Sticking the landing

Taking another crack at an essay with big potential

When I set out to publish daily, the goal was to get in the habit of publishing imperfect things.

For the past few years, my perfectionism has been a bit debilitating. I've had so much to say, but held myself back from saying most of it. So during this 100 day challenge, I'm doing a bit of self-imposed exposure therapy. I want to experience and embody a reality where, despite what my inner critic says, everything's okay when I publish things that don't live up to my high standards. Intellectually, I know imperfect work won't cause my business to implode, nor will it lead to people losing respect for me. In fact, I believe the opposite. So now it's time for me to experience that reality and get my emotional and nervous systems up to speed with my intellect.

But there's an interesting tension here. If there's one thing that reliably grows my business and attracts new homies into my world, it's my polished long-form essays and manifestos. When I take the extra time to really get something right, it often pays off.

Which brings us to my recent essay on the perils of niching down. I suspect that bad boy is bound to spread through creator circles for years to come. It struck a nerve, and it's got legs. Turns out, I'm not the only one who acutely feels how limiting and spirit-destroying the best practices of the creator economy are.

I absolutely LOVE the first three sections of that essay. It's some of the sharpest, most vital writing I've ever done. However, the last section of that essay is... not great. I felt rushed, depleted, and like I needed to get something across the finish line that day. So I phoned it in a bit. It's overly conceptual, and it doesn't tie up the ending to my story in a satisfying way.

My gut says some extra work on the ending will go a long way, and yield disproportionate results in the years to come. It's a chance for me to plant some deeper seeds about what the Ungated philosophy is really about, and draw people further into the world I'm building. Feels like a smart investment of time.

So today, I'm using my daily publishing practice to take another crack at the ending, while my brain's a bit fresher. Below you'll find both versions of the ending, side by side. So it's probably a good idea to read the original piece first, if you haven't already.

Anyhow, it's time to stick the landing y'all.

The new ending

I wish I could point to a single moment where I knew I wasn't The Niche Guy™ anymore. That sure would make for a tidy ending to this story, wouldn't it?

But truthfully, it's been a messy and frustrating journey. Just as my identity as a filmmaker dissolved over five long years, so too did this truth emerge slowly, bubbling up from some deeper inner knowing. And much like the years I spent grasping onto film, trying to make it feel alive again, I spent most of 2021 trying to ignore the voice within saying "this ain't it, chief" whenever I'd talk about niches.

Practicing the art of NicheCraft didn't feel good anymore. I knew this, yet I was terrified to let it go. It felt foolish to walk away from the intellectual capital I'd accrued during my years of niche obsession. It finally felt like I had real control over my future. If I stuck on this path, I would be known for something, and my bank account would be full. I was certain of it. But no amount of "head knowing" could drown out the "heart knowing" that NicheCraft was not leading me towards an enjoyable, worthwhile life.

There's one other piece to this story that feels important. Somewhere in 2021, I stumbled into a corner of twitter colloquially known as TPOT, or This Part of Twitter. In addition to being a subculture defined by friendliness and openness to experience, TPOT's got a large contingent of people doing deep emotional and spiritual work. As is the custom, I made friends with many of them, and so began 18 months of unfucking my worldview and enlivening my spirit.

Western modernity conditions us through our upbringing, education system, and work culture, to view ourselves as rational, economic machines. Homo Economicus is the water we swim in, and is the default set of instructions for how to navigate the world. We're also conditioned not to trust ourselves, especially those pesky inner voices, but instead to defer to Experts and External Authority. When I was mired in that worldview, NicheCraft made perfect sense, and was the obvious choice for how to approach Ungated.

But through 18 months of emotional and spiritual work, that worldview fell apart. My friend Michael Ashcroft introduced me to the frame of non-coercion, and created space for me to start trusting myself more deeply. In short order, I started listening to the inner voice, and heading its call. I gave up on NicheCraft, and instead started being more of myself online. Instead of Adding Value on twitter, as I thought I should, I became a silly lowercase shitposter. I started having fun, following the aliveness, and making friends. And the strangest thing happened. My business didn't fall apart. Instead, I started creating a small handful of true fans who didn't see me as The Niche Guy™, but as Rob.

Turns out, there's a stark difference between creating true fans around one narrow, rigid aspect of yourself, and creating true fans of a dynamic, evolving human. Niche strategy is great at the former, but the latter requires something else entirely.

I can no longer deny that I’m a fluid, evolving, self-renewing human. My life is richer and more vibrant when I’m not locking myself in a box. That's why I am no longer striving to build a carefully calculated personal brand designed to Add Value or create the maximum amount of customers. I could go down that road and make a fuck ton of money, but the expense to my spirit would be far too great. Instead, I want to be fully myself, fully alive, and keep connecting with people who value the full expression of my vitality, and who who want to partake in the journey with me. Those are true fans. And that's why Ungated exists.

The old ending

Change is the only constant. This is true on a macro level, as technology continues to upend the stories propping up our economic and global order. It's also true on a micro level. Nothing about our internal world is static, fixed, unchangeable. When you plop a human into a dynamic, evolving world, the environment changes them. As I've worked to live more in the real world these last two years, instead of doubling down on my attachment to stories about how the world should be, boy have I begun to change.

The biggest realization is that I am not a niche, and never was. I value my ability to change and grow and follow my curiosity in surprising new directions. That pursuit makes me feel alive. I also value friends and co-conspirators who want to work on messy, wicked, cross-disciplinary problems with me. That's what makes me feel connected and rooted and purposeful. Slowly and surely, I’m beginning to build a creative life and business not around short-term certainty, but around how I want to feel for the rest of my limited time.

Turns out, there's a stark difference between creating true fans around one narrow, rigid aspect of yourself, and creating true fans of a dynamic, evolving human. Niche strategy is great at the former, but the latter requires something else entirely.

That's why I am no longer striving to build a carefully calculated personal brand designed to Add Specific Value or create the maximum amount of customers. I could go down that road and make a fuck ton of money, but the expense to my spirit would be far too great. Instead, I want to be fully myself, fully alive, and keep connecting with people who value the full expression of that vitality, and who who want to partake in the journey with me. Those are true fans. And that's what I'm after.

Hence the reason I'm no longer The Niche Guy™. And hence why I'm setting out to build containers of aliveness for myself.

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Rob's Daily Invitation

This morning, in addition to sticking the landing on this piece, I began work on a new workshop about how to write sizzling manifestos. The Ungated Manifesto and the non-coercive marketing manifesto probably account for 90% of how people first find me. These essays are my most valued assets, and they're exceptional ambassadors for what I'm doing.

In this workshop workshop, the plan is to share a few core principles about what makes a manifesto work, but not make it overly intellectual. Instead, we'll work through some experiential exercises together in real time. If you show up, you will discover the raw ingredients, thesis, and structure of your own manifesto, so that you can create ambassadors too. It's gonna be great.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to sell tickets to the live workshop, but I do know that Frontier members will get it for free. So yeah, I hope you'll join me.