In April 2022, my political media business was making a clear transition from a steady hobby into a “real” business that was starting to make some impact. I had made (or was about to make) the campaign ads for almost every progressive politician running for something local in Sacramento, including Jaclyn Moreno, Caity Maple, Karina Talamantes, Alana Matthews, etc.

This growth in my business was no accident – I was very intentionally using the network (and clout) I had built over my decade of experience as an external union organizer to get me in front of the right people in the right contexts to successfully sell my services. Even as the growth of my political media business was no accident, it did feel sudden, and so I wrote an essay “3 Things I’m Learning as a Small Media Business Owner” to capture my feelings and the lessons I was learning. These lessons – “be extraordinarily aware of my mission & values,” “way way way overestimate expenses and way way way underestimate revenue,” and “have extremely clear communication and have a solid contract” – were nothing profound. But they were profound *to me* – in the way that the most banal statements suddenly feel profound when you’re deeply engaged in a new venture and broadening your potential.

By September 2022, my political media business had continued to grow – and grow faster than I ever could have anticipated. In retrospect, the second half of 2022 was completely bonkers. I was not sleeping. I was working – constantly. And I truly am unsure if I’d be able to replicate such productivity again today. I had continued my work making campaign ads – notably for Dave Jones. In partnership with Nick Anderson, I co-directed a short documentary “The Invisible Homeless.” And I had networked through the good majority of the professional Sacramento film community – regularly taking gig work on the weekends and in my off hours, sometimes in the camera department, but particularly in the lighting department.

To capture how I was feeling at the time, I wrote the essay “3 More Things I’m Learning as a Small Media Business Owner.” Again, these lessons – “as a business owner, I am responsible for everything,” “the experience of the services is just as important as the actual services,” and “your network is your net worth” – were cliché, but part of the necessary clichés I had to internalize, deep into my nerve endings, through hard-earned experience.

It’s been more than a year since that last essay. And in many ways, this last year has been more calm – which I think is good. Manic growth was an experience I don’t regret, but mature, solid, real growth is earned slowly.

Here are the 4 lessons I’ve been reflecting on in particular this last year.

Lesson #1: People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

For better or worse, my “conversations with potential clients” to “new client acquired” ratios are laughably low. But! How should I put it? My “conversations with disillusioned Leftists who have taken staffer jobs within the Structure-Of-It-All who have the budget and ability to hire political media professionals” to “me being hired by them” ratio is unbelievably high. And I use the word “unbelievable” formally. My fellow Sacramento film friends do not believe my client acquisition ratios for this “disillusioned Leftist neoliberal staffers” niche. (Depending on how you count it, it’s somewhere between 50% and 100%.)

My client acquisition ratio for this niche is so high, I think, because as someone who has literally spent more than a decade of his life as an external union organizer, I can deeply connect with these disillusioned Leftist neoliberal staffers. I know exactly what they are trying to convey to the public, I know the exact pain points they have in conveying their message, I deeply relate to their disillusionment, and I have developed real potential solutions for these pain points as someone who has obsessed about these pain points in the field for more than a decade. Importantly, I know these disillusioned Leftist neoliberal staffers’ experience because it has been my own experience for more than a decade – an experience that cannot be faked.

I repeat this line constantly in my conversations: “Most political media is stupid and boring. This is just obvious to me, and I think it’s obvious to you. People deserve better. And I want to create political media that doesn’t condescend – that isn’t stupid and boring. I want to be effective.” And it’s not just that I may say these lines – it’s that I believe these lines deep into the fiber of my being.

Ultimately, my experience with sales has made me realize that I don’t want to expand my business beyond this particular Leftist niche. Leftist political media is what I’m good at. And it’s where I excel. And it’s where I offer the most value.

Lesson #2: Slow growth is real growth.

At this stage of my political media business – I am somewhat established in my market, and I have somewhat regular business – I truly believe that the worst thing that can happen is if my political media business grows too quickly.

