Chapter 60: How To Thrive In The Second Renaissance

This letter is for a specific person.

For this person, this letter will sing. It will articulate the ideas you've had but haven't been able to put words to.

I'm writing it for the smart, ambitious, driven individual who wants to step off the default path, to pursue their natural curiosity and creativity, and build something of their own.

If that's you, I'm excited for you to read this, to internalize it, and hopefully act upon it.

Alright, here's the core thesis:

We're living through the greatest time in human history to be a creative builder. The Second Renaissance. And if you want to thrive during it, the simplest way is to become a creator.

You might cringe at that, but I'll bet if you read this all the way through you'll understand the logic.

The Problem (And The Moment It Broke My Frame)

I've always known I'd build something of my own.

I sold candy in middle school, ran a dog walking business, and flipped things on Craigslist in high school. The entrepreneurial drive was always there.

For the first eight years of my career, I worked at startups. I learned an incredible amount through these years. I honed my sales skills and trained and built teams.

This skillset allowed me to raise money for short films outside my startup tech career.

But when I watched a tech founder raise $30M for his startup off one post after documenting their progress on the internet for 2 years, right after I had spent 4 months sending hundreds of emails to raise $30K…

It fundamentally broke my frame.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

I was grinding through cold outreach to people who had never heard of me, had zero reason to trust me, and were actively trying to ignore me.

Meanwhile, some other twenty-something year old was building a 9-figure business on the back of attention and trust they'd earned by sharing their ideas online.

The harsh reality of business is this: you need to sell things. And to sell things, people need to know you exist. And currently, the simplest and highest leverage way to make that happen is through social media.

You can have the best product, the most compelling vision, the deepest expertise. But if you're competing against someone who has already spent hundreds (sometimes thousands) of minutes educating, entertaining, and inspiring your potential customers, the fight isn't even close.

They've already built trust, demonstrated value, and own a slice of your customer's mind you'll never compete against. You can either get mad about this, or become the person who has the advantage.

This was the decision I made.

Why This Is The Second Renaissance

If you look back at the first Renaissance, the reason it came to be was the advent of the printing press.

The printing press allowed books (aka information) to be spread at rates that were previously impossible.

It removed barriers and gave access to everyone.

This technical shift kicked off the greatest period of excellence across disciplines in human history (similar to AI today).

It birthed legendary figures like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo. People who pursued multiple interests. Philosophy, physics, engineering, mathematics, the arts, history.

Because for the first time, they could acquire the knowledge they needed to pursue those disciplines.

But here's what people miss: those creators didn't work for free.

They had patrons.

Wealthy families and institutions who funded their creative pursuits because they saw value in what these artists could produce.

Well, we're in the exact same situation today.

But instead of convincing one wealthy patron to fund your work, you can prove your value to an audience on the internet.

Once you do this, you can partner with existing businesses or create your own products and services to help your audience and ultimately fund your creative pursuits.

Social media is the new patronage system.

If you're reading this, you have a smartphone and wifi connection. Thanks to AI, you have access to all the information in the entire world. You have tools that allow you to do things that used to take a team of ten months to create. And with social media, you can reach millions of people for free.

Do you realize how insane that is?

But Wait, Is This Actually Patronage?

I know what you're thinking.

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel and moved on. I have to post 5 times a week forever or the algorithm kills me. How is that patronage?

Fair question. Let me address it.

Here's what people miss: content isn't your masterpiece. The content is the entry point to building your masterpiece. Aka the business, the book, the product, the movement.

Renaissance artists also did constant commissioned work. Portraits for nobles, sculptures for churches, smaller pieces to fund the big vision. The difference is they served one patron. You serve an audience that funds your vision.

The content isn't the end goal. It's the vehicle that enables the larger mission.

And yes, the platforms have power. Instagram can kill your reach tomorrow. TikTok can ban your account. YouTube can change the algorithm overnight. This is real risk.

Which is why smart creators treat social media as the jumping off point. You use it to prove your value and capture attention, then you convert that into things you actually own. Email lists. Text lists. Products. Businesses. Relationships.

The content gets people to know you.

The owned channels let you build something real with them.

Renaissance artists were also subject to their patron's whims. One falling out with the Medici family and you were done. But today, you can build a direct relationship with thousands of people who support your work.

Social media is the modern patronage system. But the smart move is using it as the entry point to build something the platform can't take away.

The fundamental exchange hasn't changed: prove your value publicly, get funded to pursue your creative work.

But the mechanism is different and the opportunity is bigger.

And unlike the first Renaissance, you don't need to be born in Florence or catch the eye of the Medicis.

You just need wifi and something worth saying.

What Becomes Valuable When Everything Is Abundant?

Another popular argument: "if everyone has access to all the information and tools they would ever need, and people can generate words, pictures, videos with nothing more than a prompt, doesn't all of this become worthless?"

