of brand storytelling feels like an instruction manual: neat, tidy, predictable. But curiosity-driven messaging is messier and more alive. It opens a loop, it leaves space for imagination, making people feel like co-discoverers instead of targets.

Maybe if we can do that—at home, in classrooms, inside organizations—then the technology finally becomes what it’s meant to be: a canvas, a studio, a stage. And curiosity becomes the spark that makes better messages possible.

I worried that giving my son an iPad might replace the messy poetry of paper and cardboard, but it didn’t. I still find his cardboard submarines on the floor. I still reorganize drawers overflowing with doodles on printer paper. The iPad didn’t erase any of that. If anything, we’re running out of storage.

Good News, Bad News

The good news for people like me is that companies still have an appetite for making interesting content that grows and connects with their audience. The bad news is that most of them have been burned.

And honestly, I get it. There’s been a trail of disappointment and confusion in this space. Consultants and agencies charge a fortune for experiments that never hit the bottom line. The CEO's nephew who's a TikTok influencer can’t understand why your B2B claims company isn't as well. And there’s the ever-changing all-powerful algorithm.

No wonder we’re at the point where somewhere in the middle of every Zoom call, a voice eventually says, “I bet we can just get AI to do that,” like a Pavlovian cue.

This isn't a you problem or a me problem, by the way. It’s a culture-wide thing. Disney/Pixar just spent $200 million on Elio, a movies critics called creative, interesting, and ambitious. It bombed at the box office…hard. There’s a disconnect we’re all very much feeling between what gets made and what happens next.

Why This Keeps Happening

From where I sit, there are three big reasons brands keep tripping over content strategy.

The first is alignment. Comms, sales, ops, and leadership often think they are rowing in the same direction, but in reality they are on different rivers. Marketing wants storytelling, sales wants leads, and ops just wants everyone to stop using the word “vibes” in pitch decks.

The second is that strategy itself has become a BS term. It gives off very pre-COVID TED-talk vibes (Agggh I just did it!). “Strategy” gets thrown around so casually that no one trusts it anymore. Everyone says they have one, but press them to explain it and you end up with a dozen slides that could apply to any company in any industry. Strategy has become corporate wallpaper.

The third reason is KPIs are a hall of mirrors. When it comes to content, most teams are afraid to admit they don’t actually know what success looks like. Should they measure views, conversions, shares, retention, or something else entirely? The ambiguity creates a void that gets filled by the loudest opinion in the room (which is always TikTok-nephew. His name is Madison).

The Consultant/Agency Problem

This is the part of the movie where the cavalry shows up. The consultants. The agencies. The pitch decks with moody stock photos of city skylines all shot in 9x16 portrait mode. They promise clarity, momentum, and metrics that will finally make sense.

Sometimes they deliver. A lot of times they don’t. But even when they do deliver, the client often doesn’t follow through. The budget runs out, leadership moves on, or the KPIs were never defined clearly enough to know if the campaign was actually working. Both sides walk away frustrated, muttering about how the other side “just didn’t get it.” Meanwhile, Madison is choreographing the HR department through the latest dance trend.

So…what can be done?
For all the false starts and missteps, here’s what I’ve seen does work…

The First Shall (Hopefully) Be Last.

Whether you’re an individual creator, small business, IPO, or entertainment studio, content strategy does not start with platforms. Let me say that again. Platforms come last.

First comes your point of view: what you stand for, what you are trying to say, and why anyone should care. Legendary producer Rick Rubin talks about “clarity of intention” in his book The Creative Act. That is where you begin.

Next comes audience: who you’re talking to and in what context. Are they in a boardroom? In line at the grocery store? Sitting at home at midnight? Until you know the backdrop, your content is homeless.

Only after those two pieces are nailed down do you move to formats and platforms (TikTok, podcasts, LinkedIn, email, etc.) Not because they’re irrelevant, but because they only matter once you know the message they are carrying.

When you flip that order, you end up with noise and cynicism. When you get it right, you create the communities you’re hoping for, ones that build trust, spark joy, and occasionally inspire awe.

Better > More

The future does not belong to brands making more content. It belongs to brands making better content. Content rooted in clarity of message, not just whatever platform happens to be hot this quarter.

If you lead with platforms, you’re at the mercy of algorithms, trends, and Madison’s whims. If you lead with message, you build something deeper: content that aligns your team, earns trust with your audience, and still has life six months later.

