Member-only story
Don’t wait for permission.
Too much of the world is still run by gatekeepers. When I look at the music industry, that’s the way it was built. Around record labels, management companies, booking agents, and so on. All the people from whom you had to get a Yes before you could “Make It.”
And that’s a dumb system. Because it means that a select group of people get to be the ones who decide what’s good for the rest of us. They get to decide who can and can’t create and share their work. And that’s not the way the world should be. That’s not the way we have to work.
Today, we can do anything, from starting a company to launching a black metal album, without anybody telling us no.
And that’s a beautiful thing. We aren’t beholden to someone else’s tastes, comfort levels, or desires. We can set a vision for what we create and then put it into the world in our own way. By creating collectives instead of startups, and trading our work on our terms, we can flip the script on decades of corporate gatekeeping and exploitation.
New York Times bestselling author Eva Lesko talks about writing and creating a world where gatekeeper permission was seen as the only path.
“Some people will waste a lifetime waiting for the Gatekeepers. I was almost one…
