I had a plan. And to be clear, it wasn't a bad plan. I had decades of experience behind me. I knew how to produce and edit video. I knew how to teach people how to do it themselves. So the business seemed like it could be divided pretty cleanly into two things:

Done for you.

Done with you.

Simple enough.

Then the plan made first contact with reality.

Three years later, I don't look back at that original plan and think, Man, I didn't know shit.

I knew a lot.

What I didn't have yet was access to the kind of knowledge you can only get by participating.

I was missing nuance.

Some things you can't know from the starting line

There are things I understand about this business today that no amount of planning in 2023 could have given me.

I had to meet people. Try things. Get things wrong. Listen. Change my mind. Build something, live with it for a while, and discover that the people I could be most useful to didn't fit neatly into the categories I'd created for them. That distinction matters to me.

Because there's a version of entrepreneurship where every change in direction gets turned into some inspirational lesson about how your original idea was wrong and failure made you smarter. 

I don't think that's what happened here. The original idea got me moving. Movement gave me information. Information gave me nuance. And nuance changed what I was able to see. One of the biggest changes has been in how I think about visibility.

Being visible isn't the same as being seen

I have spent a lot of time over these three years thinking about what it means for a person or a business to become visible. Because visibility matters. People can't engage with something they don't know exists.

But I've also come to understand that visibility doesn't equal engagement. And engagement doesn't necessarily equal action. You can be visible as hell and still not create much of a relationship with the people looking at you.

Here's what I've started noticing instead:

People engage differently when they see you seeing them.

When I sit down for a discovery conversation with someone, I'm not trying to discover how to sell them something. I'm trying to discover them. I'm listening for what they've been trying to say. I'm listening for the thing they understand intuitively but haven't quite found language for yet. I'm listening for the gap between who they are, what they care about, and how they're currently describing their work.

And then I try to reflect back what I've heard.

If I understand you correctly, here's what I think you're telling me…

Sometimes that conversation reveals a clear way that One Tiny Problem can help. Sometimes I know somebody else who would be a better fit and I make an introduction. Sometimes the answer is simply: I don't think I'm the person for this, and unfortunately I don't know who is. From a traditional sales perspective, that last conversation might look like it didn't produce anything. I'm no longer sure that's true. Because somebody can still leave that conversation having had an experience that is surprisingly rare:

They were witnessed.

For all the complexity that comes with being a human being trying to build something meaningful, they were at least moderately understood.

That has changed something fundamental about how I think about storytelling.

Storytelling isn't just transmission

I've believed for a long time that storytelling is some of the most powerful magic human beings possess.

I still believe that.

What I didn't fully appreciate three years ago was just how deeply story is woven into the way we understand ourselves and each other. Story isn't only what you publish. It isn't just the video on your website or the LinkedIn post or the beautifully produced brand film. It is also what happens between two people when one person is paying close enough attention to help the other recognize something they've been carrying.

That's relationship.

And increasingly, I think relationship is where the interesting stuff happens. Which creates a funny problem for a business. Because relationships don't always move efficiently. Understanding people takes time. Listening takes time. Figuring out what you're actually seeing takes time. And sometimes the most useful thing you can do in a conversation has absolutely nothing to do with making a sale. That isn't particularly convenient. But three years into building this company, I'm less interested in forcing the work into somebody else's definition of what a business is supposed to look like. I'm much more interested in paying attention to what the work itself is teaching me.

If your business isn't learning, it's dying

There's a phrase I've heard a thousand times:

If your business isn't growing, it's dying.

I'm starting to think about that differently.

If your business isn't learning, it's dying.

One Tiny Problem knows considerably more today than it did three years ago. It also has considerably more infrastructure. There are systems now. Support. Relationships. Processes. Tools. Things I couldn't see from where I stood in September 2023.

And somehow, having more knowledge has made me more aware of how much remains unresolved. There are things about the future of this company I genuinely don't know. There are things I'm testing. Things I'm questioning. Things that are taking shape but don't have names yet. Three years ago, that kind of uncertainty probably would have bothered me a lot more. I would have wondered why I hadn't figured this shit out already.

Today, I think uncertainty can mean something else.

It can mean you're still paying attention.

The sidewalk doesn't tell you where you're going

During the walk where I recorded the reflection that eventually became this essay, I crossed an invisible boundary between El Sobrante and Richmond. If you didn't know the boundary was there, you'd probably miss it. But something changed. There were sidewalks. Infrastructure. Later, while talking about uncertainty, I found myself walking alongside the busiest road on the route. And somewhere in the middle of talking about how much a business can learn, a squirrel appeared.

Hi, squirrel.

None of these things is a grand metaphor for entrepreneurship. Sometimes a sidewalk is a sidewalk and a squirrel is a squirrel. But I think there's something useful in noticing them anyway. Because that's increasingly the posture I'm trying to bring into this work. 

Not constantly asking:

How do I make the world confirm the plan I already created?

But:

What's actually happening here?

What am I learning?

What am I available to notice now that I couldn't have noticed before?

