NO ONE KNOWS EVERYTHING

If your goal is world-domination, give up. Hell, people don’t even know about shootings these days. You’ve got to operate in your niche and hope to cross over but don’t expect everybody to know you or your work, it’s utterly impossible, the only one with 24/7 attention is Trump.

POLITICS RULES

It drives the culture. It’s more important than entertainment and sports. Entertainment can INFLUENCE politics, but so far this has not happened. Entertainment has power, but it has been abdicated.

GETTING A TV SHOW IS NO LONGER THE HOLY GRAIL

And you don’t even get rich. Getting a TV show is like getting a Grammy, if you haven’t got one, you’re not in the industry. It won’t be this way forever, at least on television. There will be a separation between winners and losers, HBO/Netflix/Amazon and everybody else, budgets will sink and outlets will fail but right now distribution is fighting for the ultimate prize of dominance, and in this case distribution also owns content, so it’s a double-whammy. Distribution is king, but without content you’re screwed. Which is why Spotify is beholden to the labels, but Netflix is ultimately beholden to no one.

HIP IS NOT

There’s no such thing as hip anymore. Hip requires a cohesive society wherein those non-hip can be branded so and feel bad about it. Now everybody’s fighting just to be a member of any group, everybody’s overloaded with input, they don’t care if they’ve missed out on this or that, they’re willing to be hipped.

BEING FIRST IS NO LONGER A BADGE OF HONOR

Of course there are exceptions, buying the first Tesla S, the new iPhone X, but the truth is today’s world is social and it all does not matter until everybody else is involved. So, your goal is to bring others into your group, not to be self-satisfiedly superior.

COLLEGE DEGREES DON’T MATTER TO ENTREPRENEURS

In the old days, of the boomer, getting an education was a prerequisite to middle management. Today’s world is ruled by entrepreneurs, a skill innate more than taught. If you’re gonna use your education to get ahead you’re probably gonna work for somebody else, they’re the only ones who will be impressed.

INSTITUTIONS HAVE BEEN DEVALUED

In an era of haves and have-nots, no one likes to be told how it is or what to do unless it agrees with their preconception. So we’re totally tribal. It used to be we all paid fealty to a layer of unified society sitting atop us, now it’s only the members of that society who believe they rule, they don’t.

BOOMERS ARE TOAST

They don’t set trends. They spend money. But usually not on the new, but the old.

POWERLESSNESS RULES

You can protest all day long online, but you don’t seem to be getting anywhere, you always feel a party of one broken down by the system.

BINARY IS KING

Haves and have-nots. Stars and proletariat. There is no middle. Not in anything. The Asians can manufacture more cheaply and the behemoths have scale which allows them to not only lower prices, but make better products. If you’re coasting, you’re heading towards the bottom. America is one big race, whether you know it or not.

PEOPLE HATE CHANGE

Sure, there are early-adopters, but most are convinced they’ll lose something in the transition. But the new always happens, embrace it. You may laugh at AI, but you’re gonna be using it.

FOOD IS ENTERTAINMENT

And it’s bigger than movies and music, and quite possibly TV. Funny how people will bitch about the price of concert tickets, but they’ll drop a hundred bucks for dinner no problem, never mind fight for a reservation long in advance. Food is like art used to be, it doesn’t scale, it’s totally unique. And, once again, there’s an underclass, those who go to chain restaurants.

DOUBLE DOWN IN TIMES OF CHANGE

He who cuts to balance the books/maintain margins loses in the end. No better example than the L.A. “Times,” there’s little there there. Amazon did it right, ignore the Street.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM WILL PARALYZE YOU

Don’t pay attention to the blowback, those people are just mad that you’re on the front line and they are not. They want to tear you down and force you to do it their way, even though they’ll jump to the new way overnight, best example being Netflix, the public cried when it went to streaming, angry DVDs by mail were being de-emphasized, and then they all went to streaming.

ASK DON’T TELL

We live in an information society and you don’t know all of it, admit when you’re uninformed.

COLLECT INFORMATION

Winners see all sides. You can only do this by gathering different opinions. He who adheres to only one is ultimately left behind.

KARMA AIN’T INSTANT, BUT IT STILL RULES

Just ask Harvey Weinstein or Bill O’Reilly…they thought they were getting away with it, but they didn’t. It’s the story of all criminals. If you’re crossing the moral line expect to pay for it.