*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.

Yep, that’s me circa 1989. I was as nerdy then as I am now.

The reason I wanted to share that photo is because I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to be when I grow up, besides an accordion player, and I think it’s time to put some of my skills to use for clients. For a while, I’ve been sitting on a new agency called Onfluence. The tagline is:

You’re Brilliant. Why Are You Still Invisible Online?

The goal is to help founders, CEOs, and industry experts turn expertise into influence by creating content and thought leadership around people who are doing amazing things. I’ve been doing this work for a few founders so far, mostly as a series of loose coaching gigs. Basically, we chat once a week for about thirty minutes, and I help with your Substack, blogs, press releases, media training, SEO/GEO, social media management, media outreach, and general marketing. I am working with my friend Neeraj Bansal who is on the operations side and between the two of us we have over 60 years experience in startups and entrepreneurship.

Thus far, I’ve helped folks build 25,000-reader newsletters, gain 500,000 Twitter followers, build a massive Discord audience, get great global press, and host dinners with journalists at major events. My goal is to be a coach, not a PR person or your full-time CMO. This introductory package is $1,000 per month, which feels like a reasonable amount in this economy. I want to help founders build, and I think this is a great way to do it.

Contact Me

I also have another offering that is a bit more complete. It includes about 22 pieces of content per month, including newsletter posts, LinkedIn posts, and TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn reels. For that, I’m offering an introductory rate of $1,500 per month. This is a little more in-depth, and I’d love to chat with folks who are particularly interested in this solution.

The bottom line? I want to use my skills for good and survive as a freelancer. If you’re interested in either package, email me at john@biggs.cc. I’d love to help.

I had one of my favourite conversations in a long time this week with writer and Full Bleed podcast host Arjun Basu.

We both came from the magazine world. We remember the days when magazines had millions of readers, editors could call a trend before it happened, and entire industries waited to see what would appear in next month’s issue.

Then the internet arrived.

Most people tell that story as if technology simply destroyed print. Arjun had a more interesting take.

He argues the first mistake wasn’t losing advertising. It was trying to make magazines behave like the internet.

“The internet spent all that time just being like magazines and newspapers,” he told me. “And then slowly the ad dollars started going away.”

That made me think.

Every new technology seems to convince the old one to abandon what made it valuable.

Magazines chased clicks.

Newspapers chased page views.

Television chased YouTube.

Now everyone is chasing TikTok.

Somewhere along the way we stopped asking whether we should.

One thing Arjun said really stuck with me.

“The publisher sort of forgot about the reader.”

When advertisers paid the bills, readers became a metric instead of the customer.

Today that’s changing again. The publications that are succeeding are asking readers to pay directly, which means they have to produce something worth paying for.

The audience is back in charge.

There’s another twist I didn’t expect.

Many of the people buying independent magazines today aren’t Gen X nostalgics trying to relive the 1990s.

They’re Gen Z.

Magazine shop owners are finding their stores filling up with people in their twenties who are making zines, buying beautifully printed magazines and treating them as social spaces instead of relics.

Maybe that’s because they grew up surrounded by screens.

Maybe holding something real has become the novelty.

I don’t think print will ever return to what it was.

Neither does Arjun.

“The days are over,” he said. “You are paying your penance, and I’m trying to bring it back.”

He’s probably right.

But perhaps that’s the wrong goal.

The future isn’t recreating the old magazine industry.

It’s taking what magazines were always best at, thoughtful curation, strong voices and memorable design, and building businesses around communities instead of advertising.

That’s a much harder business.

It also might be a much better one.