Three years isn't an especially long time. But it has been long enough to learn that experience and certainty aren't the same thing. Long enough to understand that visibility without recognition can be pretty hollow. Long enough to discover that helping someone feel seen may sometimes matter more than explaining myself perfectly. Long enough to build some real infrastructure. And long enough to see more clearly how much I still don't know.

So I'm entering Year Four with known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

There is no dramatic reveal coming at the end of this essay.

No seven-step roadmap for what happens next.

I don't know exactly what happens next.

What I know is that One Tiny Problem needs to keep learning.

I need to keep listening.

And my job, as far as I can tell, is to keep making myself available to notice.

Three years in, that feels like a pretty good place to begin.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from making things nonstop while feeling further and further away from yourself.

For a long time, I assumed that feeling was a personal failure. A discipline issue. A motivation problem. Something to solve with better systems or clearer goals.

Now I think it’s something else.

I think it’s what happens when pace stops being a choice.

AI as Continuity, Not Output

I use AI every day.

But not in the way most conversations about AI assume.

For me, it’s primarily a private partner in sense-making—a place where thoughts can accumulate without pressure to resolve. Where half-formed ideas can sit beside each other. Where connections can surface slowly, without the demand to immediately become content.

It functions less like a machine for answers and more like continuity.

What it does not do—at least not in my practice—is author finished work for public consumption. Especially not in forms like image, video, or music.

That distinction matters to me more than the tool itself.

Why Some Things Need to Disappear

There are forms of meaning that only emerge because they can’t be endlessly revised.

These forms depend on interruption, loss, and irreversibility. On the fact that something happens once and then becomes memory instead of artifact.

Infinite iteration flattens that.

Not because iteration is bad—but because impermanence is doing real work.

When every early sketch is preserved forever, when every experiment is archived, optimized, and evaluated, something fragile gets crowded out: the right to fail quietly. The right to abandon ideas without explanation. The right to grow past work that no longer represents you.

What I’m protecting isn’t nostalgia for craft, or some performance of authenticity.

I’m protecting transience.

Withholding as an Ethical Act

We live in a culture that remembers everything and rewards constant visibility.

In that environment, withholding starts to look suspicious. Like fear. Or scarcity. Or lack of confidence.

But I’ve come to see restraint differently.

Not as hiding—but as incubation.

Not as delay—but as care.

Some ideas need privacy to become honest. Some versions of ourselves need room to exist without witnesses. Some work deserves the chance to fail completely, to vanish, to be outgrown without leaving a permanent record.

Choosing not to share everything isn’t a tactic.

It’s a value.

Pace Is a Moral Choice

I’ve lived through enough technological “revolutions” to recognize the pattern.

And each time, culture and capitalism reclaim the surplus.

No one actually gets time back.

So at some point, pace stops being about productivity and starts being about ethics.

I’m intentionally building a life and business organized around sustainable pace, care, and depth—not because it’s optimal, but because it’s humane.

That choice is my quiet resistance to time extraction.

Longer Thinking, Not Faster Publishing

Ironically, this is why I’m excited about large language models.

When used privately and intentionally, they don’t accelerate output—they reclaim mental space. They allow ideas to stretch. To connect across longer arcs of time. To stay unfinished without being lost.

They support longer thinking, not faster publishing.

That distinction feels critical in a moment when everything is pushing toward immediacy.

The Question Beneath the Tools

So the real question, at least for me, isn’t whether AI is good or bad. Or how much to use it. Or how fast to create.

It’s something quieter.

I don’t think there’s a single right answer.

But I do think there’s value in choosing deliberately—especially when the default is acceleration.

That’s where the work gets honest.

And that’s where I’m choosing to stay—for now.

And yet something inside you feels… off.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, they stopped speaking from the deeper place that brought them here in the first place. They stopped leading with the moment, memory, or belief that ignited their work. They started talking about output instead of purpose.

And when you lose your “why,” you lose the thread of your own story.

• Saying “no” and actually meaning it.

• Listening to intuition instead of the critic.

• Resting on purpose, not as a reward.

• Creating because it lit something inside me, not because it justified my existence.

And as I rebuilt, I realized something quietly transformative:

That realization changed the way I approach storytelling — for myself and for every leader I work with.

Because here’s the truth:

Your story becomes magnetic not because it’s polished, but because it’s honest.

It’s your mind and body telling you that it’s time to return to the part of yourself that knows why you’re here.

And when you reconnect with that part — that deeply human center — everything you create starts to resonate differently.

Part 3: Making the "Right" Decision for You

There is no single "right" answer for a video budget; it's always dependent on your goals and resources. For some context, companies in their brand-building phase can spend 20% or more of their annual revenue on marketing, while more established brands may spend 5-10%. While video is just one part of a marketing budget, this gives you a sense of the kinds of sums that are commonplace in the business landscape.

Based on your budget and goals, you have two primary options:

• The Full-Service Partner: This is the best choice for high-stakes projects where quality, speed, and proven results are non-negotiable. It's an investment in a partner who will handle every detail, from concept to final delivery.

• The In-House Solution: This is the right path for ongoing content needs where consistency and volume are more important than a single, high-budget production.

Your mission is to make the decision that's right for you. Armed with a clear cost-benefit analysis, you can do so with confidence.