OK, OK. How 'bout...

Dean Moore: Living at the intersection of creativity and commerce for a cool two decades.

I co-wrote that line with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4. 

First, I uploaded my super-deluxe "Hire Flyer" résumé, and he came back with a nice, sturdy bio draft based on it. It was an impressive read, which...sounded nothing like me. In tone or accuracy.

So I decided to spill my guts out to Claude. I told him of growing up in the Midwest chasing an MTV-inspired rock 'n' roll North Star. Securing a journalism degree so I could write about music until I was a pro musician myself. And of getting to pretty much do just that—on a small scale in Indianapolis, then on a large(r) scale in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Nashville.

While touring and recording, I also started to, as Claude puts it, "help organizations navigate the complex terrain where artistic vision meets business reality."

My A.I. buddy also feels my life to this point has been "a masterclass in understanding how creative and technology industries actually work." Which sounds a bit...lofty. But he's right that I've been a touring musician with major label artists, a journalist covering the music industry's evolution, and an executive helping companies translate between creative and business stakeholders.

So I have indeed been engaged at every level of both the music and tech ecosystems. I've worked with major labels, indie startups, and legacy publications. And I've managed teams, developed content strategies, and solved problems under intense pressure while juggling multiple constituencies—artists, executives, investors, and audiences who all speak different languages but still need to understand where one another's coming from.

Shortly upon landing at American Songwriter, I transformed a sprawling team of 28 freelancers—"sprawling" figuratively, as their skill levels varied wildly, and literally, as we had a contingent of remote ESL writers from as far off as Cameroon—into a focused unit of five expert music journalists. I also overhauled internal editorial standards based on AP Style, and helped navigate the tension between traffic goals and editorial integrity. In earlier roles, I've championed sustainable customer care practices over exploitative tactics, even when it meant challenging established revenue models.

This might not sound like typical corporate experience—it isn't. And it's up to you whether you agree with Claude's first-draft analysis that "it's something more valuable. It's the ability to see patterns across industries, to understand what drives decision-making at every level, and to communicate complex ideas in ways that resonate with diverse audiences." Whether I'm explaining spatial audio technology to consumers or helping a band understand their label's marketing strategy, I suppose I agree with Claude that I'm essentially doing the same thing: "making the complicated simple and the abstract concrete."

And here's some deeper insight I gathered all by my human self: the entertainment industry taught me that every project is a startup; every album a product launch; every tour a complex logistics operation with moving parts that must work in perfect harmony. I've found these skills translate directly to organizations trying to manage stakeholders, launch products, or tell compelling stories in a crowded marketplace.

I bring the strategic thinking of someone who's seen all kinds of businesses find all kinds of ways to succeed and fail; the communication skills of a journalist who's had to distill complex stories from multiple sources under deadline pressure; and the perspective of someone who understands that behind every business challenge is a human story waiting to be told.

Ready to help your organization bridge the gap between vision and execution? Let's discuss your next project.

No. No, no, no. That is such Claudespeak. The guy was such a help in determining which elements I should key in on from my disparate background, as well as how to best represent them. But that's...ew. 

Tell you what. Hit me up at dean@deanmoore.media. You can tell me all about what you do and why you do it. And I can (hopefully) convince you that I actually wrote the above myself. Mostly.

Yours,