As I’ve spent the last year watching much of my life completely implode, I’ve had countless reasons to stop and reflect. Two of the most recent instances for reflection have been turning 45 (I’m going to pretend that’s a typo…no really I meant to type 25), and secondly I walked away from the final mix review session for the series finale of Cobra Kai, a show I’ve worked on (and loved) since 2018.
While it’s incredibly difficult (and often terrifying) to navigate so much uncertainty, I’ve decided it’s time to lean into my fears and accept two very clear realizations:
- It’s time to retire from editing films & television.
- It’s time to say goodbye to the “Optimize Yourself” brand.
To clarify → I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE.
I still intend to provide you with educational content in the form of podcast interviews, online courses, and coaching services. In fact my vision for the future is to significantly expand our offerings so we can continue to both inspire & empower you to design the more rewarding, fulfilling, and sustainable creative career that you deserve.
But what got me here will not get me there.
Now that Cobra Kai’s final episodes are mixed & delivered to Netflix, to act on the advice of Johnny Lawrence himself, I’ve decided to go “all in” on building a world-class educational business designed specifically for those of us who identify as “creatives.”
If you live to create I intend to build the best community on the planet to help you expand your peer group, build your dream network of expert & mentors, and help you find collaborators who believe their work has a purpose and should have a positive impact on the world.
If you create to live – i.e. your livelihood depends on your creativity – I also intend to provide you with the best educational resources to help you create amazing work…but without sacrificing your health, your relationships, and your sanity in the process.
And to do this in a way that is authentic to me, to my personal brand, and most importantly to our global community, I have to say goodbye to “Optimize Yourself.”
The Power of Your Brand
We talk a lot in the Optimizer community about the power of having a strong personal brand. Man oh man if I only had a time machine, I’d go back to April of 2014 and teach myself what I know now about branding when I had this crazy idea: “What if I got a group of my editor friends together and we went hiking and inspired each other to get healthier?” This was when I (with some help from friends & colleagues) came up with the brand Fitness In Post.
Why “Fitness In Post?” Because it was catchy! In our tiny little corner of the entertainment industry, we editors always joked about the idea of everyone “fixing it in post” (i.e. neglecting doing their own jobs since we would fix their work for them), so Fitness In Post was a play on that concept.
The problem is that it was an inside joke that all of about 500 people understood. Never in a million years did I think my podcast would become anything, yet within a few months I was getting upwards of 10k downloads per month with zero advertising or social media of any kind. We grew via word of mouth. I had tapped into an entire global community’s need to openly discuss what no was was willing to:
Our jobs were literally killing us.
When one of my very first blog posts A Classic Case of Post-Production Burnout went viral, I was off to the races with thousands of readers.
Shortly after came the brand confusion.
The Fitness In Post brand ran into one of two recurring problems:
- Almost everyone in post-production was terrified of fitness.
- People interested in fitness had no idea what “post” referred to. Was it like a post-workout recovery program?
When I realized this was a brand that could potentially have a positive impact far beyond my original intentions, I began to take it seriously. And it only took me a couple of years to realize I was building a brand on a confusing name I simply couldn’t scale beyond a microscopic niche.
Then one day while I was reviewing the copy on my website, the new brand name hit me:
Of course. Optimize…Yourself!!!!
From that moment I began thinking about the countless ways I could expand educational products off this brand name.
- Move Yourself
- Focus Yourself
- Advance Yourself
- Balance Yourself
Etc etc etc.
(There were also products we discussed late into the night fueled by massive sleep deprivation, like the program to help you manage digestive issues – Shit Yourself. And the product about sexual health – Go Fuck Yourself.) 🙂
I was off to the races for the next several years building a multitude of self-guided online courses that then transitioned into coaching services, live workshops, our brand new yearlong creative mastermind, and more. I was able to successfully build an audience around this brand name that attracted a very specific kind of person – creative minds who wanted to achieve their true potential…without burning out.
Then came fucking “Hustle Culture.”
As I was building this brand I was consistently running up against the problem of finding numerous other brands in the online space using some form of “Optimize” in their brand name (it is a very common term, after all). But none of them were penetrating the post-production sector of the entertainment industry. Therefore I was able to keep doing my professional development thing as a big fish in a tiny, tiny pond.
But after the pandemic hit, everyone and their “bro” decided this was their moment to capitalize on the unprecedented amounts of attention they could command online by becoming “influencers.” (just the mere mention of the name makes me want to shower.)
The select few in the optimization space who I genuinely respected (e.g. Tim Ferriss, Ben Greenfield, Brian Johnson) were getting drowned out by countless bros and their bros doing bro-y things and optimizing every aspect of their lives through “hacks.” Suddenly my original intent behind the word “optimize” was co-opted by an influencer culture desperate to capture the most attention with their bargain-basement “content” (another word that prompts an immediate shower).
Couple losing control of my interpretation of the word “optimize” with the realization that the true value I was providing my audience had nothing to do with information or education and everything to do with creating a community, and I knew the brand name no longer fit (even if I wasn’t ready to admit it yet).
Of all of my professional accomplishments in my 20+ years in Hollywood, without a doubt the one I’m most proud of is building a thriving online community of creatives who support and uplift each other. Therefore, the idea of optimizing “Yourself” no longer fit the brand. A more fitting brand name would’ve been “Optimize Each Other.”
Finally, this last year was the nail in the coffin for the brand as I watched my personal life completely implode. Every facet of my life was the polar opposite of being “optimized.” My fitness routines and my health fell apart, I stopped focusing on business growth, and it took everything in my core just to survive. As a recovering perfectionist it’s always been a struggle cutting myself some slack when I’m not achieving my best. And being the face of a brand with the word “optimize” in it was only fueling the flames of shame & guilt.
The conclusion I’ve come to from building a very successful career as a Hollywood film & television editor, a successful online business with hundreds of students on six continents – and all while staying present for my family – is that “optimization” is not a goal worthy of striving for. Neither is building a life around “hacks.”
Life is not a linear progression culminating in optimization.
Life is instead a cyclical journey where the best we can hope to achieve is consistent progression rather than the pursuit of perfection.
Therefore it is with a clear mind (and a bit of a heavy heart) that I’ve come to the conclusion it is time to say goodbye to Optimize Yourself.
But to reiterate one more time → I. AM. NOT. GOING. ANYWHERE.
I and my team are working tirelessly behind the scenes to prepare the launch of our new brand, relaunch the podcast, and open enrollment for another round of our yearlong creative mastermind (as well as our upgraded community membership) in the new year. So stay tuned, because as my father always used to say:
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
In the meantime, we’d like to have you along for the ride as we redefine our brand and design the next round of products & services to both inspire & empower you to build a fulfilling life around your creativity.
So to get the conversation started, I’d love to know…
What is the most important value you’ve received from the Optimize Yourself brand over the years?
Zack Arnold
Zack Arnold (ACE) is an award-winning Hollywood film editor & producer (Cobra Kai, Empire, Burn Notice, Unsolved, Glee), a documentary director, father of 2, an American Ninja Warrior, and the creator of Optimize Yourself. He believes we all deserve to love what we do for a living...but not at the expense of our health, our relationships, or our sanity. He provides the education, motivation, and inspiration to help ambitious creative professionals DO better and BE better. “Doing” better means learning how to more effectively manage your time and creative energy so you can produce higher quality work in less time. “Being” better means doing all of the above while still prioritizing the most important people and passions in your life…all without burning out in the process. Click to download Zack’s “Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Creativity (And Avoiding Burnout).”