Insights: 5 Things I Learned While Making The Announcement
The creative lessons I'm taking forward into whatever I do next.
It’s eight weeks since I released The Announcement, and I continue to be amazed at the ongoing response.
In the last two weeks alone, I’ve been chatting about the show with Wavelength, The Adventure Podcast, The Ski Podcast, Bomb Snow, Adventure Magazine and Huck.
Here are a few of the notices the series has received since its release:
“Hits with truths you may not want to hear” Wavelength Magazine
“The definitive work on the subject of sustainable business” Surfer Magazine
“The current must-listen for anybody in the outdoor industry” Outdoor Industry Compass
“Examines the damage done by conventional modern philanthropy and how and why billionaires should stop using it as a platitude magnet and ego-boosting game. We need this now more than ever - you listening, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg?” Brooke Roberts-Islam, Techstyler/Forbes
“An exceptional series and highly recommended for anybody interested in what the future of capitalism looks like” Bronwen Foster-Butler, CMO, Finisterre
“A masterly podcast that unpacks the story of new ownership models in business” Erinch Sahan, Business Lead, Doughnut Economics Action Lab
“Captures the thinking on the future of evolutionary paths of business, markets and capitalism” John Elkington, Founder, Volans
I always hoped the series would find an audience, and it turns out the themes I explored in the three episodes (the democratic impact of unaccountable billionaires making decisions on behalf of the rest of us; the reality of the trade off between extractive capitalism and ‘business for good’; how we combat the climate crisis; the impact of corporate philanthropy) could not have been more timely - especially in the age of Trump and Musk.
All of which is why I have decided to evolve The Announcement into a standalone series - akin to my much-loved and much-missed Type 2 series - through which I’ll continue to explore these themes through new conversations, episodes, and investigations.
So how is this going to work?
As trailed for quite a while now, I’ll be releasing the longform versions of the interviews that formed the foundation of the series as planned.
Next week’s first follow-up episode with Carl Rhodes (in which I spoke to Carl for a second time, to get his take on billionaire influence in the context of Musk and Trump) will be free.
Subsequent instalments with other Announcement contributors such as John Elkington, Imandeep Kauer, Audette Exel, Erinch Sahan, Markus Lux and Chuck Collins, will be exclusively for my paid Insights community.
Find out more about that below:
Insights is my new Looking Sideways section, exclusively for my paid subscribing community.
It’s an absolute treasure trove of the - well - insights and wisdom imparted by over 250 Looking Sideways guests; as well as from the 25 plus years I’ve been pissing about for a living as a journalist, author, podcaster, business owner, mentor and speaker.
It’s where you’ll find exclusive blogs, podcasts, video chats, guest posts and articles all geared towards answering that two fundamental questions:
How can I spend more time doing the things I’m passionate about?
What does a ‘successful’ creative life actually look like?
Here are a few recent Insights articles to whet your appetite:
In addition, I will be recording an ongoing series of follow-up interviews.
I’ll be speaking to people such as Jon Alexander about his book Citizens, and David Gelles about his biography of Chouinard, Dirtbag Billionaire. I’m also planning to follow up with Patagonia, to get their take on the series, and to ask them some of the questions listeners have posed since listening to the series.
These new episodes and conversations will be free for everybody, and I’m excited to see where this new strand of The Announcement leads.
Before all that - a follow-up blog on the creative lessons I’ve learned while making The Announcement.
As my Insights subscribers will know, I’ve also been posting a number of behind-the-scenes films over the months, in which I explored some of the thinking that went into the series.
In the last of these (which Insights subscribers can watch above) I began to explore what I learned during the making the series, and from the subsequent critical response.
I’ve now expanded these thoughts into the following blog, and I’d love to know what you think, and how this chimes with your own experiences of putting your own creative work out into the world.
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