If you’ll rappel down a canyon but struggle to pay a parking ticket, you are my people.
ADHD memes speak to me more than I’d care to admit. And there’s no better way to experience it in full flower than by starting a company. After cheerfully embracing that very big scary thing, up next are an assortment of much smaller and more practical tasks that will do your head in.
I went into canyoneering mode three weeks ago: I dropped everything to care for my mom after she fractured and dislocated her shoulder. She’s 87. Everything else looked like (and was) a distraction. I didn’t even think about trying to maintain this newsletter. There was no room at the inn.
The shift from living and breathing Flamingo to gratefully watching “Matlock” was total. It was such a complete overthrow that, in quieter moments, I wondered if I’d lose track of what I was building in the first place.
First: She’s doing better. I’ll head back to Texas for her shoulder replacement surgery next month.
And there’s this: Somehow, in the moments when Mom was napping and the nursing care wifi worked, I managed to do something I thought impossible. The Flamingo Index went from theory and analysis to a living entity with 359 entries. They represent a good chunk of the Story Economy deals, projects, and companies formed in 2026.
There’s a lot of work before it’s ready for public consumption, but it’s enough to build a pilot.
I’m starting with a core group of brand-backed entertainment projects to test whether someone can:
Start with a brand and discover the entertainment projects it has backed.
Identify the people and companies that helped assemble those projects.
Understand how the deals and partnerships were structured.
Find useful precedents to inform their own projects and decisions.
(There will be a Beta team for testing! If you’re interested, ping me at [email protected].)
Technically, I could have achieved this weeks ago. I’m trying to figure out what changed. It looks Iike I broke a big task into small wins, but I didn’t. Doing that almost guarantees I’ll be sending my husband a Poppy the Prairie Dog clip 10 minutes later.
I struggle with small, practical decisions and building anything means making a life of them. Think of what a freeway requires — the audacity! The humanity, planning, coordination, and time required to go from mixing concrete to rush hour on the 405! It induces vertigo (that may be just me).
That’s why I suspect only being able to make tiny and erratic bursts of professional effort wound up being a gift. Strategy and analysis make me warm and cozy, but I no longer had the luxury of deep thought. That left two choices: I could do the very small thing — mix the concrete, pour it into a form — or do nothing.
Yes, yes, pouring concrete is ultimately how you build a freeway — but I didn’t understand that it may also require not thinking about the freeway.
Three weeks ago, Flamingo was an idea I could explain. Now it's something I can work on, argue with, and eventually put in front of other people, all because I stopped trying to plan its finished state and started discovering what it was through the act of making it.
I still have no idea how to build a freeway. But I have 359 little pieces of concrete, which is 359 more than I had three weeks ago.
The next entertainment deal won't look like the last one. Follow Flamingo for the people, partnerships, and business models creating new possibilities across the Story Economy.