How I Screwed Up (End of Osmosis P2/3)

The following is part two of three parts in an email series in which I said goodbye to a list of subscribers from my “other life” as a marketing consultant

Hey there. You’re still here.

Once again, to summarize: I am shutting down this ConvertKit account. The deadline is March 21st. This is a “farewell series” of emails so if you don’t care about any of this, you can click here to unsubscribe.

Back to our regular programming… In my eight months of absence, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this whole “building an audience” thing. Especially for someone like me who had nothing to sell when I first started. Let me just say this: building a business, especially an unproven one in a startup environment is… well, weird. When you build a startup, you keep pivoting until you find a product-market-fit (PMF). Even when you’re copying a “proven business model”, following a “blueprint”, or building a franchise with a 600 page SOP binder… there are so many variables thrown at you. What worked in one environment might not work in another. The timing could be wrong. Your execution could be slightly off because you didn’t adapt properly. No business is an actual simple “step-by-step” process.

I think about the business my partners have been building the last two years a lot (I mean, as I should, since I have a lot of money invested in it). For the most part, what we’re doing at Plural Healthcare (PHC) isn’t necessarily new. Or so it seems on the surface. But once you get past the broad categorization of PHC being a “mental health facility”… and you get into the weeds of the different types of mental health facilities, and how it fits into the overall ecosystem of healthcare services in the United States, and you add on the fact that getting accredited, credentialed, and in-network with the insurance companies are all incredibly high hurdles to jump… you suddenly realize the truism, that “the devil’s in the details” is unfortunately and painfully true.

The truth is – building PHC has been a tremendous struggle. Our fearless CEO has been beaten down, destroyed, chewed up… and yet, he still gets up every morning again and again and keeps going. We’ve borrowed money to keep going. We’ve put homes as collateral to keep going. We’ve dealt with our own mental breakdowns over the last two years. And yet, we’re still standing. And all this is a testament to faith in the fact that what we’re doing is something genuinely good for America. That we’re building something that transforms lives. That PHC is a force for good. That mental health is important, and there are people who can’t afford it but need it, and eventually, this business will also pay us back in spades because we did the right thing.

And I want to contrast all of that with what I did with Osmosis. See, the problem with Osmosis (and most “creator-economy-slash-web3” businesses, which really, is just a fancy new name for something as old as “biz op”) is that it’s sold to you as something “easy”. Something you can do from your kitchen table. Something you can start with very little costs (except your time), and you can build into a “digital media empire”. And it sounds really good on paper. After all, the successful ones, they’re “just like us” right?

And maybe they are. Maybe they started out in the same spot you’re at right now. You’re fed up with your 9-5, the gig economy, the job you’re stuck in. And you just need something else, something that will propel your income beyond paycheck-to-paycheck. But you’re also not a risk-taker, you need a “proven model” to copy, something where you can just follow the step-by-step formula. Let’s say, for this argument’s sake, that you did find a repeatable formula. There’s still one thing missing: your will to keep going.

Because here’s what happens when you actually sit down to do something. In business, you’re going to have to adapt, improvise, and shift to find your product-market-fit (PMF). Even if you’re following a “proven formula”, the real marketplace is chaotic. So you pivot, and you pivot, and you pivot… until what you have barely looks like what you thought you were going to do in the first place. So now you’re doing stuff you didn’t want to in the first place. And this is especially hard for a “creator”. Because no matter how creative you think you can be – if you’re looking to monetize, and monetize well, you’re more likely than not going to end up in a few buckets: how to get rich, how to find love, how to get well, how to find self. Creators who have outsized audiences and are making money are in those four buckets. (Please don’t reply with weird outliers like Mr. Beast).

I knew this. And yet, I kept fighting it with Osmosis. I kept trying to be useful with human psychology, but not tying it clearly and directly to “how to make money” or “how to live better”. To make matters worse, I kept creating subscriber funnels that were the “how to make money” kind (copywriting, freelancing, etc.)… but the moment they got Osmosis, it was this vague, nebulous thing about human psychology. This creates what we call in marketing “INCONGRUITY” and it causes whiplash in the audience, which is why you should click here to unsubscribe if you don’t care about any of this philosophical tangential stuff. Osmosis’s failure (along with all its related properties) is all my fault. I’m very much aware of this. The truth is – it took the last eight months to fully realize this, and ADMIT it, and accept it – but I finally came to the stark realization that what I could teach that was monetizable (copywriting and freelancing) was simply something I didn’t want to teach. That was the short of it. I mean, if someone plopped down my fees and asked me to teach them, would I? Absolutely. That’s a simple transaction. But do I want to BLEED like my CEO at PHC and build an audience just so I could eventually sell them courses? No, not really. That’s what I finally realized with the Freelancers’ Guide to the Universe.

