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Editor’s note: this is a rewrite from original post on 8/3/2023.

I just finished Season 12 of my favorite Netflix series, ALONE.

If you've never seen ALONE, I highly recommend it. They take10 people, drop them in the middle of nowhere by themselves, and see who can stick it out the longest.

The last one standing wins $500,000.

The fascinating part is the first day or two, watching who prioritizes what. Because the choices they do (or don’t) make often times decides how far they go. Some contestants go straight for food, others start on shelter first, others getting a fire going.

I'm no survivalist, so I won't pretend to be the expert here. But watch a few episodes and you'll notice the same thing over and over, a lot of contestants prioritize the wrong thing first. They start building an elaborate shelter when they should be scouting food. Or they chase food when hypothermia is the thing that's actually going to get them first. Order matters as much as effort does.

And that got me thinking about Producers making the exact same mistake of prioritizing the wrong things.

So I asked myself:

Self? If you had to build a priority list of what it takes to survive as a Producer in the wild… what would you suggest… and in what order?

I present to you “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs”… but for Producers.

Same rule applies here as it does over there. You don't get to skip levels. Maslow said you can't chase self-actualization on an empty stomach. I'm saying you can't niche your way to the top if you don’t have the markets. The levels lower down have to be locked in before you're allowed to worry about the ones above them.

Here's the pyramid: