It is election day, so I am not allowed to talk politics. Fine. That is someone else’s job for the next few hours. What I can talk about is my own state of play: for the site, for what we are building next and for me.
Readers may have noticed I stopped doing the podcasts. There are two reasons and neither of them is mysterious.
First, cost versus return. I was subsidising the podcasts myself. No sponsor, no other revenue and they became prohibitively expensive. I love doing them. I miss the conversations. But love does not pay the invoices. If you, or someone you know, want to sponsor The Good Oil podcast, get in touch through the contact page. I will pick the mic back up the moment the numbers make sense.
Second, my cancer diagnosis. I have to put my health first. That is not optional.
The diagnosis came as a shock. It has put unexpected costs on me and I can no longer subsidise the website, the podcasts or anything else out of my own pocket. That is why I have been pushing free members to become paying members and lower-tier members to upgrade to VIP.
I will beat this. It is treatable and I will likely have some kind of surgical procedure in the new year. That is all the medical detail I am going to put here.
Good Oil AI
Despite all that, I have put a lot of time into building and deploying the Good Oil AI system. It is live at app.goodoil.ai. In plain English, it is a research desk for New Zealand public life: MP profiles and dossiers, a bill index and stages, donations and pecuniary interests, wires and an Insight Assistant that answers from the live database with citations. There is also an Organise mode for people, tasks and campaigns. Free gets you the public file. Paid Insight, which is the same entitlement as Good Oil VIP on this site, unlocks the full desk. We have plans to extend it further.
Alongside that, I have built AI production bots that make different kinds of video, from explainers to promos. I want to do more of this. Better videos and more of it, for members who actually pay for the work. That needs more VIP members.
My focus now is more content of exceptional quality for VIP members. If you are not one, consider joining. VIP includes automatic access to Good Oil AI. On goodoil.news the active paid tiers are Basic at NZ$5 a month, Basic+ at NZ$15 a month and VIP at NZ$25 a month (yearly options sit at NZ$50, NZ$150 and NZ$250). Free is free and it is a shop window. VIP is the desk.
I have been doing this non-stop for more than 20 years. It is fair to say I am more exhausted after this election than ever before. I put that down to the stress of the diagnosis and the effects of treatment. The work still gets done. The tank is just lower than I like.
Act Before Noon
I have also built two other projects and I want to share them with you.
The first is Act Before Noon. It crystallises my daily goal-setting plans: take stock, choose a few tasks and act before noon. The New Zealand site is actbeforenoon.co.nz (there is also actbeforenoon.com for the US-dollar workbook – both are live). The workbook is a 20-page PDF plan, with a free companion on faith, prayer and goal setting. For Kiwis it is NZ$15 including GST.
I also designed an Act Before Noon Grok Bot. It turns what you are facing into a few written, dated goals and one step to do before noon. Faith is optional: it brings scripture in only if you ask. I use it every day.
The Stoic Way
The other site is The Stoic Way (thestoicway.nz). It pursues Stoicism in small, daily, exact doses: a passage, a plain modern reading and one thing to do before the day is out.
One of my heroes, and the person whose strategy got me to number one in New Zealand, is Ryan Holiday. I recently went to see him when he came here (13 October), at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna, Auckland. He talked about how Stoicism can guide your life under pressure. The talk had a profound impact on me, and it gave me the push to build The Stoic Way.
I also built an advice bot for Grok Bot that guides you through any challenge: The Stoic Way bot. Free to copy. I use it daily too.
The Stoic Way leans on Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. Marcus, writing to himself, put it bluntly: “Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live. Necessity hangs over you. Be good while you live and it is in your power.” That is Meditations 4.17.
Epictetus, in the Enchiridion, cuts the same way: “Do not seek that the things that happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things that happen to be as they are, and you will flow well.”
Seneca belongs in the same conversation, even if The Stoic Way site sticks to Marcus and Epictetus for its daily passages. In Letter 13 to Lucilius he wrote: “There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” That line has been sitting with me through treatment. The fear is often louder than the fact.
Gospel Bot
May I also commend another Grok Bot, developed by EKO: the Gospel Bot. Tell it what you are facing and it shows you where your story already lives in the Bible. I am glad it exists.
Life is full of challenges. The next one for me is building on the successes we already have. That only works if readers commit: free members becoming paid, paid members moving up to VIP and the people who can afford to sponsor the podcast saying so.
Because of the cancer challenge, I am now researching and have started writing a long-overdue book about my life. I want it to be a proper account of the road. More on that when there is a chapter worth showing.
I am still here. The site is still here. The tools are better than they have ever been. If you value the work, help keep it standing. Join, upgrade, sponsor the podcast or just try one of the bots and tell me what you think. I will beat this and I intend to keep publishing while I do.
