Three Point Four Media was built with a simple structure in mind: Noah and I lead all the work, and we tap our deep roster of talented freelancers to suit our client’s needs. It’s just the two of us. And that’s by design. But the TPF family grew at the end of February—a week early, to boot—which means Noah is out on parental leave.
What does parental leave look like for a two-person studio? Well, morally and philosophically we want to be a company that supports families. So Noah’s out, full salary, for a little while as he masters the art of diaper changing. He’ll be back in the spring. And then take off a few more months over the summer. (Last week a client told me, “That’s really the new thing with parental leave for companies that actually offer it—six weeks off after the baby comes and a few months later.”)
Why am I sharing these mundane HR updates? Because a lot of folks have been asking me, that’s why! Friends, loved ones, freelancers, clients—they all want to know how we do it. The answer is extremely boring: like any company big or small that takes care of their employees. You bring in some extra help where necessary, add a little more to your plate, and everything still gets done on time. It’s not that complicated. Also, Noah is still sending me emails.
Onto the links.
A project
I spent three days in Sonoma with our clients Acumen America at their first-ever CEO Summit. The event was a success. It was a rare chance for the insanely hard-working founders of Acumen America’s portfolio companies to connect with each other, discussing their work advancing health, bridging the wealth gap, and building a better future for workers. When people say they “want to make the world a better place,” well, these are the folks doing it. We also collaborated with the most excellent director Ian Kibbe on the above video, which was a huge hit when we screened it at the Summit.
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An article
I’ve been listening to Panda Bear (née Noah Lennox) and his band Animal Collective for going on two decades now and know next-to-nothing about him. I even interviewed him once for Vanity Fair! He is a man of mystery, but GQ finally got him on the record in what is probably the most substantive profile of his career (which he even acknowledges in the piece). His new record, Sinister Grift, is very good and filled with the buoyant vocals that critics have long compared to the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, much to Lennox’s dismay. What does it mean to be an indie pioneer entering middle age?
From 2004 until 2009, Animal Collective released four straight albums that redrew the lines between pop and experimental music; during that stretch, Lennox also released 2007’s Person Pitch, a solo album that reimagined the possibilities of singing over samples that had been twisted and woven into uncanny shapes. He subsequently emerged as a vital collaborator to bona fide stars and iconoclasts alike—Daft Punk, Solange Knowles, Dean Blunt, to name a few.
But those albums are now influential touchstones nearing or past their 20-year anniversaries. Lennox’s slot on this tour can feel, then, like a nod to a lineage steadily fading into the rear-view, as if Panda Bear—and, by extension, Animal Collective—is a test case for audiences full of people who may have been only toddlers when he released his landmarks. Is post-millennial indie rock ready to become … classic rock?
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A ski race
The 2025 American Birkebeiner (aka the Birkie) was a success. A beautiful day in the Northwoods of Wisconsin: Single digits at the start line, 25 and sunny at the finish 50 kilometers later. I felt pretty bad for a while and then pretty good for a while—and then pretty bad again. That’s ski racing. As you can tell from the look on my face, at about 49.95 kilometers, I was ready for a cold beer and a brat with some sauerkraut, which you can smell wafting from the sidelines the last 200 meters of the race.
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A perfect dive bar
Steps from the Birkie finish line in downtown Hayward, Wisconsin, is one of America’s finest drinking establishments: The Moccasin Bar. The beer is ice cold, the walls are lined with taxidermy diorama, and the jukebox is very loud. On race day the bar is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with washed up former Olympians, middle-of-the-pack heroes like myself, and, most years, the Birkie champ is roaming around with a pitcher of beer. It’s a perfect scene, and I look forward to it every year.
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That’s (most likely) it for cross country skiing content in your favorite small business newsletter for this year. We have some great Q&As on deck for you and a guest newsletter later this month. Stay tuned.