In the last five years or so, I’ve had the privilege of transitioning the entirety of my work from the “real world” to the internet.
That process really got traction with an idea called Visualize Value in 2019 - originally a service business that helped people take complicated ideas and turn them into simple visuals.
To win clients for that business, I started finding ideas that resonated with me, turning them into simple black and white diagrams, and posting them on Instagram and Twitter every day.
I grew a handful of accounts (personal included) to an audience of around 1,000,000 people doing that one thing.
Eventually the demand for that service exceeded my ability to fulfill it, so I started building digital curriculums. This was an incredibly healthy business with a very simple feedback loop. Visualize ideas, broadcast them, get clicks to site, sell stuff.
In the last couple of years I have been almost exclusively practicing as an artist, transitioning from making these artifacts as advertisements for a product, to the artifacts as the products themselves.
Work with Visualize Value’s cryptographic signature has now done around $340,000,000 in volume, and trades between $20,000 and $50,000 of value daily.
The point of this email is to both highlight the absurdity of the above, and to acknowledge that all of that optionality is derived from this one very simple, very consistent creative practice I started 5 years ago.
A practice that at times I have massively neglected the significance of, strayed from, let the muscle atrophy, etc.
I record a weekly podcast with a couple of friends called Not Investment Advice - in Episode 66 we interviewed Micheal Saylor, who talks about the concept of Laser Eyes:
”Once you do one thing, if you have a modicum of success, and you think you can do a second, third and fourth thing, you’re wrong. You can’t.”
There’s obvious nuance in that every practice and career evolves, but I write this as a warning (mostly to myself) that if you’re ever lucky enough to find it, never take for granted that one thing.
Curly: “you know what the secret to life is?”
Mitch: “no. what?”
Curly:☝️”this.”
Mitch: “your finger?”
Curly: “one thing.”
That one thing is called “substance”. At surface level is called talent, and deeper level reveals “gift” to the world and ultimately connects to your soul.