Here’s a riddle: Your ability to be successful can hinge on this idea. You must earn it, but you can’t save or spend it. Once you have it, the battle begins to maintain it. But the passage of time always takes it away. What is it?

The answer: Relevance; having current and practical social importance.

Actor and author B.J. Novak summed it up nicely in this tweet: “Some people have fuck-you money but nobody has fuck-you relevance.”

It’s so true. Relevance is slippery. The moment your work becomes a part of the zeitgeist, the moment that what you have to say matters, that relevance can slip away. No matter how relevant you become, it will vanish unless you consistently find new ways to replenish it. And that requires hustle.

A Brush with Relevance

My first bit of relevance came through the work of my company, Common Craft. My wife Sachi and I made a handful of animated videos in 2007 that explained ideas like RSS, wikis, and blogs “in plain English.” These videos went on to become viral hits in the early days of YouTube and are now known as the first animated explainer videos.

Just days after we published the first video, everything started to change. Our inboxes became full of offers, and for a while nearly everything we did seemed to get attention. The videos were getting thousands of views a day and appearing on the front page of Digg.com. This took us by surprise; we never guessed the videos would be so popular. It was intoxicating.

Soon enough we were being hired by companies like LEGO, Google, Dropbox, and Ford to explain their products and services. Our newfound relevance was translating into a successful business. Despite having little experience with what we were doing, we were now professional producers.

 While these custom video projects paid the bills, we continued to make educational videos like our first ones. These videos, what we considered the real Common Craft videos, continued to be a big priority despite producing little income. They were about ideas and not products.

We Earned It! Now What?

For the first couple of years, we were so busy that we hardly had time to think about where we were headed. New leads arrived every day. We were working like we’d never worked before.

We learned some valuable lessons in those early days. First, we loved the idea that the two of us, a married couple, could make a living by making animated videos. We didn’t require a big studio or other producers or actors. We were a self-contained creative unit based from our home in Seattle.

Over time, this aspect of Common Craft became paramount. We loved our jobs and the lifestyle it enabled. We had stumbled onto an opportunity of a lifetime, something that meant we could have absolute freedom from regular corporate jobs. The question became: How can we make this last? How can we keep doing this for another decade or more?

While we were at the height of our relevance, an idea crept into our consciousness. We started to see the custom video part of our business a little differently. It was a part of the promotional media world, an industry that is prone to short-term fads. The cool new thing today could quickly become a joke tomorrow. If this happened to us, if our signature style went out of fashion, we’d be stuck. Time could very easily take its toll on our relevance, and with it, our perfect jobs.

For the first time, we started to consider shaking the Etch A Sketch. Rather than watching helplessly as things changed, we decided to push the change ourselves. The question became: How can Common Craft videos have more timeless relevance?

The Sleepers Awaken

Since the first video in 2007, our library of educational videos continued to grow on a monthly basis. Now that we had dozens of videos, a new kind of request started to appear. It became clear to us that our videos were becoming an important tool for educators. They were solving problems and helping professionals do their jobs more effectively. These professionals began to ask us: Can I use this in my classroom? Can we use this on our intranet or in presentations? Can I download the video files?

These requests triggered ideas. People were prepared to license our work, to pay for permission to use them professionally. We saw that the educational videos, unlike the custom ones, could be produced once and licensed multiple times, like software. Could we turn our videos into a product?

A Big Decision

Sachi and I did not take this potential opportunity lightly. To make the licensing model work, we needed to make it our primary focus and work to build relevance within a completely new niche.

Would we abandon our current success in order to focus on licensing, something that was just a possibility? Were we willing to trade custom video revenue today for the potential of passive, scalable revenue in the future? It was an agonizing decision—our future hung in the balance.

Along the way, we learned a few things about the educational media industry. First, there is an established culture of paying for educational content. Second, educational content can be virtually timeless. One video can be relevant for many years. This seemed like a near perfect way to think about the potential of our videos.

So we started testing. We offered digital downloads of “presentation quality” videos on CommonCraft.com and sold our first video within a few hours of going live. The evidence looked positive.

Within a few months, the decision was final. We would give up nearly everything that established our current relevance to change course. We would take ourselves out of the custom video market, stop using YouTube, and focus exclusively on licensing videos on CommonCraft.com. We were ready for the consequences.

Winding It Down, Then Slightly Up

The change started by saying “no” more often. We said no to great companies and potentially great projects. Over time, we took on fewer and fewer custom projects and oriented our website around e-commerce.

As expected, our revenue and relevance in the promotional video industry gradually fell month after month. Our licensing model was working, but it was nowhere near custom video levels. We knew it was a long bet. It might take years to achieve the relevance we needed in the educational world. And this made us study, strategize, and work even harder.

In 2012, we virtually eliminated our custom work, focused everything on licensing videos through Common Craft, and wrote a book called The Art of Explanation. That’s where we are today. Common Craft now has individual, school, and corporate members in over fifty countries, and we remain a two-person, home-based business. The business supports us, and we feel we’re just getting started, again.

A Different Kind of Relevance

These days, I think differently about what it means to be relevant. While B.J. Novak says no one has fuck-you relevance, I now believe it is possible to make relevance more sustainable. By taking risks and thinking long-term, it is possible to find niches and opportunities that can make relevance more manageable.

We made a decision to give up much of what we had achieved early on to make a long-term bet. That bet meant trading short-term success and high-profile relevance for a more focused, sustainable kind of relevance.

Today, our bet is still in play. We have growing relevance to those who are interested in educating others. In this niche, our content is useful, which helps our social and practical importance become more timeless. Our revenue isn’t what it was at its peak, but the curve is sloping upward with each month. It’s working, gradually.

Taking this leap required a commitment. Common Craft isn’t just our business—it’s our entire lives. This is the heart of why we were prepared to take the risk. We found something we loved, and more than anything, we wanted to continue it for years and years. So, we had to find a different kind of relevance.

Column A: all the things you’re good at.
Column B: all the things you can earn money doing.

***

What’s in both columns? Those are your
sweet spots.

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Now, take both column items and future-proof them.

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How can your efforts bring you returns if media,
technology, geography, or corporate structures change?

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Work toward and focus on those future states,
and you’ll stay relevant.