Content Creation

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

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

Endowment

Leaving a legacy seems to motivate those who feel called to change the world. This leads to prolific focus and lasting ambition, but the psychological undertones are real.

A subconscious need to be loved, trying to counter death anxiety, and equating our legacy to symbolic immortality can slip toward self-centered intentions. A decorated life is legendary to the person living it, but a dilated ego becomes burdensome. This mental weight holds us back from living in the moment. It belittles simple pleasures. It fuels a fear of failure and disguises invigorating initiative by equating movement to risk. When the idea of leaving a legacy starts to echo a desire to be famous, impossible expectations harbor misery and unavoidable disappointment.

The entrepreneurial lifestyle is guided by leaders who create more than we consume, but there is freedom for those who are not engrossed by the hope of being remembered. This may feel like an assault on the significant impact we make or a wicked invitation to be complacent, but it’s not. It’s forgiveness and a liberating release to keep building.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Creation vs. Consumption

Before the music, before the crowd, there’s one voice asking a simple question: Can you hear me? Creation starts here. Not with a perfect line or the finished song. But with the smallest test of presence.

EXTRA SHOT

This contribution was written by Corey Dion Lewis. Corey is a leader in healthcare who creates impact networks where care is equitable and shared far beyond the clinic.

Creation over consumption sounds like a slogan, but for most of us, it’s a balancing act. Consumption is how we learn from the world around us. It’s also a comforting remedy that helps us reset. This supplement for the soul keeps us tranquil, but in excess, consumption mutates into a drug devoured by a subconscious addiction.

We are all imaginative and being creative makes us happier, but we live in a world where algorithms reward spectators. This has us scrolling, watching, and absorbing everybody else’s thoughts, pain, and opinions before we check in with our own. This does something to our mind, and it’s not neutral. Consumption without creation leads to overload. The American Psychological Association reports that heavy, unfiltered exposure to news and digital content is associated with higher stress, anxiety, and burnout. There’s just too much coming in. This feeds unfair comparisons. Suddenly, everyone else’s life is your own measuring stick. We start to feel like our voice, our story, and our unique angles do not matter as much as the polished content we continuously consume.

As the emcee of your own life, there’s not time to hope someone hands you the mic. We must pick ourselves, make sacrifices to unite an audience, step into the light, and even when our voice is untested, speak to add energy into the room. This brings us to life as the thrill of creation is felt.

That is mental health in action. When we create, we regulate. When we speak, we release. When we name what we feel, it loses some of its power over us. Pressure turns into expression. More thoughts, often the hard and heavy ones, become art. The sounds, images, pages, and other multidimensional content become part of our creative practice. Creation is the path to descriptively understand systems, parts, processes, and how we make things better.

The beautiful thing is, it doesn’t have to be dramatic or impressive. Drawing, even badly, can reduce stress and ease anxiety. Gardening can do the same. Cooking with intention. Chopping, seasoning, tasting, it all pulls you into the present. They all ask your brain to be active, engaged, and creative. This produces positive emotions.

Creation builds a sense of mastery and progress. This strengthens self-esteem and resilience. It gives you a channel for self-expression so emotions and experiences are being worked with, not just numbed by distractions. Over time, crafted creations become the highlights of your stories. These bookmarks add depth to future moments and drive toward a joyful side of our own mental health continuum.

While consumption can bump our spirits more toward a depressive state, the goal is not zero consumption. Some of what you consume is nourishing. It feeds your ideas, your learning, and your rest. The balancing act is about spending more of your day making, expressing, and contributing than you do scrolling, binging, or buying.

We don’t have to change everything overnight. We don’t need a ten-step plan or a perfect morning routine. We need one small moment each day where we choose to create instead of consume—one page, one sketch, one idea voiced, one boundary set, one feeling named.

Creation over consumption is not a rule; it’s a relationship you build with your own voice. Today, you don’t have to build the whole thing. Just say one true thing, in your own way, and let that be enough for now. And remember, someone is waiting on the work you are creating.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Dollowers

Social media addicted the world to pops of dopamine that came in the form of a friend request or clickable reactions to content. With a single click, likes led to more followers, which added attention and became a metric to support an entire industry of online influencers. The temptation of fame for anyone had many doing whatever it took to keep engagement flowing and follower count growing, but the audience we often yearned for was never truly owned.

Followers are controlled by tech giants, guarded by unseen algorithms, and can vanish without notice. Play the game without being bamboozled by diversifying your online presence. Then make advanced moves by adding controlled layers of followers who pay to stay in-tune. Dollowers pay with their wallets, status, affiliation, and attention. As we grow an online audience, transition followers into dollowers with segmented email lists, a fleet of products, digital assets, speaking engagements, book sales, creator compensation programs, affiliate marketing, online courses, and a website to call home base. This gives true fans a sustaining way to show lasting support beyond today’s favorite fad.

By Ben McDougal, ago