The idea is not to post more often. The idea is to nurture a garden where every video, podcast, email, or live event flows from the same well: your actual positioning and point of view. That is what audiences can feel. That is what makes the difference between noise and resonance.

So here’s a provocation: stop asking “Should we be on TikTok?” and start asking “What do we stand for, and how do we want people to feel when they hear from us?” Platforms will follow. Formats will follow. Most importantly, people will follow.

Please clap.

“This,” he declared, coughing, “is either the Devil’s piss or the blood of Saint Denis himself.”

Across the table, Fyodor Dostoevsky squinted suspiciously at a basket of boneless wings, as if they were somehow judging him. “They’ve removed the bones, Victor. How can there be truth in a thing without a spine?”

It had been a strange day.

One moment they were quietly dead, entombed in their respective corners of Europe. The next, they were stumbling through the automatic doors of a Buffalo Wild Wings outside Columbus, Ohio. Apparently summoned by the overactive imagination of a media producer curious what might happen if two 19th-century moral titans were plopped into a bar in Ohio and asked to explain modern America without screaming.

No one else in the pub seemed to notice that two of history’s most dramatic men were sitting in a booth next to the arcade machines, looking like gods who’d fallen into polyester slacks and tourist t-shirts. Hugo’s said “UNDER ARMOUR” in all capitals and Dostoevsky’s said “Good Vibes Only.”

On the television above them, a talking head explained that armed patrols were sweeping up immigrants regardless of citizenship or criminal record. That children in Gaza were being sacrificed in the name of security. That liberty was under threat unless everyone got in line.

They watched in silence.

Then Hugo set down his drink.

“I am working on a sentence,” he said slowly. “It came to me just before the Fireball. ‘There are no bad plants, or bad humans. Only bad cultivators.’”*

“Cultivators,” Dostoevsky repeated. “Like… gardeners?”

“Precisely.”

Dostoevsky stared again at the boneless wings.

“You think if we had better farmers,” he said, “America would not be bombing children or building walls?”

“I think,” Hugo replied, “that if you raise a boy in a field of poison, you cannot be surprised when he does not bloom.”

Dostoevsky leaned in. “But Victor, what of the soul? What of the man who chooses the lie? Who tells himself he is righteous while feasting on the suffering of others? A better field does not stop a liar from lying to himself.”

“Ah,” Hugo said, “so it begins. The eternal tension.”

“The eternal truth.”

“You want to fix the soul.”

“You want to fix the system.”

“Can they not be the same thing?”

Dostoevsky shrugged. “In theory, yes. In America, no.”

Victor pointed at the TV. “They are punishing the refugee. The orphan. The stranger. They treat compassion as weakness and cruelty as patriotism. If this is not the work of bad cultivators, what is?”

Dostoevsky took a long sip from a Diet Coke and grimaced. “And yet, some of the most ‘cultivated’ men in this country lie more convincingly than they pray. Your good gardener still must wrestle with the snake in his own chest.”

“There you go again, bringing it all back to Eden. Save these kinds of sermons for Sunday School you brooding Slav.”

“You're the one who brought up the notion of gardens. I was simply going along with your metaphor.” He paused and took a short sip of air. "Sentimental Frenchman.”

The waitress arrived with more wings and a tray of blue cheese. Hugo was delighted. Dostoevsky looked vaguely betrayed.

Somewhere between the honey barbecue and the mango habanero, the TV switched to a breaking news segment. Footage of a protest: students, artists, parents holding signs. “Free Palestine,” read one. “Let Them In,” read another. The pundit called them naive. Said the real threat was disobedience. Disorder. Disrespect.

Hugo’s face was pink with fury. “How easy it is to justify cruelty when you've made truth a matter of opinion.”

“And when love becomes a branding strategy,” added Dostoevsky.

Victor leaned back, arms crossed. “The American ideal was once liberty. Now it is convenience. The fast food of justice.”

Fyodor nodded. “And yet, they still claim to be a Christian nation. I have seen more Christian ethic in the way a mother cuts bread.”

There was a silence between them, heavy but unhostile. The kind of silence that belongs to people who have walked through hell and brought back vocabulary.

Then Hugo asked quietly, “What is the line you are working on?”

