Your most vital creation is yourself
Welcome to a different way to build. This is a sanctuary for polymaths, generalists, and deep thinkers. The internet wants you to build a personal brand. We are here to turn raw potential into a concrete life’s work.
Every culture has built something meant to outlast the people who built it.
Pyramid of the Sun · Teotihuacan · c. 200 ADThe artist builds for the same reason, and calls it a body of work.
After Otto Rank · Art and ArtistGoethe called his the pyramid of his existence.
“The desire to raise the pyramid of my existence as high as possible into the air outweighs everything else.”
Goethe to Lavater · 1780It is built one stone at a time, and nobody else can build it for you.
That is the work this house exists for
About me
Hi, I am Philipp.
I am a freak turned entrepreneur, reborn as an artist. I built three e-commerce brands, scaled the business to seven figures and sold it, and then ran a branding studio for other people’s companies.
In my twenties I bought two blueprints for success, and both of them worked. That was exactly the problem, because each time I had built somebody else’s business. When I finally stood on my own feet I did not feel free. I felt blocked, and I turned my own will against myself.
What got me out was not another strategy. I committed to a body of work that was mine and built it in public, one piece at a time. Serapex is the philosophy that came out of that. It joins Otto Rank’s idea of the artist with the realities of running a business, and it rests on one claim: your most vital creation is yourself, and the work is how you make it.
Read the whole storyThe Exhibition
Selected essays on making work that is your own, in a market that would rather you made content.
Substack Is Turning Into a Pyramid Scheme
Substack used to feel like a library. You could spend an hour in the feed and come away with three ideas you had not considered before.
The Niche Is Dead
If you want to make a fortune on the internet today, there is a very simple three-step formula. Step one: buy my $997 course.
How to Build an Audience Without Creating Content
I spent my early twenties getting seduced by gurus. It started back in 2016.
How I Wasted Four Years Building the Wrong Business
Stop Creating Content
The Whole Collection
You do not need to know yourself better.
Most people who find their way here have done the inner work. They have read the books, named the shadow and understood exactly why they are stuck, and the understanding has become one more place to hide. What they need is a form for what they already know, and a place where the work gets finished.
Which sentence is yours?
Before you leave
Sign the guestbook.
Leave your address and the next essay will find you when it is finished. It comes from my Substack, where everything I have written is kept, and you can leave as easily as you came in.
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