Due to reasons outlined in this week’s Newsletter, I am going to cut to the chase. In that Newsletter I also promised that I was going to be candid in this article. Let’s get to it. This is Life with Ken’s 2024 Mid-Year Business Plan Review. Originally, I had some reservations about referring to it as a mid-year for certain reasons that I may get into in a moment, but the reality is that is what this is. I want to deal in realities for this because it doesn’t serve us not to.
That being said there is also this dichotomy that has been presenting itself in my life recently. Before I go any further, let me give the mission statement:
Life with Ken is a lifestyle brand that focuses on helping you live more confidently.
I can’t imbue you with self-support. But Life with Ken can and wants to support you in that endeavor of supporting yourself. The root words for confidence are “con” and “fidence” or “fidelity.” Fidelity means support. Con is with. With support. Life with Ken is here to help you live with support. We just finished a series that we are featuring right now entitled, “What Makes what we do Matter.” In that we go into great detail about the “cornerstones” or major influences in our drive to achieve our goal.
Support
Support is valuable to me because that is the journey that I have personally been on for some time. Without quality support, not much gets done in this world. We try to achieve our goals is by providing you with resources to help you live a better-quality life. This is where the business side of things comes in. Objectively the follow up question to that previous statement is, what is in it for us?
That is what we are here to talk about today for a moment. How does Life with Ken become profitable? That is the journey that we currently find ourselves on. By being able to generate a cash flow for ourselves, that will enable us to do more inspiring and impactful things like expand our video offerings, deliver on consistency, create an experience that is satisfying and appropriate, and create the space to platform other creators and intellectuals. All of that is just the surface of what we really want to try to accomplish, but we need to start somewhere, and there is objective value in ambition.
The dichotomy that I have been facing recently has been between faith and reality. God is important to me. I don’t promote this website and endeavor as a Christian one, but I am a Christian. Life with Ken is not a church. If individuals who go to church or need/want to be exposed to faith as a topic get value from us, then all the glory goes to God. Faith is mainly valuable in this pursuit as it relates to how I approach what we do.
The struggle is that my faith and my reality not only don’t match, which while sometimes an issue, isn’t something worth stumbling over. But also, would appear as though in this instance one far out scales and scopes the other. To the point of someone of a sober mind or different kind of faith may be led to ask, how?
The Dichotomy
The ultimate goal as I currently see it is Any Door. Any Door is as of right now a code name for a business that I want to start that would encompass real estate, publication, and banking. Life with Ken and Kenneth Wyche Publishing are part of the publication branch of that goal. Publication just happened to be the most attainable for me 5 years ago.
That is the faith that I have, or at least to a certain degree. The only thing holding me back from achieving what I want is God’s will, me being a black man in America, and or the fall of America as an empire and superpower. There are just a lot of things going against me in reality that would make my faith appear to be foolish. As a Christian however, part of my higher calling is to walk by faith and not by sight. Additionally, why not me? There is no good answer to that second part other than something racist, low vibration, maladaptive, or disintegrative.
There is no fundamental reason why I can’t try to achieve something noteworthy in and with my life. So, the next question becomes, is all that faith translating into greenbacks? What do I get for all of those lofty goals?
Let me back track for a moment. Let’s discuss the value of money from the perspective of why that is a pursuit. In doing so maybe God will answer a prayer that I made this morning prior to preparing this article.
Personally, I would do Life with Ken for free, or finance it myself. I like doing this a lot. Money from this endeavor doesn’t really matter all that much to me. That being said however, I have to live. I think everyone has a right to try to survive, especially if they are alive. I am a sentient human being living in the richest nation in the history of earth that was built off of the labor of my ancestors. If I don’t have a right to live in America no one does, other than the indigenous American Natives that the white colonizers basically killed off. This is just my mindset as it relates to my relationship with my country. I am an American. I want to live and die and have friends and experience love and all the things on this soil.
The struggle that I have been having, of which I speak about in my forthcoming book “Get Your Mind Right” (I will touch on that in a moment), is that I don’t want to rely on a capitalist to pay my way. At my current job for example, I need to do some makeup hours after the events of this past weekend, and when I asked my boss, he essentially said, “we’ll see.” If I wait for him to see it’s going to be a rough damn near 2-3 months for me potentially. That’s how much little wiggle room I have for certain things.
This gets to another point that I have been considering. How can or is there a way for me to leverage Life with Ken for my personal benefit. The issue with that is I don’t want to whore out my content. “Dance negro,” “sing monkey,” “pick that cotton.” These are all the underlining implications associated with parading your resume around. I don’t want to show off how well I can sing, dance, or pontificate. I want that value to be intrinsically recognized in me. That is something that is a relatively unique problem. It wouldn’t be the case if I was of a different complexion.
I have to sing and dance to be considered, another individual will have the red carpet rolled out for them. I’ve seen it happen. I don’t want to go into comparisons, but my value speaks for itself. This is another one of those dichotomies. I may be being prideful or crass, and for that I pray the lord softens my heart and leads me in the path everlasting.
I think that is the conclusion that I will draw from this. Right now, it’s less about me trying to force or will Life with Ken to become profitable, of which is still a worthy goal. Right now, I should apply a perspective change and not consider any of the aforementioned as something suitable for me. You only receive what you believe you are worthy of receiving. I need to stop believing that I am worthy of being treated the way outlined above.