Dostoevsky looked up. “It’s a warning. To the self-deceiver. ‘Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him…’”*

“…and so loses all respect?” Hugo guessed.

Dostoevsky smiled. “And having no respect, he ceases to love.”

Hugo nodded, eyes glossy. “Then we are both writing the same book.”

Dostoevsky raised his Diet Coke in a toast. “From opposite ends of the field.”

Hugo raised his Fireball whiskey. “To America. May she remember that love is not a luxury.”

“And that truth,” said Dostoevsky, “is not optional.”

They clinked their glasses. Somewhere in the bar, a song by Imagine Dragons began to play. Both men shuddered.

*From Les Miserables, Volume I – Fantine, Book Five
*From the last chapter of The Brothers Karamazov

1997 called. They want their Braveheart references back.

On the bus ride up the hill, our driver told us a story. Here, on the island, was where Robert the Bruce hid in a cave in the early 14th century. He had fled here after a crushing defeat in battle, hunted by his enemies and with few places left to turn. The local lords who owned the island had promised him shelter, with one caveat: if the English found him, he was on his own.

I've always had a soft spot for Robert the Bruce, largely because of how he's portrayed in Braveheart. He’s a complicated character, caught between loyalty and survival. Torn between his conscience and his own ambition. In other words, he’s not some cardboard hero. He’s human.

And yes, here I am, a man with a dad-bod, casually referencing Braveheart like it is 1997. But give me a break. When you’re trying to make a point about courage and inner conflict, sometimes a Mel Gibson epic is just sitting there, waving at you. Stay tuned for next week’s essay on The Patriot.

The story goes that after suffering yet another humiliating defeat, Robert the Bruce fled to Rathlin and hid in a cave. There, alone in his fear and depression, he watched a spider attempt to weave its web between two very large rocks, each time swinging across the gap and falling short, failing six times in a row before finally succeeding on the seventh. Inspired, he returned to Scotland, rallied his forces, and eventually defeated the English at Bannockburn.

Sometimes you just need a good cave.

In creative work, we have our own versions of that cave. Sometimes we find ourselves there after a failure, or after a season of exhaustion. Sometimes we go there on purpose. The cave is where the noise stops. It is where you are forced to sit with the silence and the echoes. I once heard Willie Nelson talk about a dry season in Johnny Cash’s writing career. “Sometimes you need to go back to the well,” Willie said. The cave is the well. You don’t go there to produce. You go there to reflect. To remember. To see the spider. Silence isn’t an absence of progress; it’s where progress learns to speak.

And then sometimes you gotta put on your kilt and kick some...

"Why was it off in the first place?” you ask. Look, it was a cave. He was alone. I’m not a historian, but you’re gonna tell me I’m off-base here?

The trouble is, the cave can trick you. The quiet feels safe. You can convince yourself that staying there is noble, that reflection is enough. But the spider moment is not the end of the story. It’s the signal that the story is about to start again. As the rebel monk Thomas Merton wrote, “I have come to the monastery to find my place in the world, and if I fail to find this place in the world I will be wasting my time in the monastery.”

Robert the Bruce didn't set up a permanent Airbnb in that cave. He left. He fought. And that fight was not aimless. It had direction, fire, and the kind of stubbornness that comes only when you have been humbled and reoriented. A vision that never leaves the cave dies there.

I think about that in my own work. There are seasons where creativity dries up, where the ideas feel like they are sitting in another room with the door locked. When that happens, the temptation is to push harder, to demand results. But the better move is often to step away, to find your cave, to give yourself space to see the thing you could not see in the frenzy. Ireland did that for me. Not because the landscape whispered perfect plot points into my ear, but because it put me back in touch with why I create things in the first place… and that if spiders don’t give up, none of us have an excuse to. The cave restores your strength, but the battle proves you have it.

Still, the cave is not home. At some point, you have to get back in the fight. You take what you saw there, what you felt, what you remembered, and you put it into the work with every ounce of energy you have. You fight not like a machine or a content mill or a person endlessly refreshing their analytics, but like what the last line of Braveheart calls a “warrior poet.” Which, for all the dad jokes and Mel Gibson baggage, is still not a bad way to live.

PS. Puffins are freaking adorable and 100% worth it.

PPS. A great book on creative work and exiting the cave from my friend, Blaine Hogan.

PPPS. A song from our kids media project for schools about perseverance…à propos: