Hey friends!

Last week I popped into your inbox with invitation to something I’m really pumped about: the Film Impact Summit we’re hosting at Distant Moon (IN TWO WEEKS!) on September 12, 2025. It’s a one-day event (limited to just 50 people) where leaders from Kingdom Story Company, Hillsdale, Freethink/Big Think, and top agencies will gather to talk about where storytelling, education, and philanthropy meet.

But I didn’t want the newsletter to just be about “marketing an event.” I wanted to make sure everyone (whether you’re in the room or not) walks away with tools you can use right now. So last week, I kicked things off with two insights:

1. Audience-powered film beats blind storytelling.

Don’t wait until your project is done to invite people in. Test your ideas early, share rough cuts, ask what’s sticking. When your audience helps shape the story, they’ll champion it like it’s their own.

2. Find your niche and take bold risks.

Hillsdale College is a great example—they invested in cinematic online courses long before there was proof it would work. It felt risky at the time, but now millions watch. The big takeaway: breakthrough stories always come with risk, but that’s also where growth lives.

(If you missed it, you can check out the previous newsletter here!)

This week, I’m continuing the series with two new ideas to think about and implement:

3. True stories/Documentaries can turn your viewers into brand advocates (and)

4. The principles behind turning your story into a box-office success

Let’s dive in!

3. Use true stories to turn viewers into advocates

Data convinces the mind. Stories move the heart. But the most powerful campaigns don’t choose one or the other – they use stories first, then let the data serve as proof.

Freethink’s case studies are living proof of this:

• When they produced short films for the John Templeton Foundation, their stories didn’t just rack up hundreds of thousands of views – they led to record watch time and created new global conversations around science and spirituality.
• In their work with Turntide Technologies, they crafted human-centered stories around complex innovations in sustainable energy. The result? Inbound leads jumped 5x, fundraising became easier, and recruitment surged because people connected with the human why behind the tech.

How to apply this:

• Start with One Person: Find the individual who embodies your mission. Don’t tell us about “10,000 students.” Tell us about Maria, the first in her family to graduate, and the turning point your program created for her.
• Craft the Journey: Every story needs struggle, turning point, and resolution. Show us the pain before the triumph. That tension is what keeps viewers watching.
• Add Data Later: Once your audience’s heart is engaged, then show them the scale. Story first. Data second. This order is what transforms passive viewers into donors, volunteers, and advocates.

4. Turning Your Story into a Box Office Success

Blockbusters aren’t accidents. They succeed because they deliver on the rules audiences expect. Ignore those rules, and you don’t just risk failure: you almost guarantee it.

As my friend Bobby (an executive at Kingdom Story Company) says, “the checkboxes WANT to be checked! So check them!” (Oh, by the way, Bobby Downes is an executive at Kingdom Story Company. They’ve had tons of HUGE box office hits in theaters. He knows a thing or two about reaching audiences.)

What this means:

Audiences come with certain expectations: strong characters, real stakes, a clear arc, emotional payoff. And different audience demographics require very specific types of content or story beats. If you skip these because you think you’re “above the rules,” you’ll only confuse or bore them.

Hubris is the enemy. Storytellers often think their story is so important that the normal rules of narrative don’t apply. But storytelling isn’t about self-expression. It’s about communicating to your audience.

Something my Dad always used to say applies here: Communication requires not just projecting information. It requires the receipt of that information by the audience it’s intended for. If nobody is watching your content, you’re not communicating. You’re just shouting into the void.

How to apply this:

• Identify the Hero’s Journey: Who is the protagonist? What obstacle do they face? What’s at stake if they fail? Where’s the turning point?
• Study What Works: Watch the films and campaigns that capture attention in your space. Don’t copy them, but understand the emotional laws they’re obeying. AND invest the time to understand what YOUR specific audience demands. Christian audiences demand very different things in a movie than horror fans. People who are concerned about the water crisis in third world countries have a VERY different set of boxes they need checked than people who care about American political issues. Understand your audience and speak to them in the way they need to be addressed.
• Deliver, Then Surprise: First, give audiences the emotional beats they expect. Then, once you’ve earned their trust, surprise them with the fresh perspective that makes your story unforgettable.

Audiences decide what succeeds. Ignore the rules they live by, and your film or video dies unseen. Respect those rules, and you earn the right to innovate.

