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Hi,
When I tell entrepreneurs that “good chaos brings stability,” I’m usually met with skeptical looks. It sounds like the kind of thing someone says to justify their scattered attention span.
I’m not saying it would work for every business owner, but if you are already a walking ball of chaos, then it can be strategically beneficial.
My career looks chaotic. From the outside, it probably seems unfocused, even reckless, but over enough time (and we’re talking years, not months here), patterns emerge.
Let me give you some numbers. This is my career, distilled:
- 1,000 finished comic pages I’ve written (plus countless more never produced)
- 350 produced podcast episodes
- 212 comic pages I’ve drawn and released
- 200 podcast appearances across 150+ shows
- 120 talks at 60+ unique conferences
- 55 group giveaways run for authors
- 50 publishing contracts signed
- 44 novels
- 40 anthology appearances
- 39 fashion models shot during my photography days
- 30 websites built
- 27 transmedia projects I’ve helped adapt
- 21 nonfiction books written or co-written
- 13 years with some form of representation
- 10 conferences hosted (including 3 in person)
- 8 signature courses designed and released (not counting dozens of masterclasses)
- 7 companies started (2 production companies, 2 telecom companies, 1 publishing company, 2 education companies, and a photography studio)
- 5 anthologies edited
- 4 projects optioned to Hollywood
- 3 web series directed (one started as a movie)
- 2 apps built
- 1 year as executive producer of an internet television channel
Look at that list. Does it seem focused? Does it look like someone who “stayed in their lane”?
Absolutely not, and that’s precisely the point. Long ago, when I wasn’t the best at anything, I learned about the concept of skill stacking. It posits that there are two main ways to build a durable creative career:
- Become the best at one thing.
- Become really good at a few things that, together, make you stand out.
Both paths work, but most people won’t reach the top 1% in any single skill. Being the best takes extreme focus, the right timing, and usually a fair amount of luck. I’ve never been particularly focused or especially lucky, so I knew I probably couldn’t ever be the first thing.
The good news? You don’t have to go that route to build something great.
You can be top 20–25% at a handful of skills—and that combination can still make you more valuable than someone who’s top 1% at just one.
That’s skill stacking.
You don’t have to out-launch every founder, out-market every marketer, or out-teach every teacher. If you can do all three well enough to connect the dots? That’s a competitive edge most people simply don’t have.
I wasn’t very strategic about it, but skill stacking made intuitive sense to me. It also gave me the ability to shift between lots of different mediums, which I desperately need. Even though I love writing, I don’t want to write all the time. Whenever I am too tied to one form of expression, I start to feel itchy.
Luckily, it turned out that every new skill added leverage to the others, which made me very attractive to potential partners in recently years.
There’s very rarely something I hear in conversation where I can’t contribute meaningfully. Publicity strategy? I’ve run campaigns and booked hundreds of podcast appearances. Web presence? I’ve built thirty sites from scratch. Video content? I’ve directed web series. Course creation? I’ve launched eight signature programs.
I’m a Swiss Army knife of skills, connections, and hard-won knowledge. This creates resilience through diversity, and what I mean by “good chaos”. The more things you chaos around and learn about, the more valuable you become.
On top of that, Every item on your skill list represents more than just work completed. Each one is a node in an expanding network.
Those 200 podcast appearances? That’s 150+ hosts who know my name, my work, my reliability. Many became friends. Some became collaborators. A few became clients.
Those 120 conference talks? That’s thousands of people I’ve connected with, helped, and stayed in touch with over the years. When I launch something new, I’m not shouting into the void. I’m reaching out to people who already know me.
Those 50 publishing contracts across multiple publishers? I understand how different houses operate, what different editors value, and how various imprints position books. I can talk shop with traditionally published authors, hybrid authors, and indie authors because I’ve lived in all those worlds.
Productive chaos builds a web of relationships, skills, and experiences so interconnected that it becomes nearly impossible to fail completely. You’d have to burn down the entire forest, not just one tree.
So what makes chaos “productive” rather than just scattered?
