Brewed From Within

Wayfinders

Startups that pay in love are a blank
canvas that comes to life through us.

By nature, parents want to provide the means for children to go beyond their potential. Family requires immeasurable resources, but the love from our kids unlocks more hours in the day. The added productivity comes from seeing the best of ourselves in someone we care so much about. Purpose is renewed and the heart we put into our creative work can make our presence as parents even more interesting.

Summon Stories

Children grow up fast, so we stay in the moment. Everyone tells us to cherish the simple joys of life, but it may be worth getting a little extra creative. One way to enhance your family’s ability to relive memorable moments, is by using multimedia marketing skills to summon family stories.

Every moment is special. As creation becomes second nature, handpicked memories can be stitched together to revisit interactively, any time, with or without you.

Most of us have an endless collection of photos and video on our smartphone, but scrolling around on a digital device doesn’t translate into something a group can enjoy together. It’s easy for good things to get lost in so much noise and spoken storytelling is always merry too, but why not paint more stories with a few added brushes?

Quiet relics like photo slideshows, something printed that sits beautifully on the shelf, a mix of audio recordings, art on the wall, or a cinematic feature film that highlights your adventures. You’re the creator with endless ways to create.

We all do a form of this, because family is our favorite, but the time required is real. A rigid cadence is not required, since any day is a good day to ship this type of of art. In the early days of photos and video, it was only birthdays and Christmas — now everyday is a holiday. No need to rush, but keep producing new surprises. Everyone will love the end result and as more come together, the growing playlist becomes a sequence of stories that follow kids growing up. With our constant collection of content, a good story is always ready to tell, but at a minimum, why not share an annual gift with your kids, partner, and other loved ones?

Along the way, attentive and controlled organization will make a growing collection of relics easier to craft. This takes an ongoing commitment, but file management is easy and helps bring life to life with shared memories.

Your future self will then thank you for an effort to organize this heartfelt content. Share in public if you want, but that can alter the art if it becomes a show. Do it for yourself and your favorite people first. Organize what will be a massive library offline, then, if you want play with the transitory channels of social media, that’s a personal choice.

No matter who resists whatever it may be, time compiling legacy projects will rarely feel wasted. It’s using our real skills to commemorate those we love. Scanned memories may give us content without capturing it in the future. For now, it’s up to us to trap time for personal storytelling.

Compensation is not money, but this does enhance your content creation skills for other areas in life. Technology also makes editing content more productive, but this is not your average task. This is the type of sincere storytelling you enjoy spending time with.

As kids grow up, these projects will have the lowest view counts, but always be your very favorite. Looking ahead, it’s crazy to imagine being a child right now, then receiving such a gift from my parents someday!

You’ve Got Mail

Consider setting up an email for your little one. This inbox can be used as a communication channel to write to your child as they grow up. Whether you start writing before they are born or later in their life, imagine what a gift this inbox will be in the future! This email address can be shared with family and used for online accounts if you want, but at a minimum, this curates a personalized time machine full of thoughtful updates.

Extra Shot

What’s your favorite parenting tip? Share it as a comment or hit me up!

Along with sentimental content, your kids will appreciate an email address that can be used after childhood. First and last name with your preferred email provider should stand the test of time. This is also a good chance to register a URL using their first and last name. This can connect to their email or support a personal website someday.

Avoid Routine

“Time flies” and “they grow up so fast” is accurate, but avoiding routine may slow down time.

The freedom to be spontaneous is a privilege and everyone will define such flexibility differently, but a proven path to explore such a reality is entrepreneurship. Boundless hard work, dedication, and resiliency are what this lifestyle takes, but suffering provides a stronger sense of purpose.

As this purpose is layered in later stages of life, experiential wisdom can be channeled into more treasured time doing things that make us happy. While hardship is part of the deal, children make their parents happy. Perhaps a reward for parents who lead by example, is the opportunity to share everything with those who matter most.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Table of Riffs

Brewed From Within: Energy for the Entrepreneurial Lifestyle compiles 125 riffs into four timeless sections. Here’s a VIP snapshot tour, with a handful of riffs linked for early access!