Ok, so those are a few additional weekend thoughts that I hope help you dream and change the world! I’d love to hear what you think and any insights you have! (I’ve received a handful of emails from people saying “they’re sure I don’t read the email responses,” but honestly I read every single reply that hits my inbox and try to respond to all of them! Also a little secret: replying to my newsletters actually helps teach google and other email inboxes that this newsletter isn’t spam! So lets keep the conversation rolling!

Oh, and don’t forget to join us at the Film Impact Summit in two weeks! I hope to see you there!

Here’s to Human Flourishing!
-Ian

Join Us at the Summit!

These are just starting points. At the Impact Film Summit, we’ll dive deeper into frameworks, show examples from inside campaigns, and give you tools to build films that inspire and sustain growth.

Date: September 12, 2025
Location: Hotel Burg, Leesburg, VA
Register Now—Limited to 50 People
Want to learn more? Watch the video below!

<p>The post Secrets to Box Office Success first appeared on Distant Moon.</p>

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the unexpected gift of closed doors – how sometimes when an opportunity disappears, life (providence) might actually be pointing you to something better for that time of your life. I still believe that. But I there’s another component of finding new opportunities that I want to talk about this week: projecting your vision and dreams out into the world.

Look, I don’t subscribe to “manifest it and it’ll happen.” The universe isn’t some magical wish-granting genie waiting to realign to the vibrations you’re putting out there (Sorry Napoleon Hill). But, I am convinced that what you believe, think about and talk about help to realign reality. 

Hold up. Didn’t you just straight-up contradict yourself?

Here’s what I mean: Your brain is a pattern-seeking machine. In fact the human brain is one of the best pattern finders in existence. (Actually crazy interesting: check out this article. Or this one.) Turns out we’re actually still better than AI at pattern recognition. Go team Human!

If consistently fed with vision and clarity, that squishy miraculous brain of yours will find connections, patterns, and pathways that lead to actions that open doors or recognize the paths to open doors. Even better: other people’s brains do that too. The more you talk about your dreams and goals, the more vision-aligned people show up. (I believe a decent dose of Divine orchestration is also involved, but that’s a good conversation for over coffee.)

In essence, in the same way that we train AI on datasets that help it recognize patterns, the more you train your brain on datasets that feature objectives, dreams, values, and education from a wide array of disciplines, the more effective your brain is at pattern finding when presented with real-life opportunities and challenges.

This “training your brain” is why we at Distant Moon practice three things every week:
1. Positive Focus – What’s going well? Dwell on that and reorient your emotional perspective.
2. Dream/Vision Repetition – Where are we going? Why does that excite us and get us up in the morning? Even more importantly, how does that change the world?
3. Values Discussion – What are the values we live by? Why are they important and how do they remind us of the ultimate purpose of what we do – serving others through our efforts.

So, that’s part of the equation, but what happens when the doors open too fast? What happens when the dream starts to bury you? When all the blessings you once begged for come crashing in at the same time?

“Well that’s a weird question!”

Is there such a thing as too much opportunity? Here’s why I ask:

• In the last month, I’ve our team has been on the road across five states.
• In just three weeks, we’ve had four shoots across four cities.
• Our team just wrapped a full motion graphics/animation pass on a feature film for our amazing friends at Freethink (more info coming soon!).
• We launched a new online course with Hillsdale, are worked on an upcoming series with University of Dallas, and juggled 15–20 projects in various stages of production.
• We also welcomed three new hires (two editors and a sales manager) in the same stretch.

We’re not a 100-person shop. We’re 20. And this is a lot. I personally started to feel pretty wiped. So I did a gut check: I asked the team how they’re feeling, expecting a wave of stress.

And I braced myself.

But our senior editor, Nathan, spoke up said, “Everything is pretty chill.” (For those not in the know, that’s Millennial for “The work isn’t too overwhelming and things are manageable.”)

Hold up. What?

Who Not How and Unique Ability.

Here’s why I think the team isn’t losing their minds: we’ve embraced a simple idea from Dan Sullivan’s book, Who Not How. It’s this:

Stop asking, “How do I do this?”
Start asking, “Who can help me do this?”

Before this mindset shift, various members of our team were trying to do everything. I myself thought excellence meant being the person who carried the entire project. Write it. Shoot it. Cut it. Lose sleep over it. That’s what good artists do, right?

But good artists also burn out. And Distant Moon is in it for the long-haul (have I mentioned that we’re working to build the most impactful film studio of the 21st century? Manifes…er. Dataset building. )

So we changed.

