PORTFOLIO CAREERS + MEDIA BRANDS
Hello, Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Curious Friends—and welcome back to Curiositea, the podcast by Concept Nest.
In this episode. . .
We’re joined by Annie Heise Alden, a woman whose career is anything but linear. Over the course of her life, Annie has been a serious tennis player, an actress on shows like NBC’s The Blacklist, the founder of an equestrian apparel company, a mother, an author, and, most recently, the founder of a new media brand.At first glance, these might seem like a collection of very different chapters, but Annie has spent this season of her life looking back at those experiences, synthesizing them, and uncovering the “through line” that connects them all. That through line is The Gap Theory, a philosophy she coined for both life and design. At its core, The Gap Theory asks us to get comfortable with what we don’t yet know. And doing that, Annie argues, requires a few things:
+ HUMILITY: accepting the fact that we don’t know what we don’t know
+ PATIENCE: settling into ambiguity and recognizing that the unknown could be the most valuable part of the process
+ GUMPTION (our personal favorite): the willingness to go for it because…why not?
Those ideas become more than just the framework for The Gap Theory; they also become the lens through which we explore Annie’s career and, ultimately, our conversation in this episode.We talk about building atypical and multifaceted careers, what it means to “mindfully engage” with emerging technologies, and even the process of creating abstract art — a practice with no clearly defined beginning, middle, or end. In each conversation, we find ourselves arriving at the same place: the space between what we know and what we have yet to discover.And perhaps that’s what I enjoyed most about this conversation. Each topic leaves just enough room to evolve — to open another door, raise another question, and challenge what we thought we knew five minutes ago… That’s the point, isn’t it?
We only know what we know and what we know is shaped by what we’ve experienced so far, but what we come to know next might completely change the way we see everything that came before. We are never done. We are never finished. We are, in every sense, a work in progress… so why not embrace that?
LEARN
+ Buy Annie's book, Restless by Design: Notes on Staying With Yourself While Everything Moves
+ Dig into Annie's thoughts on Substack+ What is a creative philosophy?
+ Is AI helping or hurting our brains?
+ AI's Impact on the Environment
FOLLOW YOUR CURIOSITEA
0:00 Introducing Annie Heise Alden
3:25 What is a media brand?
4:58 The Thesis of A Multifaceted Career
5:56 Who is Annie Heise Alden behind the scenes?
8:02 Annie’s Creative Philosophy: The Gap Theory
10:21 Beginner’s Mind
14:59 Ideas Evolve as You Evolve
15:31 Whistleblower
17:34 Portfolio Career
19:06 Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself
20:52 Glen’s Portfolio Career: Innovation and Process Optimization
24:54 Reliving Past Experiences with a New Perspective
27:36 Creative Practice and Play
28:34 Abstract Art: Divorcing Outcome
30:07 What NOT to Put on a T-shirt
33:54 Experimentation Requires a Lack of Preciousness
35:35 Well-versed in Risk
35:59 “The Entertainment Industry is Not a Meritocracy”
39:06 Genuine Curiosity
40:16 Why is my brain the one that’s different?
40:19 Rote Learning in the Era of AI
42:18 AI and Entrepreneurship
44:31 “AI can’t replicate experience”
49:26 AI, Sustainability, and Balance
53:07 Is AI helping or hurting our brains?
56:16 Book Recs
58:32 Rapid Fire Questions
1:03:24 Synthesizing an Hour-long Chat with Annie
1:04:43 How to Purchase Annie's Book and Follow Along