- Cultish Creative
- Posts
- Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap July 5, 2025)
Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap July 5, 2025)
When Creative Authenticity Meets Commercial Reality: Navigating Structure, Serendipity, and the Art of Getting Discovered
Matt Zeigler
July 05, 2025
Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...
But first: Did you know you can now sign up for this weekly email ONLY? That's right. If my dailies are clogging your inbox, I've got you. Open this email in your browser, then click > the profile icon in the top right > manage subscriptions > preferences (on the menu on the left) > select daily or weekly > and it will auto save! Click reply with any questions.
On to the recap…
Sly Stone's transformation between his first and second albums reveals the essential tension every creator faces: how to maintain sophistication while achieving accessibility. His debut "A Whole New Thing" was brilliant but too cerebral - packed with Dylan references and Otis Redding answers that impressed jazz musicians but confused record buyers. The breakthrough came when manager Dave Kapralik delivered hard truth: "You have to make it for everyone, to get people dancing to your music." This led to "Dance to the Music" - still smart, but reorganized for both Miles Davis and your neighbor down the road. Sly cracked the code of doing both simultaneously, changing music history in the process.
Quote from the (Personal) Archive: (on the creative evolution toward clarity, as Sly said it) "I had an idea in mind with the catchiest melody, the most obvious rhythm, and the simplest words... 'Dance to the Music' wasn't just the hit and the title. it was also a model for half the record: leads traded off, tight solos, keep everyone's feet on the dance floor."
The experience of writing my first foreword became a meditation on "sonder" - that profound realization that everyone else's life is as complicated and emotionally chaotic as your own. Jared Dillian's willingness to be vulnerable and weird in finance (where that's "socially illegal") creates authentic connection rather than professional posturing. The collaboration emerged naturally because we both document the human experience without pretense. Writing someone else's introduction forced me to articulate what makes creative partnerships work: mutual respect for the mess and complexity of being human, plus the courage to show that mess publicly.
Quote from the (Personal) Archive: (on the nature of creative collaboration) "Rule 62 is a book about what it means to sonder. It's a book about successes, failures, and redemptions. It's a book about being human without forgetting the humanity."
Yancey Strickler's Artist Corporation concept addresses a fundamental mismatch between how creative people actually work and how our business structures accommodate them. The core problem: you can't mix S-Corp and C-Corp tax treatments without losing benefits, forcing creatives to choose between optimizing for today's cash flow or tomorrow's sale value. A working musician might need S-Corp treatment for touring income, C-Corp structure for publishing catalog value, nonprofit status for grant work, and collaborative frameworks that don't fit any existing model. While I remain skeptical about the mechanics, the vision addresses real structural disadvantages that make creative careers unnecessarily difficult to sustain financially.
Quote from the (Personal) Archive: (on the complexity of creative business models) "Business takes all the fun out of creativity, and a business getting big takes all the fun out of business... There's something structurally amiss here, and us artistically-minded people need some help."
The story of Ace of Base's discovery perfectly illustrates Grant Williams' formula: "talent + opportunity + luck" explains cultural hits better than any algorithm. When Denniz PoP's car stereo jammed on their demo tape, forcing him to hear "Mr. Ace" repeatedly until it grew on him, that accident created the conditions for "All That She Wants" to become a global phenomenon. The inefficiency wasn't a bug to fix but a feature that prevented the music industry from becoming completely predictable. As Grant observes, "If we could explain it, everybody would be writing Harry Potter books and you'd get lost." Sometimes the breakdowns - stuck tapes, lost contact info, serendipitous meetings - create the very frictions that allow genuine discoveries to emerge.
Quote from the (Personal) Archive: (on the necessity of randomness in creative success, as Grant Williams said it) "You can't pick it, but you know it when you see it. And I think if we could explain it, that would negate the chance of something like Harry Potter making it, because if we could explain it, everybody would be writing Harry Potter books and you'd get lost."
Craig Pearce represents the pragmatic reality of modern publishing: "It used to be you write a book to become known. Now you become known, then you write the book." This shift reflects the democratization of publishing through self-publishing platforms - publishers can only afford to bet on authors with established platforms. His "snooker instinct" for recognizing quality manuscripts comes from 17 years of editing hundreds of books, developing the kind of professional intuition that emerges from deep practice. The key insight is that publishers and authors want the same thing - the highest quality book distributed to as many readers as possible - making collaboration rather than antagonism the path forward.
Quote from the (Personal) Archive: (on trusting professional instincts, as Craig Pearce said it) "If you've done something for 17 years and edited hundreds of books and you've seen some that have sold a lot of copies, then you just do know. Anyone - any professional who's done something for a long time - has an instinct like the snooker players we were discussing before."
Grant Williams demonstrates the counterintuitive truth that writing authentically for yourself creates the most loyal audience. By starting each piece with genuine questions he wants to explore rather than what he thinks readers expect, he builds trust through curiosity rather than performance. His approach to conversation - knowing when to stop based on instinct rather than forcing content beyond its natural endpoint - reflects wisdom about creative boundaries. The deeper insight is that sustainable creative work requires protecting flow states where "nothing else matters" while trusting your gut about completion rather than manufacturing experiences for external validation.
Quote from the (Personal) Archive: (on authentic creative process, as Grant Williams said it) "I can only ever write for myself. I never, ever even bother to be honest, thinking about what the audience is gonna think. I just write about things I find interesting, and I write in such a way that I start with a question and hopefully end with some answers."
Where Else I Showed Up This Week
New "Click Beta" episode dropped on Excess Returns featuring Dave Nadig and Jason Buck - and honestly, who else can I laugh in the face of depressing existential market stuff with but these two? All sorts of culture. All sorts of us trying to make sense of how the world works:
Dave also created an excellent post and playlist that captures the spirit of what we're trying to do with these conversations - check it out here. It's the kind of thoughtful follow-up that reminds me why I love collaborating with people who think as deeply as they create.
Plus, Jack Forehand and I dropped another Excess Returns clip show this week, based on our “What do you believe that the majority of your peers would disagree with” interview question:
Personal Archive Prompts (for you):
What creative work are you overcomplicating when you could follow Sly Stone's example and make it both sophisticated AND accessible?
HOW MIGHT EMBRACING "SONDER" - THE COMPLEXITY OF OTHERS' LIVES - CHANGE YOUR APPROACH TO COLLABORATION AND CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS?
What structural business problems are you accepting as "just how things work" instead of exploring whether new models might serve your creative practice better?
WHERE ARE YOU TRYING TO OPTIMIZE SYSTEMS THAT MIGHT ACTUALLY BENEFIT FROM MORE INEFFICIENCY AND SERENDIPITOUS ACCIDENTS?
How could you build your platform and establish expertise BEFORE trying to write the book or launch the big creative project?
WHAT QUESTIONS ARE YOU GENUINELY CURIOUS ABOUT THAT YOU COULD EXPLORE PUBLICLY, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OTHERS FIND THEM IMMEDIATELY COMPELLING?
How can you better trust your instincts about when creative work has reached its natural endpoint rather than forcing it beyond where it wants to go?
As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections in your own Personal Archive.
(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)
ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules
BONUS:
The new MOST WATCHED video on Cultish Creative YouTube is Keith Morris and Ned Russin. Thanks for watching! If you haven’t yet, pile on, and if you know somebody else who might like it, please share -
but wait, there’s more…
Mostly because this was just so beautiful, I clipped out Keith’s discussion of Jeffrey Lee Pierce to be a standalone episode. If you want 7 minutes on what a true friendship looks like, I was too moved to not carve this out. I hope fans of Jeffrey’s music can find and appreciate this for years to come.