For creative
founders who like to make money by shipping epic work,
straight from the source.
On this page I share the philosophy and principles behind
The Channel, and why it was created. If you are the founder of an
expert or thought leadership business, you may find these ideas
resonant and useful.
01
Why I created The Channel
For years I have operated at the heart of founder-led thought
leadership businesses. I have been the copywriter, the marketing
manager, the CMO, and the consultant.
Here is what I saw, over and over. The founder is the heart of the
business, and the energy of the business is the founder's energy. As
soon as the founder steps back from the core act of communicating and
leading with intensity and creativity, the energy falls out of the
thing. The best customers move on. The whole operation goes onto life
support.
So why do founders stop writing? They hand it off, and the stated
reason is usually that the copy workload became too much to handle
alone. But from inside those operations, I can tell you the real reason
was almost never that the founder stopped having things to say.
It was that there was too much bullshit between them
and the send.
I lived that frustration personally. As the copy chief, a finished
email would regularly take another 20 or 30 minutes of futzing to get
out the door. For some clients, 60 to 90. Most
CRMs are built by software programmers who are not email marketers
sending to a list every day. If they were, the tools would not involve
so much bullshit.
The writing tools were no better a fit. Google Docs is capable, but
it lives in a browser that is full of distractions. iA Writer is
incredible, focused, and clean, but minimal: no organization beyond
basic folders. Trello is amazing for organizing ideas through a
campaign pipeline, and a horrible writing experience.
What I dreamed of was simple. A clean writing experience. A simple
kanban board to track campaign ideas through a pipeline, so there is
always a clear plan for what is next. And one button, so that when the
writing is done, the email goes to the right audience at the right
time.
So I built The Channel.
02
What I believe
The Channel is built on a specific belief system: nine beliefs
about business, and nine about creativity. The business half is about
the game: how it changed, where the money is, and why the founder is
the source. The creativity half is the physics: how the work gets
made, stored, and released. Business artists hold both halves at
once.
01
Business
The game changed. The money moved. The founder is the source.
The new game
01
We are living in the Age of Authenticity.AI tools have burst onto the scene, and they have brought
incredible capabilities to creators. They have also brought a whole
bunch of bullshit. In a world of fakery and manipulation, the
authentic individual is what stands out: a meaningful source of truth
that is reliable and trustworthy.
02
Trustability is the new Deliverability.For years, email marketing pros preached deliverability as the
core principle of the game: it does not matter how good your copy is,
because if it does not get delivered, nobody reads it. Now, in the age
of AI, people are filtering suspected AI sources harder and faster
than ever. If they do not trust that it is the real deal, they discard
it. Especially the discerning buyers in high-stakes markets.
03
The world belongs to business artists.As the ability to create anything at a moment's notice becomes
real, all that matters is what you are creating and whether it is the
thing that is ideal for others. Business artists will be untouchable,
because they exist to create products and experiences that connect
them to their True Tribe: the people who want things exactly how they
make them, and who deeply resonate with their work and their world.
Sterile, business-only operations will still have a place. They will
not be able to compete with a brand that has a creative motherf*cker
at its core, on fire, leading from the front with vision, intensity,
and passion.
The money is in the sends
04
Artistic Expression is the magic ingredient of Creative
Motherf*ckery.Creative Motherf*ckery is the magic overlap where artistic
expression meets commercial production: art, aimed at commerce, made
by someone who refuses to choose between them. That overlap is where
the untouchable work comes from. Explore the essay:
Art ♥ Biz.
05
Email is the primary money maker.In every expert and coaching business, email is the biggest
driver of revenue. If it is not, it is because the founder is not
using it as the primary channel for building relationships, trust,
and desire in the marketplace. They are not using it right.
06
People read emails. They buy from campaigns.The relationship happens from sending things worth reading.
Pointing your creativity at writing campaigns with offers is what
drives the revenue in any business, and it is what makes the effort
worth it.
The founder is the source
07
Founder-led content will always perform better.The message is what ultimately converts, and the message always
suffers a game of telephone once it has to pass through filters
between the founder and the audience. The signal is strongest straight
from the source.
08
Thought leadership starts with sharing your genuine
thoughts.Not with having another person, or a machine, imitate your
voice.
09
Machines amplify the creative act. They never replace it.The purpose of every tool is to amplify the creative forces
and minimize the resisting forces. Use AI to think faster, edit
sharper, and ship sooner. The moment it speaks in your place, you
have traded away the one asset nobody can copy.
02
Creativity
The physics of the work: generation, storage, decay, release, motion.
The laws of generation
10
Ideas are Energy.Every email, every campaign, every offer began as a spark:
an idea that showed up carrying a charge. Ideas are the raw energy
of a founder-led business, and everything downstream is a conversion
of that energy into words, sends, and money. A founder flush with
ideas is a charged battery. A founder without them is a machine
with no fuel.