What if there is some organization out there that values me and what I have to offer? That wants me to be part of their operation and gives me the latitude to do so? Admittedly there may be some song and dance associated with it, but work is performative in nature. What if that performance didn’t feel demeaning? What if I got more from that context than is what’s required of me to give? Is that a possible reality?
Applying Belief
I think that the dichotomies I have been talking about boil down to one thing, how do you choose to apply your belief? Everyone believes, everyone has desires. Are you willing to experience the fullness thereof regardless of how that materializes? Or do you believe that your challenges are more influential and can’t be overcome? What does this mean for Life with Ken at this juncture? I need to take some pressure off of Life with Ken, leverage it in a way that is beneficial to all parties involved, and find places and spaces that will accept who I am and what I have to offer, period, and without any strings attached. If I can find the time to do that then I think that is a worthy pursuit for us as a brand at this stage.
Ultimately however nothing is promised or guaranteed, and I don’t feel as mentioned above for no reason. The other sober reality is I do need money. Who knows if that other imaginary door will open and who is to say that my faith applied to fitting in somewhere else is more virtuous than my faith to build somewhere where I fit? So again, how do you choose to apply your belief? I could believe that my faith is better placed elsewhere but what is the implication of that thought process? Or I could believe that my faith is better placed in this endeavor and accept the implications of that thought process.
But then, why not both? Can’t I have faith to believe that Life with Ken will do well and have faith to be part of something else? The point of that is acceptance and the materialization of opportunity. Which after this point brings me to my book: ultimately, do I want to rely or depend on the benevolence of someone else, or do I want to actualize my own perspicacity? I believe that while support is necessary in either scenario, I would rather build myself up to the point of needing little to no support from other people, as opposed to only being able to live dependent on the support of others. That’s healthy self-actualization, that’s living with confidence (support), that’s Life with Ken.
Going forward as we continue to move through this year from here on, I will commit to putting less pressure on Life with Ken as a brand and business. Additionally, I will leverage what God has allowed me to build here to market myself as Kenneth Wyche. The value in doing that will be a healthier relationship between myself and Life with Ken, and a maximization of earning potential. On top of that I will continue to work towards making Life with Ken profitable as that is what I ultimately value as a human being.
Not necessarily Life with Ken being profitable, but rather the ability to break away from this kind of conversation, which will only happen when I am able to demonstrate a self-sustaining level of independence. That is a life not without people, but apart from them. Peak self-actualization is wanting people but not needing them. Life with Ken offers that reality, any other pursuit doesn’t. I want to choose mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health.
My forthcoming book “Get Your Mind Right” is my debut non-fiction book available for pre-order now! This is also the second book for my book publishing company Kenneth Wyche Publishing. The book is basically about everything I’ve highlighted in this article and in this week’s Newsletter. Distilled down, Get Your Mind Right is about how you can have a revelation that will produce for you a breakthrough, that will materialize a change of trajectory for your life. This book promotes dynamic thought (which happens to be a chapter in the book) that will unlock realms of existence previously unavailable to you. It’s all about understanding the influences on your life and being able to do something about them if you choose to.
The book releases November 19, 2024. I am and will be continuing to work on getting reviews between now and then. I will be making an announcement about how you can review the book if you’d like next week. You can find more information about Get Your Mind Right, here.
We are still working on a studio, and now we need new equipment. I will provide more updates as those things become more of a reality. If you made it all the way through this business review you are who I do this for and I want to activate the potential in you!
Coming up Next
Finally, I’ll speak on our 5th year celebration for a moment. This July will mark five years of Life with Ken. This is an amazing and humbling experience. Prior to this business review I wasn’t sure how I felt about keeping this going. Right now I’m fired up and pulsating! The value of what this work means is so much greater than a dollar, and it shouldn’t be encumbered by one. As long as God continues to allow me to do this, this is what I want to do, wherever I am and in particular in the United States. I am still considering different rollouts for July, but we have a course bundle planned, probably some type of sale, and I am brainstorming some other things.
Our next update will probably be towards the end of Q3 beginning of Q4. Some quick honorable mentions for this as this article is already long enough is right now we are featuring Justice Dixon on our website. I’ve been wanting to do collaborations so, promises made, promises kept. The first collaboration we did this year was with Britt’s Crochet and Macrame.
We did that in April. It was fun and exciting. There wasn’t enough brand alignment for a long-term spot in our store, but that door is still open. Justice Dixon is the artist that did the frontispiece for my book, he is a great artist, so we decided to do a virtual gallery on the Life with Ken website to highlight his work. We are featuring his art for the entire month of June. After Which it’s all about Get Your Mind Right, and our 5th year celebration.
I’ve made some edits around social media and my booking offerings as well and we will be working on improving our SEO as soon as possible. More eyes is the name of the game and that is what we are going to continue to stimulate and promote. If you find value in the work, we do here at Life with Ken consider donating to our cause. We take your money very seriously and contributing to us is contributing to a good cause that will yield you a return on your investment in the form of quality and experience. Either way, thank you for being part of Life with Ken and we look forward to sharing in this capacity with you again.
If you are moved in some way by our cause and want to support the proliferation of this work use the form below and make a one time donation:
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