Hey :) 

I was speaking to Scott last night and we got onto this idea that I keep bumping into from time to time.

The idea goes something like this:

“What’s the point in doing anything if there’s no clear, direct link to making money?”

And my immediate reaction was to push back on it.

Because if that’s the filter…why do anything at all?

Think about it for a second. Art. Poetry. Storytelling. Novels. Fiction. None of that exists if the only reason to do something is because you can clearly see how it will make money.

Even in my own work, especially in B2B, yes — of course the business exists to make money, get clients, grow, all of that.

But when I look back over the last few years, there are loads of things I’ve created that I was never directly paid for.

One example: I designed something that ended up being printed and used as a facilitation tool. It became part of how we work. It improved our IP. It made our sessions better. It increased the credibility of what we do.

Did it ever directly make money?

No.

Was it sold as a product?
No.

If I’d stopped myself at the point of saying, “I can’t see how this will make us money,” that thing simply wouldn’t exist.

And that’s true for a lot of meaningful work.

Some things are worth doing because:

A lot of creative and intellectual work is like that.

Frameworks. Ideas. Ways of thinking. Ways of explaining things. You don’t know in advance which ones will compound and which ones won’t — but you pursue them anyway because you’re curious.

There’s always the hope that you’ll make a living from the work you care about. And honestly, it’s a luxury to have enough agency to choose what you work on and also make money from it.

But I think things go wrong when every piece of work has to justify itself financially upfront.

If every struggling author stopped writing because there was no money in it yet, there would be no books. No breakthroughs. Nothing new.

Which brings me to something I picked up from Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic.

I’m paraphrasing, but her point stuck with me…

Don’t give your creative work the burden of paying your bills.

Make money by selling more of the thing you already sell.

Let your creative work breathe without forcing it to earn its keep immediately.

I keep coming back to this question: What would change if you untethered your creative work from the need to make money — at least in the short term?

Not because money doesn’t matter.

But because it shouldn’t be the only reason something gets to exist.

Chris.