Would things have been different had my attempt to fully monetize FGU last year worked? It’s a good question. Let’s say The Federation quickly monetized at $5K/month. Would I be writing this? I don’t know. Because I would still have faced “Ian’s Question” on my trip to England/Scotland. I would still have had hours on the plane and the various UK trains… and I think I would’ve still come to the same conclusion: that what I really want to do in my non-work time is… not this.

What I’ve learned over the past few years, in funding PHC and watching my CEO be tortured, and building Osmosis and struggling is this: No matter what you intend to build, you’re gonna have to bleed. Even if you think you have a “proven formula” that you bought from some guru on the Internet. Even if you paid a quarter million for a “proven franchise”. Even if you’ve seen the business model work for others. Blood is required. So the question you have to ask yourself, always, is: are you ready to bleed and for how long?

Nothing is guaranteed in the world of business, investing, and creative work. It’s all a throw of the dice and then a lot of bleeding. Bleeding money, bleeding energy, bleeding time, bleeding life, bleeding other areas of your life you could be spending time on but you’ve sacrificed for this “one thing” instead.

And I’ve come to the conclusion – that with a fairly stable copywriting/consulting business, along with investments in PHC, and various other boring retirement stuff… I’m not that much interested in “bleeding” for an audience-based business like Osmosis.

Also – there’s another cost to “building an audience” that I don’t think a single guru talks about. And believe me, I’ve been in this business for 15 years now. I’ve worked with enough of these people, and consumed enough of their content. I am 99.9% certain I have never seen a single guru talk about what I’m about to say. And it’s this. One of the biggest costs of being a guru is… being a guru. I don’t think aspiring creators/gurus fully understand what this means. You’re sold you can be “authentic” when in reality, who gets the most attention on social media? Go ahead and look at the creators/gurus you follow on social media right now. They all project this smug “look at me” confidence. They humblebrag about their results. They’re clever, with attention-seeking humor. They repeat their wins (as hooks) in a million ways. They’re constantly selling themselves. And I, knowing that this was/is what works, as I’ve coached so many clients to do it, did it myself. All my Twitter/LinkedIn posts are still up, you can read them. But I never fully found it quite comfortable to do any of that. It just felt… weird. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it felt gross, icky, or dirty, I think bragging (and a general lack of modesty) has always been a part of my DNA. My wife hates my constant smirk, as if I’m up to something or I look like I know something that you don’t. But to do it so publicly on social media? I don’t know. When you have strangers from all over the world engaging with your brags, it just feels different. It’s cute when it’s friends and clients realizing you’re being a jerk with a smirk. It doesn’t land as well when it’s some stranger on the other side of the planet who don’t know you and take you at face value, or from a wholly different culture and doesn’t get your sense of humor.

I think a large part of what made those brags feel weird also was that I wasn’t necessarily proud of them to begin with. Making my clients money, building my freelancer business, those were all things I needed to do to pay bills. It’s not work I look fondly back on. It’s not something I would tell my non-work friends or parents about. They were purely transactional. I did X, I got paid Y. And on top of that, in my opinion, it’s not like it’s work that should be publicly bragged about. So what if one of my funnels made my client millions of dollars? Is that something to be admired or respected? OR – is that more like, “hey look at me, I did this and you should hire me” or “oh wow, this guy did this, I should follow him and learn from him and hopefully repeat his success”. So in a way, the public brag itself is this weird transactional thing too. Put another way - it’s clear you’re selling (or attempting to) sell something. I mean, we don’t see doctors bragging about saving lives on the operating table on their LinkedIn do we?

Listen - I know what I just wrote probably pissed off a lot of aspiring creators/gurus. I want you to know that I’m not looking down on what you’re doing. I’m simply saying it’s not for me. I’m saying, if I’m going to bleed for something, if I’m going to publicly brag about something, it’s not going to be that. After eight months of reflection on this whole Osmosis experiment, I know that now. I don’t want to be recognized for that. But if that’s what you want, it’s not my place to yuck your yum.

Point is - for me, it’s been eight months of clarification post “Ian’s Question”. I’m 43. I am well past my midpoint. If I do the math, based on Oliver Burkeman’s “Four Thousand Weeks”, I have 1754 weeks left on this planet. It’s not a lot. I can keep chasing something I don’t really love, or I’m not proud of, in order to maybe “make more money”… or I can reallocate what resources I have left after doing work that pays the bills and builds my retirement… to what I personally think is important to me.

As per yesterday’s email, you’re free to click here to unsubscribe.