Outsider Economics — TikTok / Short-Form Video Concepts
15 video concepts mixing Outsider Economics philosophy with Big Muddy visual content. Each is 30-90 seconds. Vertical format. No hashtags in script — add in post.
TT-01: The Dollar General Math
Hook (first 3 sec): "Dollar General opens a new store every six hours. Here's why." Premise: Walk through the site selection algorithm — target towns with low income and eliminated local retail. Show the investor deck language. Connect to extraction economics. End with: "They're not filling a gap. They ARE the gap." Visual approach: Start with drone shot of a Delta town's main street — Dollar General the only lit storefront. Cut to Chase walking the empty block. Screen capture of the 10-K filing with key phrases highlighted. Back to the empty storefronts. CTA: "Follow if you want the math they don't put on the sign."
TT-02: The Blues Room Multiplier
Hook (first 3 sec): "One musician. Five businesses. Zero extra marketing spend." Premise: Walk through the talent pipeline in real time. Show a musician arriving at the Inn, sound-checking at the Blues Room, sitting for a radio interview, getting photographed for the magazine. Same person, five revenue events. That's the coordination premium. Visual approach: Fast cuts following an actual musician through the full pipeline in one day. Time stamps on screen. Running dollar tally in corner showing value generated at each node. CTA: "This is what outsider economics looks like when it's running."
TT-03: 82 Cents Leaves
Hook (first 3 sec): "I tracked every dollar in a small town for 30 days. This is where it went." Premise: Visual breakdown of where money goes — rent (Memphis landlord), groceries (Bentonville), gas (London), phone (Dallas). Only 18 cents stays. The problem isn't income. It's circulation. Visual approach: Start at a kitchen table with actual receipts and bills spread out. Draw arrows on a whiteboard map showing money flowing OUT of town. Each arrow labeled with the corporate HQ city. The town shrinks visually as dollars leave. CTA: "The fix isn't earning more. It's keeping more local. I'll show you how."
TT-04: The Parking Lot Exchange
Hook (first 3 sec): "Five people. One parking lot. $1,380 in value. Zero dollars exchanged." Premise: Tell the story of the first coordination exchange. Gene's brakes, Linda's taxes, Rick's porch. Real people, real skills, real value created without cash. The town isn't broke — it's uncoordinated. Visual approach: Recreate or illustrate with a whiteboard sketch — draw five stick figures, list their skills and needs, draw connection lines. Show the matches light up. Running value counter. End with the total. CTA: "Your neighborhood is sitting on this right now. You just haven't asked yet."
TT-05: Highway 61 — The Undrawn Line
Hook (first 3 sec): "The most famous road in American music has zero economic strategy." Premise: Drive footage down Highway 61 naming each town — Memphis, Tunica, Clarksdale, Cleveland, Greenville, Vicksburg, Natchez, New Orleans. Same music, same food, same culture. No coordination between any of them. A tourist goes wherever Google sends them. What if the corridor marketed itself? Visual approach: Dashcam/GoPro footage of the actual drive. Town name overlays as you pass through each one. Split screen: left side is the current state (isolated towns), right side is the coordinated version (connected nodes on a map). CTA: "Somebody just has to draw the line. We're drawing it."
TT-06: The Off Switch
Hook (first 3 sec): "They're building money with an off switch." Premise: Explain CBDCs and programmable money in 60 seconds. Your savings won't work on Tuesdays, or outside city limits, or if you said the wrong thing online. Then the pivot: what you build instead. Labor can't be deplatformed. Your neighbor knowing you fix trucks can't be turned off. Visual approach: Start with phone screen showing a "Transaction Denied" notification (mocked up). Cut to Chase at a workbench. Hands fixing something real. Tools. Grease. "They can freeze your bank account. They can't freeze this." CTA: "Build something they can't turn off. Start with your hands."
TT-07: The Inn Nobody Would Fund
Hook (first 3 sec): "A bank in Charlotte told me no. Best thing that ever happened." Premise: Quick story of buying the Inn. Charlotte said no because their spreadsheet doesn't have a column for coordination premium. They see a B&B in a shrinking town. Chase sees the anchor node of a federated economy. Different spreadsheets, different outcomes. Visual approach: Start with a generic bank exterior, then cut to the Inn — porch, rooms, the Blues Room next door. Show the connections being drawn on screen — lines from the Inn to the venue, radio, magazine, directory. The web forming in real time. CTA: "Sometimes the best business plan is the one no bank understands."
TT-08: Cottage Food Law — The $75K Nobody Knows About
Hook (first 3 sec): "Mississippi will let you make $75,000 a year selling food from your kitchen. Most people have no idea." Premise: Break down the cottage food law. No commercial kitchen required. No food handler's license for most products. $75K cap. Baked goods, jams, pickles, tamales, candy. Walk through what you could start this weekend with what's already in your kitchen. Visual approach: Start in an actual home kitchen. Show the products that qualify — lay them out on a counter. On-screen text with the law citation. Quick math: sell 50 jars of jam a week at $12 = $31,200/year. From your kitchen. CTA: "Stop asking for permission. The law already said yes."
