Now Is the Time to Start Creating
The creator economy is taking over, so why not join it?
“Don’t die with your music still inside you.” — Wayne Dyer
Everyone has some unique “music” to offer the world: a talent, affinity, or aptitude for something that others don’t. Fortunately, there has never been a better time in history to share that music with others. The internet enables us to create, share and engage with virtually anyone in the world from anywhere, at anytime. Never before have we had the ability to impact, connect with and influence so many people, so frictionlessly.
A new era of excellence
We’re living in an age that is redefining what it means to be “smart”. In the past, being “smart” was viewed as synonymous with getting the “best jobs.” Those jobs were typically the ones which require the best (and most expensive) education, programs, network, connections, opportunities and experiences. We’re increasingly realizing that this is a long, expensive — in time, money, and resources — path to an average lifestyle. A lifestyle where you’re working for someone else, on a prescribed schedule, doing the same thing pretty much every day. A lifestyle where you are trading time for money for the rest of your life.
Today, the “smart” people in society are the ones realizing that by sharing their life/insight/talent/art online, building an audience, earning that audience’s trust and loyalty, and then monetizing that audience, they can create a pretty fantastic and extremely flexible livelihood. The truly smart people of today are the ones leading the way in the creator economy.
So, why is the creator economy the future?
The creator economy isn’t just what you’re picturing: fitness influencers, YouTubers, Charli D’amelio and your favourite podcaster. There are now creators in virtually every industry: everything from plumbers on LinkedIn, to teachers on Tik Tok, to Keith Gill from r/wallstreetbets, to Anna Wintour on MasterClass, to Elon on Clubhouse.
The creator economy is not only changing the content we consume, but also what we buy and how we behave as consumers. To keep up with younger generations who consume almost all of their content (media, entertainment, education, advertising) through social media, it’s necessary to connect with them through these mediums. This is causing outdated marketing and publishing agencies to slowly become obsolete. Like everyone else in today’s world, these more archaic modes of advertising and marketing are being forced to create or die. And soon enough, it is the faces that flood our feeds whom will be selling us everything these agencies were once paid to promote.
The future is in the individual. It is the individual who has the audience, the admiration, the trust, the influence. The future of our economy will be predicated on the brands of individuals.
Becoming a creator
In the past, no matter how talented you were, you needed to be one in a million to get recognized, signed, or featured and more like one in 100 million to rise to extreme fame or influence.
Today, all you need is a phone, the willingness to create online, and to be interesting enough for people to want to watch or listen to you. That’s all it takes to join the creator economy — currently made up of 50M creators globally (<1% of the world’s population), and growing every day.
The only barriers to being a creator are generally mental ones; fear of judgement, lack of direction, uncertainty on who “you want to be” online. But all it takes, really, is to start creating. Starting isn’t a guarantee that you will be successful, but not starting is a guarantee that you won’t be. How to succeed in the creator economy may require an entirely new post, but the one thing it ultimately comes down to is consistency:
If you don’t know where to start — try thinking about a few of these questions:
- What’s the thing that people come to you for/ask you for advice on?
- What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
- What is something that lights you up/excites you when you talk about it?
- If you had to teach someone something in 5 minutes, what would you teach them?
Determining what you’re “known for” in your inner circle will help you discover what you may be good at sharing with those outside your circle.
It’s all about what you have that others want. That might be insider information on anything from the tech industry (see: Anna Weiner’s Uncanny Valley article which turned into a book), to building muscle, to hacking the MCAT, to doing the splits, to making smoothie bowls, to copywriting.
You can literally create around anything you have some edge or expertise in, and as long as it’s a space where other people have an interest or a need, you can attract an audience and create a career out of it.
Put simply: we will always be information/entertainment hungry and we will always use the internet to satisfy that hunger. If you can be the creator people use to satiate their content hunger, you will be hugely successful.
Final thoughts
Creating is not for everyone. There are people who will be happy with loads of structure, order, accountability, and will benefit from the dynamic of a corporate job or a prescribed role where they can clock in and clock out. However, there is a large cohort of society (certainly larger than 1%) that don’t enjoy that lifestyle — that want the flexibility, independence and platform to be who they are, to share the “music” inside them and be compensated for it. And while in the past they might have been forced to subscribe to the traditional way of making a living, there is a massive window of opportunity as the creator economy is still in a state of rapid expansion, where those who join it now can occupy a large amount of “land” (audience) by just starting.
Ask yourself: do you want to be the creator or the consumer? Because you’re already at least the latter. And with the way this economy is trending, being on the other side of that equation is proving to be an excellent way to “plan for your future” — something we’ve been told to do since we were kids.
After all, what else are you doing with your time?
Let me guess — consuming ;).
If you’re building a product for creators and want to chat — reach out to me on Twitter. Otherwise, you can nestle into the corners of my brain via my newsletter, or follow me on Medium for more.