Imagine holding your new book. After the cosmic cover art is initially observed, we open to a title page, one blank page for personalizations from the author, and then the publisher’s copyright page. After the heartfelt dedication page and motivating preface, you’ll find the table of riffs. While the book flows from start to finish, each riff is individually numbered and includes a snapshot of Key Topics and a unique QR code that supports easy referencing and quick sharing. The Foreword from Brad Feld and the book’s Introduction prepares you for what to expect and then we dive in! The Table of Riffs below is your first look at the modern circus that’ll energize whatever you’re building. After the book becomes a new favorite, we end with the book’s closing matter. Readers can refill their mug even more in the About The Author pages, meet the 21 contributing authors, acknowledge those who brought this book to life, sneak backstage for people interested in writing a book or book marketing, play in a mini crossword puzzle, and explore more timeless resources to keep us all building… TOGETHER.

PART ONE: ENTREPRENEURSHIP

1. Uncharted
2. Early Moves
3. Maverick
4. First in Line
5. Ideaworks
6. Pain Relievers vs. Vitamins
7. Minerva
8. Prismatic
9. Fresh Powder
10. Escorting Execution
11. Slow & Fast
12. Triangulation
13. Real Skills
14. Ship It
15. Storytelling
16. Super Sentence
17. Isochronal
18. Sequencing
19. Feedback Is Data
20. Down Under
21. Slide Deck Design
22. Attention Traps
23. Captive
24. Momentum Mountain
25. Fructifying Fortitude
26. Shifting Gears
27. Echoes
28. Breakout Valuation
29. Head Start
30. Not to Lose
31. Landing
32. Voices
33. Diplomacy Disrupted

PART TWO: LEADERSHIP

34. Listen
35. Jargon vs. Understanding
36. Small Business Owners
37. ArtOfficial
38. Linchpin
39. Significance
40. Permeability
41. Everyday Activism
42. Generosity Builds Trust
43. Atmospheric
44. Winds of Outrage
45. Executionist
46. Import Knowledge
47. Líneas Invisibles
48. Interested Introductions
49. Overtime
50. Decisions
51. Aphorism
52. Airport Foot Massage
53. Enchanting Events
54. Reluctance
55. Collide
56. Playforce
57. Playforce Principles
58. Adaptability
59. Adapttitude
60. Extra Credit
61. Tenured & Tired
62. Seasonality
63. Linear
64. Diversified Career Portfolio
65. Visualizing Variety
66. Hiatus

PART THREE: TECHNOLOGY

67. Pure Wonder
68. Innovation Curves
69. Tinker
70. Wireframing
71. Hybridize
72. Time Trappers
73. Cyberspace
74. Producing a Podcast
75. Dollowers
76. Welcome to Web3
77. Mechanized Money
78. Woven Worlds
79. Phygital
80. Munch Munch
81. Septenary
82. Conversationalized
83. Yin-Yang
84. Bridges to Tomorrow
85. Digitized Consciousness
86. Replicants
87. Incentivized Reality
88. Propulsive
89. Neon Future

PART FOUR: LIFE & HAPPINESS

90. Open to Next
91. Indexing
92. Uncertainty
93. Anticipation
94. Recursion
95. Horizons
96. Anxiety
97. Creation vs. Consumption
98. Waiting Rooms
99. 1% Better
100. Training Wheels
101. Bloop
102. Winterizing
103. Santa Is Real
104. Front & Center
105. Pebbles
106. Goodnight Moon
107. Totality
108. 13.8 Billion
109. Dark Matter
110. Gimmies
111. Hole-In-One
112. Serendipitist
113. Bookmarks
114. Feng Shui
115. Sedona Sands
116. Love Letters
117. One & Only
118. Wayfinders
119. Winding Whys
120. Oversubscribed
121. Intrinsic
122. Conspicuous Kindness
123. Sharing
124. Endowment
125. Perpetuity

For more details or to consider creative ways to collaborate, download the book summary, grab a book, and connect with the author to talk through more ideas.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Prismatic

There are endless early moves to help avoid pushing your idea toward someday. For instance, creative wireframing requires only a pencil. With a little visualized clarity in place, a couple exploratory conversations can also help.

First, meet with a mentor. This should feel like a supportive space but avoid rainbows and butterflies. Be realistic with exciting aspects of the idea, but also the challenges. As we learned in YDNTB, an early no is much better than a long, wrong yes. That said, playing it safe is easier than activating initiative, so don’t let early doubt slow you down. Instead, welcome it. Let curiosity uncover new understandings. Pivots are inevitable, and this exploration adds confidence as the original idea is tweaked toward product-market fit.

After transparently talking with that trusted mentor, the next meeting is with a potential customer. This will feel too early, but it’s not. You’re actually protecting your personal bandwidth by not swinging at a bad pitch too many times.

To optimize early innings, arrive prepared to ask good questions. Take notes and speak less so you can actively listen to how this potential early adopter is responding.