It's a fair question. And yes, this has leveled the playing field.

But when everyone has the same access to information, you need to understand what economics teaches us about scarcity:

In abundant markets, the scarce resource becomes valuable.

Information is abundant, but attention is scarce.

Content is abundant, but taste is scarce. Taste is the ability to recognize quality and originality—and judge what's worth creating.

If you want to thrive in this new Renaissance, you need to curate both.

Attention is obvious. If you want to fund your pursuits, people need to know you exist. But taste? Curation? That's where most people have no clue where to start.

Bad taste looks like regurgitating information you saw elsewhere with zero thought or personal perspective.

Good taste is taking a fundamentally true idea, applying it to your life, and communicating the impact in a unique way.

It's being able to distinguish good from bad.

To find unique ideas and package them in ways that make people feel something.

To stand out in a sea of sameness by bringing a perspective that's genuinely yours.

That's the moat. AI can generate content. But it can't have taste. It can't synthesize ideas across domains in ways that reflect genuine human experience. It can't make people feel something real.

The Evidence Is Everywhere

MrBeast built a billion-dollar business creating YouTube videos.

The world's largest TikToker just sold his business for $975 million.

This creator partnered with the first "creator production company" to disrupt Hollywood and just got their first film into theaters.

All of these people are pursuing their natural interests and building businesses. But the through line to all of it is they're creating content on the internet. That's what is enabling them to create and do the other things they want to pursue.

They're not "influencers". They're creative builders who learned that capturing attention and building an army of people who know, like, and trust you is the fastest path to funding, customers, and opportunities.

What This Actually Means For You

I'm not telling you to become an "influencer." I'm not suggesting you quit your job tomorrow with no plan. I'm not saying you need to dance on the internet or start posting motivational quotes.

What I am saying is: you can pursue your unique curiosity, build businesses, and tackle lifelong dreams by learning to capture attention on the internet.

Want to write a book? Build an audience of readers who resonate with your ideas.

Want to start a supplement company? Document your journey of getting fit or pursuing insane athletic achievements, so by the time you launch you've already attracted customers, investors, and talent.

Want to open a coffee shop? Publicly state your goal and pull back the curtain on how you're doing it.

You need to understand content isn't the end goal. The content is simply the medium that enables the larger mission.

Right now, I have an audience. I run a consulting and education business helping founders and brands build systems to do exactly what I just outlined above. But I'm also working on a software project. Long term, the options are infinite.

But none of this would be possible if I hadn't decided to share my ideas on the internet.

How To Actually Do This

Look, there are countless ways to do this.

I'm not going to pretend there's one right path.

But I'll share what worked for me, because maybe it'll give you a starting point.

I picked one platform to focus on and chose a constraint: everything had to be writing-focused because that's what I wanted to focus on.

I found a format (reading my scripts in voiceovers and pairing them with personal clips) that was unique enough at the time and repeatable.

Then I embarked on a unique journey. I moved to Portugal to go all in on my own projects, documented the process, and shared what I was learning along the way.

After growing to around 15,000 followers in under three months, I posted a story asking: "If I put together all my learnings on this, would you want it?"

200 people said yes.

So I created it and that became the foundation of my education business.

If you already know exactly what you want to create, this is even easier. You already have a strong point of view or a compelling journey to bring people on.

If you already have a business, you just need to study other creators/brands in your niche, reverse engineer what works, and build what I call an "inspo lab."

This can be your saved folder on Instagram, a Google Doc, a Notion board, or even your notes app. The point is having a place to collect proven ideas and formats as inspiration, then make your own version by adding your unique perspective.

You can overcomplicate this to the nth degree.

Or you can realize that artists, coaches, business brokers, authors, agency owners (really every example under the sun) have already done this.

There is literally a roadmap.

Go study what they did, what they do now, and start experimenting.

You're not going to generate a full-time income overnight. But if you're serious about pursuing your own path, there's never been a better time to start.

Wrapping Up

Never before in history could you reach millions of people for free, build products over a weekend, or have direct access to any and all information you would need to pursue the thing you've always wanted to pursue.

This is a blessing.

To be clear: I'm not saying this is easy.

I'm saying if you're smart, ambitious, and willing to do the work required, there has never been a better time in human history to pursue your own path.

So my recommendation is this: become a creator.

Not to pump out mindless, soulless content. But because content is the spear that will enable and accelerate your larger mission.

The Renaissance didn't happen because everyone suddenly got smarter. It happened because new tools democratized access to knowledge. We're in that moment again.

The tools are here. The access is here.

The only question is: what are you going to do with them?

— Dodds

P.S. You made it this far. Congrats. That means you see the opportunity. If you want to learn how to capture attention and build your own patronage system, you can join the Story30 waitlist here. The next cohort kicks off in February.