We don’t do it perfectly, but our team is built to operate around unique abilities. Unique ability is “your own set of natural talents and the passion that fuels you to contribute in the ways that most motivate you.” We organize not around who’s available or who’s done it before, but around what people excel at and what gives them energy rather than zapping them of energy. 

Where are they most skilled? Most energized? Most needed?

And guess what? When people do what they excel at, everything improves. Output. Energy. Morale. Fulfillment. We step out of survival mode and into sustainability – without lowering the bar on excellence. In fact the quality increases.

This is the 80/20 principle in action. When you’re operating in your zone, you can create 80% of the value with only 20% of the drag.

But that’s the Distant Moon team. Guess who still struggles with balance! (If you guessed me. You got it. It’s definitely me.)

But this newsletter is already getting CRAZY long. And we’re not writing a book here (although, HarperCollins, hit me up if you’re interested).

So consider this the cliffhanger for Part 2: “When Opportunity breaks you (almost),” in which I discuss why the myths of the “grass is always greener” and the pervasive “comfort crisis” all around us.

Until then, here’s to human flourishing!

-Ian

<p>The post Overwhelmed by Opportunity? Part 1 first appeared on Distant Moon.</p>

In case you missed it, Last week’s newsletter explored how training your brain to recognize patterns through vision, focus, and values can open unexpected doors – and how surrounding yourself with the right people makes all the difference when opportunities multiply. We also shared how Distant Moon’s shift to “Who Not How” thinking (and leaning into each person’s unique ability) has helped us thrive amid a flood of new projects and growth. Ok. Here’s part 2!

Discomfort ≠ Failure

It Means You’re Growing

Right around the time I was adjusting to this new reality (read: holding on for dear life), I picked up a book that wrecked me in the best way – The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.

The book explores how modern life has systematically engineered out discomfort. And as a result, we’re soft – not just physically (although the last year of crossfit has shown me that too, haha!), but mentally and spiritually. We’re addicted to ease. But ease is not where growth lives.

One of the core ideas in the book is the concept of Misogi – a once-a-year, voluntary, extreme challenge designed to push you so far outside your comfort zone that you’re forced to meet a new version of yourself. You’re supposed to only be 50% sure you can even complete it.

That idea was honestly crazy exciting to me.

Because it explained something I’ve wrestled with in building a company – “what if I can’t do this?” or “what if this project kills me?” or “Can our team handle this?” In many ways, building a world-class creative team feels like a life-long Misogi! (And I’m guessing many of you feel similarly about your teams, businesses, and organizations.)

New opportunities. New responsibilities. New plateaus. All of it stretches you. All of it is slightly terrifying. And all of it – if we lean in – refines us into something stronger.

What feels like overwhelm might actually be a signpost of progress.

Easter’s big point? Growth is always on the far edge of discomfort. If you feel out of your depth, GOOD. That’s where transformation happens. Not when things are easy, but when they’re just barely possible.

Please note, I’m NOT saying just struggling is a badge of honor. I also don’t believe that, but don’t buy the cultural narrative that all struggle is bad. Sometimes it’s just a sign you’re trying to do important things. Whether you’re on the right or wrong side of that balance, only you can REALLY know by searching your heart.

So, If You’re Drowning in Goodness…

If your dream is starting to feel like a weight, don’t panic.

Instead:

• Shift your question. Stop asking “How do I do more?” and start asking “Who can I invite in?”
• Reframe the discomfort. That stress you feel? It might not be a red flag. It might be proof you’re expanding.
• Practice gratitude. Even in the chaos. Especially in the chaos.
• Communicate clearly. In work, in marriage, in family. Don’t let the fog of exhaustion cloud the connection that matters most.
• Celebrate the Misogi. You’re not failing. You’re leveling up.
  

I’m still in it. Still often exhausted. But I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.

Grateful for the ride. Thankful to share it with you all!
Here’s to Human Flourishing.

-Ian

The Moment won Best Multimedia Storytelling in the Webby Awards! The Webbys are a big deal and winning audience choice would be a huge boon for The Moment! 

(Viewer Discretion Advised. Involves Language and Sexual Situations.)

Thank you all so much for your support of this project! We can’t wait to share more updates!

<p>The post Overwhelmed by Opportunity? Part 2 first appeared on Distant Moon.</p>