Abel James moved to the Smoky Mountains to start a rebellion. The rebellion has beachheads in the worlds of health and music but it extends much further.
Abel is the creator of the Fat Burning Man podcast. The podcast is a leader in the health and wellness field. But Abel is also an accomplished musician.
The Disintermediation Rebellion
In both of these worlds he has seen how marketing money and the Machine corrupt the creative process. His goal is to help people create their best work, share it with the world, no strings attached, and still pay the bills. He is democratizing art and health and he is helping the public make an informed choice between entertainment and true art.
He’s engaged in a process of disintermediation. He wants to take out the middleman. Currently, if you want to create art or bring your message of health and wellness to the world, you have to cut deals with various gatekeepers. This ends up placing a limit on your effectiveness and on your integrity. Our cultural choices are being made for us. The Internet and technology play a role in this process. The Internet drives us to look for the hype. It makes us susceptible to appeals to our emotion.
Content creators who have a positive. creative, and healthy message often find out too late what they’re up against. Once we put our art out, sharing the message isn’t enough. We are conditioned to feel “the need for speed” and the desire for instant gratification in the form of attention and material goods.
Sharing Your Creative Message and Paying the Bills
It doesn’t have to be that way. We can design a life where we do good work and are still able to pay the bills. We need to unplug, and that’s why Able and his wife moved to the Smoky Mountains. But he makes it clear that we shouldn’t unplug forever.
Abel has shown a path with his own constant reinvention. He can move back and forth between the world of music and health seamlessly. He has done it without selling out. In fitness, he jumped in with his podcast, to provide the information that he so badly needed at one time in his life. Health and wellness gurus, who were only out to maximize their profit, let him down with bad information.
Abel discovered that if you find your crowd, your community, and give them quality information and show them that you care, they will pay a premium for your information.
Conscious Capitalism
He is a proponent of maintaining creative control and he is a believer in conscious capitalism. Each of us needs to explore, to start something, to put it out there, and start a movement – create a community, even if it consists of a couple of people. Develop a powerful message, and decide on a vehicle that will spread that powerful message. For some it might be a blog. For others, a podcast, a book, or video. For others like Abel, your platform will be multimedia and even include music.
It might look daunting, but with people like Abel out there fighting the good fight, the tide may be turning. People are beginning to find their niches, take creative control of their message, and share that message. They are examples of real freedom.
You can learn more about Abel at abel james.com or fatburningman.com.
