Why Do I Do This?

Hi, this is Russell. I’m the one who writes all these blog posts and the one who started Incubator.

I get the sense some people are curious why I’m doing all of this.

I have a few motivations.

1. I love music. I love making it, I love being around it and I love helping other people make it in new, innovate ways.

2. I love working. I love working with my friends. It’s how I connect with people. I want to spend my life working towards a collective goal in a community that has a purpose.

3. I want to succeed with the people in my life. Based on previous life experience, individual success doesn’t fulfill me long term.

4. I want to exist in an environment where people like their work. Like, really like it. Like, not just making the best of it, but people who get genuinely excited about it. 

A bit of context

Discovering the real world when I graduated college was the hardest pill I’ve ever had to swallow. You could say it took me a decade to fully get it down.

I did not want to spend my days doing work I wasn’t motivated to do. I love work. So when someone makes it suck, I take it personally.

So I started a handful of businesses in an effort to make my own job. The main one was an online marketing agency. I taught myself web design, SEO, PPC, CRO and a bunch of other acronyms. I grew a team of marketers, managed client accounts and became an expert that other businesses trusted.

I liked it…for a while. But the success wasn’t shared. The people I worked alongside didn’t love their work, and after a while, it felt monotonous. I had created just another job for myself, except this time, I had internalized the boss role.

It stopped being fun. I burned out. 

I realized I’m not interested in making people do things they don’t want to do. I’m not interested in creating a space where some make the rules and others follow them. And I’m not interested in creating a space where some reap most of the benefits of others get the leftovers. 

After 7 years of starting and running and businesses, I was done. I realized any business would land me in the same place. 

So I decided to start a community.

A community, done right, can outperform a business. It can provide income to its members as well as a sense of… community (which we’re all severely lacking).

I became less interested in the hollow success associated with business and more in what it would take to succeed with the people around me.

I set out to build a profitable community where…

• ownership is collective and decisions are made collectively.
• duties are customized for each individual and flexible enough to change with the seasons.
• the workplace is democratic, where members has autonomy over what they do and who they work with.

This vision is taking the form of a music incubator because (please refer to point #1 at the top of this post). 

So why do I do this?

I do this because the world I entered as college grad is not good enough for me. I’d like to change it. Not through electoral politics or protesting on the street, but through showing the world what’s possible when you let go of the status quo.