TT-09: Federation, Not Scale
Hook (first 3 sec): "Every good thing I've been part of got ruined the same way — it got too big." Premise: Gore-Tex caps every factory at 150 people. When they need more capacity, they build another factory across the parking lot. Two plants of 150 beat one plant of 300. Every time. Apply to community networks — don't scale past 100. Federate instead. Visual approach: Whiteboard animation. Draw one big circle — it cracks. Draw two smaller connected circles — they hold. Real examples on screen. End with a network diagram of federated nodes. CTA: "Don't build bigger. Build more — and connect them."
TT-10: What a Task Board Actually Looks Like
Hook (first 3 sec): "The most powerful piece of economic infrastructure costs $11 at Home Depot." Premise: Show and build a task board in real time. Three columns: NEED, CAN DO, DONE. Walk through how it works — someone writes "Need porch rails fixed," someone else moves it to CAN DO, they coordinate, it moves to DONE. No app. No startup. A whiteboard and a marker. Visual approach: Actual whiteboard setup. Time lapse of sticky notes being added, moved, completed over a week. Show the value counter adding up as tasks get done. End with the board full of completed items. CTA: "Put this up at your church, your bar, or your laundromat. Watch what happens."
TT-11: The Extraction Drive
Hook (first 3 sec): "I'm gonna drive one mile and show you extraction economics in real time." Premise: Ride-along through a small Delta town. Point out each extraction point — the Dollar General (Goodlettsville, TN), the payday lender (out-of-state PE firm), the gas station (London), the pharmacy (Woonsocket, RI — CVS HQ). Every dollar you spend here leaves. Show what USED to be in those spots — local businesses, names people remember. Visual approach: Dashcam or passenger-seat POV driving slowly through town. Name and HQ location overlay on each corporate storefront. Old photos of what was there before intercut with current state. CTA: "Not one of those dollars stays. Now you know why the town looks like this."
TT-12: The Coordination Premium — Live Math
Hook (first 3 sec): "A plumber makes $95 an hour. Watch what happens when he meets three people." Premise: Live whiteboard math. Plumber alone: $95/hr. Add electrician ($85/hr). Add framer ($70/hr). Add permit expediter ($50/hr). Separately: $300/hr total. Together, bidding renovations: $425/hr. Same people. Same hours. 4.5x value because they're coordinated. Visual approach: Whiteboard or tablet with marker. Draw each person, their rate, then the combined rate. Circle the multiplier. Show why the jump happens — they can bid PROJECTS, not just hours. CTA: "Your town has this math sitting in it right now. Nobody's run the numbers."
TT-13: The Sound of Clarksdale
Hook (first 3 sec): No words. Just the sound of a blues guitar from inside the Blues Room, muffled through the door. Then the door opens. Premise: Let the Blues Room sell itself for 30 seconds — the music, the crowd, the room. Then Chase voice-over: this is what a coordination node sounds like. This musician slept at the Inn, got interviewed on the radio, will be in the magazine next month. One artist, five businesses, one town keeping the money. Visual approach: Cinematic. Start outside the door. Open it. Handheld inside the venue. Close-ups of hands on guitar, audience faces, the room. Warm light. Then pull back to the wider network — show the Inn down the street, the radio tower, the magazine rack. CTA: "This is outsider economics with a backbeat. Come see it."
TT-14: Small Town Death Sequence
Hook (first 3 sec): "Small towns don't die all at once. They die in order. Here's the order." Premise: Walk through the five-stage death sequence: young people leave, local businesses close, extractors arrive, services vanish, everyone says it's dying. But it's not dying — it's being drained. The people and skills are still there. The money just has nowhere to circulate. Visual approach: Five cards/frames, each labeled with the stage. Show real footage or photos from Delta towns at each stage. End with a reversal — what the first step back looks like. A task board. A Saturday. Five people. CTA: "It's not dead. It's drained. There's a difference — and the difference is fixable."
TT-15: Time Can't Leave Town
Hook (first 3 sec): "Money leaves. Your neighbor's Saturday doesn't." Premise: Your hour of welding can't get wired to a hedge fund. Your ability to fix a truck can't be shipped to a distribution center. Labor is the one currency that's structurally local. That's not a limitation — that's the most powerful feature of a coordination economy. Visual approach: Start with a cash register — money going out. Then hard cut to hands working — welding, cooking, building, fixing. Each skill grounded, physical, local. End on a neighborhood street. Real people. Real work. None of it exportable. CTA: "Start trading time. It's the one thing they can't extract."