When an industry starts to become cannibalistic and incestuous, it might be a good time to walk away.
We’ve seen it in a number of fields, from comedy to publishing to consulting to entertainment.
People start feeding off and breeding with their own kind, inhaling each other’s fumes, building business models around each other, sharing the same stories, being guests on each other’s shows, living in each other’s pockets, swapping customers and saturating the market. And because these folks meet most of their needs inside the boundaries of their own family, playing nothing but inside ball, they eventually isolate themselves from the outside world and retreat into an effortless, airless, echo chamber stroke fest.
The result is an infinite regression, a dull blanket of sameness draped over an entire industry, where people’s willingness to listen and stretch and expand is muted.
That’s when it’s time to move on.