Are you building a pain killer or vitamin? Remember, feedback is data, and this is only one data point, but let this conversation infuse reality into the idea. Show up, stand out, follow up, stay connected, find a thoughtful way to accelerate their work, and then keep building.

The business model canvas is a tool to do so. While it’s impossible to predict the future, business model canvases help us continue to explore while curating a story that sells.

Most early business ideas don’t have a clear story. This can make it hard to know where to start within the business model canvas. While you can use this tool in endless ways, consider an approach that is less about the entire business and more about one story at a time. Instead of trying to boil the ocean, organizing a complete story for each customer segment creates a combination of more actionable insights.

To give it a try, use this special business model canvas. The areas are numbered to curate canvases that each highlight a customer story:

  1. Customer Segments – Start with the details of a particular type of customer. The goal isn’t to complete the Customer Segments box. It’s starting a story to follow through the rest of the canvas. Now lean into the pain as you move from box to box and watch as your solution transforms into a story.
  2. Value Propositions – What benefit(s) can you deliver?
  3. Channels – Where can you connect with this customer?
  4. Customer Relationships – Who are you working with and how will you make this customer feel?
  5. Revenue Streams – Will financial income flow? How?
  6. Key Activities – What actions make the customer care?
  7. Key Resources – What is needed to keep building, and how might needs change to maintain momentum?
  8. Key Partners – Who helps to make this sustainable?
  9. Cost Structure – What costs go into activating this customer segment? How is pricing organized to support realistic profit margins that align with a financial model?

                By telling the story of created value for one customer segment, hypotheses can be connected with context. Next, using a separate business model canvas, visualize more stories based on different customer segments.

                With separate business model canvases for each customer segment, merge everything into one business model canvas. To stay organized, select different colors to use for each customer segment. As everything blends together, the prismatic rainbow maps roads to reality.

                By Ben McDougal, ago

                ArtOfficial

                Art for art’s sake is vital to humanity and innovation.

                We need fine artists and creatives who do not conform—who lead even when no one else follows. The calculated confusion we experience in contemporary, experimental, and abstract art pushes boundaries so new ideas, styles, and ways of thinking can emerge later. Immersing ourselves in these misunderstood realms trains us to trust strangeness. What feels unfamiliar today often becomes inevitable tomorrow.

                EXTRA SHOT
                This contribution was written by Siobhan Spain. Siobhan developed a new financially self-sustaining nonprofit model providing affordable creative workspace to over 200 artists of all disciplines in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. She now consults, podcasts about nonprofit ecosystems, and owns an arts licensing agency.

                Practicing artists see potential before there’s proof. They have a high tolerance for risk and are willing to invest years of invisible labor while operating with restricted resources.

                Artists and founders both shape how people think, feel, or behave. The divergence comes in their relationship to the market. Founders must satisfy a market need; ignoring users is fatal. Artists, meanwhile, can deliberately resist or ignore market signals altogether. This alienation can become the feature, not a flaw.

                Then there’s the question of success and perceived impact. Founders are validated externally—users, revenue, growth. Artists often answer to internal measures: mastery of a medium, conceptual rigor, or the necessity of making work that holds personal meaning.

                In the contemporary art world, a purist code of practice is common. “Selling out” is to be avoided at all costs, lest the merit of both artist and artwork be compromised. Selling out can mean creating work primarily for aesthetic beauty or mainstream appeal—heaven forbid it be mass-produced.

                The commercialization of fine art often inverts traditional capitalist values, where financial success is viewed as a betrayal of artistic integrity. However, communities that prioritize building robust creative ecosystems recognize artists and creatives as powerful drivers for economic development, cultural identity, innovation, and social cohesion.

                They foster diverse economic and social opportunities where titles, race, career, and socio-economic status dissolve into a culture of curiosity and inspiration that spark cross-disciplinary collaborations that benefit artists, companies, and civic entities alike.

                As these sectors blend a financially sustainable infrastructure is now possible – motivating artists to lean into their creative visions with a sense of purpose.

                Artists are critical thinkers who imagine what does not yet exist. They collaborate to form solutions before markets know to ask for them. They rehearse cultural shifts, test new narratives, and expand our collective tolerance for the unknown. Artists show us how to use emerging tools—AI included—with intention rather than conformity.

                When artists stop being an afterthought and start being recognized as founders with foresight, more viable economic pathways emerge, cultural relevance deepens, and irreplaceable talents can be engaged by all.

                By Ben McDougal, ago