Nathan Baschez joins the Deep End to discuss the passion economy, the realities of building a media business, and gets real with Marshall about  the realities of embarking on the founder journey as a creator. The two also chat about Every, which Nathan describes as a writer collective for productivity, strategy, leadership, & culture.

This conversation with Nathan blends a few different threads that we've covered on The Deep End. 

Nathan's background as a prolific writer & podcaster makes this a natural extension of the conversation that we covered when discussing Creator-Operators with Josh Kaplan two weeks ago. We chat about the wavering stability of media companies and the obvious upside of the substack economy to creators. We ruminate on questions like “Should writers try to become stars in their own right?” and “What did early millennial-centric media businesses get wrong?” while examining how ambitious people often are replicating their behavior based on the models that have proven to be successful.

The episode also echoes some of what we chatted about with Saagar Enjeti when we discussed the challenges & benefits of going independent. Nathan thinks that the fact that creators can reach fans more directly than ever before is to the passion economy what the shift to mobile was for tech.

Finally, right after having Dr. Anhalt on the show to discuss mental health, Nathan & Marshall do some therapizing of their own as we discuss the day to day realities of the creator journey and how it affects us on a personal level.

For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com