The 2024 presidential election provided clear evidence of what I’m about to tell you — that YouTube, newsletters and podcasts, amplified and supported by organic social and vertical video will dominate not only digital over the next ten years but information consumption in general.

That means news. That means branded content. That means politics, sports and business.

It means opinion, and it means thought leadership.

What it doesn’t mean is the end of journalism. It doesn’t mean the end of TV either.

But change is here, and the evidence of that change is only starting to happen across the country with big business decisions amongst the biggest media companies.

It’s why I’ve started my own business, Doable Digital Media.

One of the privileges of age is in seeing revolutions happen long after they’ve happened, and then eventually recognizing when one is about to happen. I’ve been in the digital space since 1998, and it started with websites and then digital news and then podcasts, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Podcasts died and then were revived permanently in the mid-2010s.

YouTube is pretty much the new TV.

And newsletters in thousands of niches are being created and then sold for millions of dollars.

This next era is one I’m not missing.

***

It all started with a dream. No, the dream wasn’t to start my own business; it was to get a graduate degree.

TL;DR: I stumbled upon a program at the No. 1 broadcast journalism school in the country, Arizona State University. It’s the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The program is called ‘Digital Audience Strategy,’ and it’s focused on the practical elements in every area of digital business from social media to SEO to SEM to inbound marketing to podcasting to project management to media law to analytics.

It was a lot. It was challenging but very achievable, even with a full-time job in TV news. IYKYK. That’s not an easy combo: graduate school and TV news.

The promise I made to myself was that if I earned this master’s degree, then I was going to do something with it.

Something big.

Well, in May 2024, in what I would considering one of my Top 5 happiest moments ever, I got my diploma at a ceremony in Tempe, Ariz., at Desert Financial Arena.

This was a big deal indeed.

But what would I do with it? Would I merely try to apply it in my role as a director of digital content for two CBS affiliates in Oklahoma? Would I maybe try to teach journalism students somewhere at a college nearby?

Yes to both.

But then the election happened, and it was not about the result. It was about the campaign strategy and the impotence of legacy media. It wasn’t needed. It wasn’t effective.

That’s an aggressive statement, but feel free to spot the lie. There isn’t one.

And that’s when the formula for success became quite clear to me, and it’s a formula that will work for any business (B2B or B2C), brand, entrepreneur, aspiring influencer, nonprofit, law firm, health care agency, politician or policy maker.

The formula is to grow your own audience through video, audio and the written word, supported by organic social media, especially vertical video.

The how-you-do-it part is more complicated in practice, but it’s simple in theory. You create for yourself a persona and a narrative that becomes part of an online identity for yourself that is communicated consistently as part of a presence on YouTube, on podcasts and in newsletters — using organic social media to support the strategy and drive people to those platforms, and then eventually to a landing page or some place where the fan is converted to client.

You know what this is.

It’s the funnel.

What’s different here is that the strategic formula that worked in the 2024 presidential election, deciding the next leader of the free world, will absolutely work for you. The operative word there is ‘work’ because it’s not magic.

***

This is usually where paralysis creeps in for most folks.

I understand, and I’ve been there.

To be perfectly honest and transparent, I’ve also dreamed about starting my own business ever since I worked for digital marketing agencies in Dallas more than two decades ago, watching entrepreneurs the same age as myself achieving big things. I don’t think I was as interested in the outcome as I was the journey.

And that journey can be fraught with risk and failure. Young me wasn’t ready for that. No way.

Middle-aged me? I look at it differently now.

Everybody has a super power of some kind, a space where knowledge and passion meet.

Mine is talking about digital strategy and supporting others on their digital journey.

Teaching. Showing. Executing.

Where the magic happened this go-round is that the end of graduate school for me and the presidential election, and what it showed the world in terms of where digital communications are at, all happened at once.

It was the big bang of business epiphanies.

Doable Digital Media was born.

The name ‘Doable’ comes from my core belief that anything you want to achieve on digital is doable.

Doable by you. Without me. Without any agency.

Without legacy media.

However, most successful quests are not waged alone. You will need some help, whether it be from an agency or winning some earned media.

But this is a moment.

And the power is in your hands.

Your content. Your platforms. Your audience.

You are your own media now.

If this is resonating with you, too, I’d love to connect. Follow along, and I’ll do my best to walk that walk.