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Hi friends,

Greetings from Utrecht!

I recently signed up for Rob Hardy’s course Finding Your Niche 2.0, in an effort to better define the context for my writing and consulting. While my initial thought was to define my niche as the creative industry, I’m now finding more and more evidence that “the creative industry” is mostly a label that is applied top-down. Within the creative industry, its members seem to identify much more strongly with the seperate industries that it contains, like the fashion industry, the movie industry or the videogame industry. Focussing on the creative industry, then, might be a good fit for my skills on paper, but doesn’t afford anywhere near the recognizability that picking a more specific industry would.

The most obvious move would be to “niche down” further, and circle all the way back to the videogames industry where most of my own experience lies and where I can best capitalize on my strengths. The question there is, are there enough companies that need my brand of consulting, i.e. companies that want help with running a better business, rather than with game development or pitching and fundraising? And does the gained depth make up for what I’d lose in breadth?

Which is all a roundabout way of saying I’m still trying to find the right definition of “my people”.

Making this decision is crucial, as it allows me to tailor content as well as services more precisely to more specific needs, even if the foundations stay the same. I’ll try to figure it out before my next essay, which will focus on methods for hiring new employees.

The next BWB edition will be in four weeks instead of two. I promised myself I wouldn’t miss a single edition when I started this newsletter in January, but I’m giving myself a pass just this once. I’m taking a vacation with my girlfriend and our daughter Maya, and I want to focus on recharging and being present with them.

The Best Bits

​Solarpunk is about the end of capitalism: This is a fascinating article on the anti-capitalist underpinnings of an aesthetic movement called Solarpunk. It stands in stark contrast to their more well-known siblings cyberpunk (which paints a rather dystopic future) and steampunk (which harkens back to industrial revolution era values and aesthetics). I love the vision this movement paints of what our cities and our lives could look like, and this article is a nice write up of some of the ideas and steps that are needed to move towards a greener and less boundlessly capitalist future.

On crypto cults: I’ve been following everything blockchain, crypto and NFT from the sidelines for a while now, trying to separate the signal from the noise and understand what’s going on. This Financial Times article deftly articulates the culty undertones that have put me off most of it so far, and to me seem to be drowning out anything of real value that might be going on underneath.

The Matrix Resurrections: Given the declining quality of the second and third Matrix movies, I wasn’t too impressed when they announced the fourth movie. Having seen the new trailer though, I have to say I’m more than a little curious to see where they’re going to take this. I might even try to see it in theaters.

See you in four weeks!

Martijn

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