Peter Hosey

There's a book titled “The Incredible Secret Money Machine” by the late Don Lancaster. It's primarily a book on running a sole-proprietorship, that being the titular “money machine”, with maximal return on minimal effort. (One of his prescriptions is “have 0.834 employees”—don't hire anybody, on the grounds of how much paperwork and interpersonal complications that introduces, and make sure you leave enough free time for your own R&R.)

It was originally published in 1977, and a second edition in 1992, and both versions contain much that has aged not very well, if it was ever good advice at all. But there are certain parts that have aged extremely well, and I'd like to share those here today. The book is available for free as a PDF from Lancaster's website (for however long that lasts, since he passed away last year), and you may indeed find it worth reading.

The two most timeless parts of it are the chapters on writing (“words-on-paper”) and graphic design (“images”). Those chapters were deeply formative to my creative style; I still use 99% of everything I learned in them, and I still reread them from time to time. They're as solid today as they were 47 years ago.

But the bit I'm going to quote today is from the introduction to the second edition. He concludes that introduction with this:

an audience seems cool but the connections that really matter is that guy who sends a comment 7 years later informing you that they've made progress on the project you had to abandon, but wrote about so others could learn about it at least.

document cool stuff! share cool links! share reading that made you think or made you feel something (just be careful with the angry)

but audiences don't tend to grow with you. eventually you'll outgrow them, because they replace the ones who grew with you, with new people finding your posts, without realizing.

and you'll be glad you didn't write for them. because new people who care keep finding your old posts. and it's the people who care who end up making an impact on the larger scale, but also tend to be more reliable connections even if you don't talk much.

Don Lancaster, at the end of the introduction to the second edition of “The Incredible Secret Money Machine” (his book on running a sustainable, low-profit, low-energy sole-proprietorship), tells the following parable:

a final thought

Many years ago, I was attending a folk concert. The opening act was a single and an unknown flute player, performing in front of the closed stage curtains. His job was to warm up the audience for the high priced help that was soon to follow.

He was good. Very good.

But as he went along, the music started getting strange and finally downright weird. He was playing chords on his flute, along with notes with unbelievably strong tonal structures. Eventually, the music turned into bunches of impossible sounding and god-awful squawks.

Almost all of the audience got bored and restless as the music seemed to deteriorate. Just then, I happened to notice a friend beside me who had played in and had taught concert band. He was literally on the edge of his chair with his mouth open.

He briefly turned to me and said very slowly, “You can't do that with a flute. It is not possible.”

Of the thousands of people in the audience, at the most only five people realized they were now witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime performance involving the absolute mastery of a very difficult musical instrument. To everyone else, it sounded like a bunch of god-awful squawks.

Always play for those five.