11
Your biggest ideas come through writing.Brainstorms and workshops are great tools, but the biggest and
most inspirational ideas arrive as a download from The Frequency (the
Muse, the Universe, God) when you are in flow, writing. They do not
always come out in the right order. But the right ideas emerge when
you sit down to write.
12
Quantity leads to Quality.The greatest creative outputs are never accomplished by a
creator masterminding a single piece from scratch. They are always the
result of a prolific motherf*cker who generates a ton of ideas,
curates the best ones forward, and lets the market decide the greatest
hits.
The laws of storage, decay, and release
13
Copy is stored energy.The words you create are captured at a moment in time, frozen,
and become a reusable piece of creative work. The founder is the
ultimate source of inspirational energy in the business, and should
therefore be the source of the words.
14
The energy of an idea is not static.An idea arrives at peak charge, asking to be expressed. Park
it and the charge starts draining. That is why content planning
spreadsheets do not inspire anyone: not you, months later, staring
at a stale row, and not the market, who can feel the difference
between an idea the founder is on fire about right now and one
being dutifully processed. Freshness of insight and time-to-share
are what make a market respond. So
capture ideas where they will be written, while the charge is still
alive.
15
An idea moves you. Resonance is when it moves others.The first thing an idea does is impact you: that jolt when it
arrives is what makes you drop everything and write. The send is how
the jolt reaches everyone else. When words land still carrying the
original charge, the reader feels a version of what you felt. That
is resonance: the same energy, alive in another person. It is the
whole point of the physics. Not output for its own sake, but impact.
And the people who feel it gather around the source.
The laws of motion
16
Friction is the enemy of Flow.The Resistance is what you feel. Friction is the cause.
Battling The Resistance is futile; removing the friction underneath
it is the key to flow. Creative founders are naturally creative and
want to ship amazing things for people who love them. When they are
not doing that, it is because there is too much friction in the way.
And everything standing between finished words and a sent campaign
is stealing stored energy from the business.
17
Systems should serve the chaos, not tame it.Creative chaos is the raw material, not the problem. The
problem is over-systematization. Every system reaches a tipping
point where managing the system becomes more work than the work
itself. The right structure channels chaos toward shipping. The
wrong structure replaces it with box-checking.
18
A founder in momentum stays in momentum.Shipping is not just output. It is how the founder stays
alive. Every meaningful thing you ship puts energy back into the
business and pulls the next idea out of you. The hardest email to
write is the one after a long silence. Objects in motion stay in
motion. So do founders.
03
The core principles
The guiding vision is Friction-Free Chaos
Management.
The creative process is chaotic, and fun. Yet without organization
and a process, it becomes unreliable and ineffective. The problem: too
much organization and systematization becomes a new source of friction.
All systems reach a tipping point where managing the system becomes
more work than it is worth.
The answer is to ride the edge between organization and
chaos. Give the creator tools to capture and generate tons of
ideas, so they can seamlessly enter flow. Give them tools to channel
and direct the chaos, rather than bureaucratically checking boxes and
following tedious systems. And wherever possible, eliminate friction,
so founders spend their time doing what they do best: creating and
expressing their vision and perspective.
01
Founder First.The Channel is a tool for the founder to create and express
their vision and philosophy, direct to their audience, with minimal
bullshit in the way. It is not a tool to keep PMs and team members up
to date, or for them to hassle you with noise about reminders,
deadlines, or content pipelines.
02
Distraction-Free Writing.The Channel is the space you open when it is time to write. One
click into a beautiful, clean, distraction-free writing experience,
where friction is minimized and expression is amplified.
03
Speed and Intensity.Minimize the friction of getting started. Minimize the chances
of getting pulled out of the work.
04
Capture Ideas Where You Need Them.Ideas come at any time, in any moment. Capturing them when they
strike is the smartest thing you can do, so your creative battery is
always charged. Remembering where the ideas are is itself a source of
friction. So ideas are captured where they are meant to be written,
and the ones to focus on next are always in front of you.
05
One-Click Send.Once the writing is done and it is time to ship, one click
sends it. No futzing with contact management portals, no wondering
where things are supposed to go, no pasting your copy into a web tool
only to reformat everything again (FML).
06
Send More Email, Make More Offers.The Channel is an email-first tool. The goal is to send more
emails and offers to your list, so you make more money from the leads
you already have. This is the name of the game, and where 80 percent
of the money comes from when done right.
07
Soul-Driven Work, AI-Assisted.AI tools are incredible amplifiers of productive work. They
feature in The Channel as assistants that accelerate idea generation,
editing, and publishing. They are there to help you write better, not
to write words for you. Your voice is your own. AI helps you say it
cleaner and clearer. Your source drives.
04
Essays
For deeper exploration of the ideas behind all of this.
01
Friction Is The EnemyThe physics of shipping: becoming prolific, net force, the
Dynamics of Creativity model, before-during-after, and the room.
The models are live on the page.
02
Art ♥ BizWhy now is the time to merge art and business, and lean
into authentic expression. The uncut version, with more heat.