The cultural impresario has always had leverage.
Invest time and money and put on a show. Start a cable network, a book publishing company or become a concert promoter. You’re the gatekeeper, an adjudicator of status, a person who can transform people’s lives simply by amplifying and spreading ideas and allowing art to reach its audience.
Time and money were apparently the gating factors. It takes a while to turn a profit, and it’s uncertain and hard work.
Except…
New platforms and tools remove both time and money as barriers.
Penn and Teller needed their fame and the CW network to launch their cable show Fool Us. But now, anyone can start a competitor on YouTube in a weekend.
A radio pundit needed to spend years to build a syndicated network of terrestrial stations, but now you can start a podcast, in your basement, for free. In a weekend.
Gallerists don’t need galleries, and you don’t even need a building to coordinate a foster-home-based pet shelter.
So what’s the impediment?
I’m guessing that if you got the call today, you could put together your ideas for a book, or five minutes of standup or even the software you’d code.
But we don’t need the specific call. We’ve all been called.
The barrier is simple: fear. The fear of beginning and of sticking with it. The fear of succeeding (or failing). The fear of impostor syndrome. And the fear of going forward without a guarantee.
So let’s call it that. Fear is real, but fear might not be rational.
Begin.