I say this because while my business has existed for many years now, I’ve only been taking in significant revenue for less than 2 years. I’m learning with every new project, with every new contract, etc. And these lessons are necessary to grow. To grow without these lessons would not only hurt my business, but it would mean I was growing beyond my capacity and skillset – absent slow growth, any “growth” beyond that would be a lie.

I don’t want to get into any specifics here, but recently I was in talks for what would have been the largest contract I’d ever done by far. It was with a very powerful potential client, and the project had the potential to make major, major impact. This contract was not about the money for me – but also, I’ll mention that this potential project would have accounted for a third of this year’s revenue. It was substantial. I try not to get emotionally invested in potential contracts, but here, I was invested.

I had thought that the best part… there were 3 key decision makers that would have allowed this project to happen. 2 of the 3 key decision makers were my personal friends. And because the majority of the key decision makers were my friends, I was a lot more relaxed about prepping my sales pitch than I might otherwise have been.

What do you know – a key meeting is set, and I am there alone with the 1 key decision maker whom I do not know. That key decision maker ends up feeling I was not prepared enough for the meeting, and then starts a series of events that makes it seem like the project may never happen. My failure to be fully prepped for this key decision maker, here, not only hurt my business, but may ultimately take away the potential impact I think we could have made together.

This loss was really, really painful. But! It was necessary. Now I’ve learned my lesson: always be prepared and follow through on the entire sales process. I will try my hardest never to let a mistake like this happen again.

And really, these lessons are the whole point of growing my business. The more mistakes I make, the more lessons I learn – and with experience, the more valuable of an entity I become.

Lesson #3: Give, give, give.

Given that my business is so mission-structured, and given that I am working with disillusioned Leftist neoliberal staffers, it’s become clear to me that the more I give, the more I receive – and that my business is not a zero sum game.

Did I make a minor mistake in a video? Immediately offer a slight discount. And the appreciation for the slight discount will, in the long term, more than make up for that discount.

The people who work for my political media business are also all Leftists. So, is there some ambiguity about a situation regarding compensation? Immediately just give more – keeps people happy and willing to give more of their heart into a project.

At the end of the day, a business is transactional, but there are ways of seeing others more fully, even in business situations – and giving more than one is required to, especially from the perspective of a business owner, helps facilitate the situation in which I’m able to interact with others as full human beings.

Lesson #4: Go with naive honesty.

I’ve often said that there are two different ways of living life. I feel like I said it best in my essay “Tragedy & Choice”: “In the first state of being, you can strive to understand the structures of the world, and with every passing day and week come to learn a deeper and closer understanding of these structures. And with this deepening knowledge, one can choose to manipulate those structures to get what you want out of the world — twisting the structures of the world for yourself. In the second state of being, you can choose to strive to understand yourself in relation to the world. You can strive to remove that which is inauthentic to yourself, and you can choose to express yourself as authentically as possible to the world, independent and practically unconcerned of the outcomes of your authentic expression, and thereby have faith that wherever your authentic expression, connection, and relating to the world takes you is where you’re supposed to be — and be at peace with that.”

This second state of being I’ve since labeled “naive honesty.” I try to embody naive honesty not just in my life but in my business as well.

For example, an organization that was considering hiring me and my team recently expressed to me how important drone work was to them. I don’t have any experience flying drones – and while it’s true that it would have been extremely easy for me to lie about that (“fake it til you make it”), I ended up telling them the truth. At this point, I could have easily lost the bid for the contract, but instead – in a sea of competitors – me being truthful ended up allowing the people at this organization to trust me even more. After the meeting, I found a friend who had lots of experience flying drones, and I let the organization know I could sub-contract the drone work – and the organization decided to go with me precisely because throughout the entire conversation, I was being transparent and honest.

I think naive honesty helps with sales, but it’s important not to employ naive honesty as a tactic – the framing is, naive honesty allows me to most strongly connect with those whom I’m authentically supposed to connect with.

And perhaps – particularly for a Leftist political media business – that’s the key to true, honest growth and – potentially – making a small dint in this world.