Build A One Person Business And Do What You Love (The Creator Economy Explained)

We've never had a better time in our history for those of us who want to, can create money doing what we love in life. The key to this is understanding the Creator Economy. 

But not much more than 100 years ago during the industrial revolution, for someone to get by, they had to literally become paid slaves to corporations if they couldn't make it as a farmer. People worked 14 hour days in harsh and inhumane conditions, including children. 

Reform set in, conditions improved and the educational system was put into place to remove children from the workforce, yet train them to become future employees. For close to a decade, people followed this model of going to school, working hard, then getting a degree, then entering the work force and having a career for the rest of your life.

As the century went on, going to school became less and less predictive of financial success (less relevant) and more and more expensive. 25 years ago, I opted out of higher education because I hated school and couldn't imagine paying for something I hated. I thought I was doomed to have an average life doing things I didn't want to do.

I ended up working my way into management at the Salt Lake Country Club and noticed something strange, most of my employees were college grads, some even MBA's, and a lot of them couldn't find a decent job and were working to pay off their loans. In the decades to come, school has become more and more costly. The other day my dentist told me that it now costs $500k and a new grad can't start their own practice because they have so much debt and have to be an employee. 

$500k to be an employee? 8-10 years of racking up debt then another 10-15 years to pay off that debt and finally be free? No thanks.

But here's the cool thing, in the last 20 years things have changed when it comes to the ability for us to create content around the topics that we love that go direct to the consumer, simply put, this is the Creator Economy. Create content around a topic, and find a way to monetize it. But there's another byproduct, and what brands like Start Wars and Lego understand: content marketing.

Content marketing is creating attractive content that consumers want to pay attention to, become raving fans, and then sell them whatever offers, services or products that align with that niche. Star Wars doesn't make money off the movies and the TV shows they make anymore, they make money of the merchandise and theme parks. But the content is what creates the demand, not advertising. 

On a smaller level, every single one of us now has the ability to create content using social media & social platforms. Creating content gives us the ability to attract and grow a loyal audience. The loyal audience gives us the ability to make money through our own offers, or connect that audience with people who will pay us to for that (affiliates, sponsors, advertisers, joint ventures). 

Back in the day, it was a moon shot to be able to get paid to create a book, create a song, create a TV show or become an actor. But now, because of the creator economy, the middle man can be removed and you can distribute your content directly to consumer without an agent, a producer, a distributor, a retail outlet, a studio. YOU are the new distributor and can easily create a One Person Business that doesn't 

You can now create paid content on many platforms: write a book and sell it on Amazon, make a movie or a show and put it on YouTube, create a song and publish it to Spotify. The possibilities are endless and this is what the creator economy offers. 

But the deeper level that most people don't realize is that the content creates clients for anything you want to sell if you embrace 'content marketing'. The High Value Skill of creating content can be cultivated and improved to the point where you don't need to advertise. Grow this skill, know your audience, turn them into raving fans and you won't need to worry about advertising because your content does it for you. 

The Creator Economy Defined: 

"The creator economy refers to a growing economic ecosystem centered around individual content creators, artists, influencers, and other individuals who generate and distribute their own original content online. This phenomenon has been made possible by the rise of digital platforms, social media, and online marketplaces that allow creators to directly connect with their audiences and monetize their work."

If you are doing or want to do business online, can you see the value of being a good content creator? As someone who has done a lot of business coaching helping other coaches and consultants, many of them are taught to 'chase people in the DM's and try to get them on a call and move them from pain to a desired outcome'. 

If you hate doing that (most people do) then become a content creator and there are ways to get people to come right to you. My marketing director and I launched our Offer Launch Blueprint course and ended up with over $70k in revenue, and because of content marketing done correctly, we didn't make one DM or cold outreach to make that happen. 

How AI will shape the Creator Economy: 

In the future, AI will create a lot of fake content creators as people can create content on demand. This will add exponential amounts of content online and make it so much easier to be get lost like a needle in the haystack. But the ones who do learn to create authentic and passionate content will stand out from the noise, and we'll be able to better use AI to create better content instead of blending in.

AI will also replace a lot of jobs and mediocre skills, while also making traditional higher education become more obsolete and unpredictable. 

Learning how to create content, build traffic and a following will be the new decentralized cryptocurrency of the future. So called assets like 'bitcoin' do not create anything, they are only as valuable as what someone will pay for it. Having an audience in the creator economy allows you to monetize in several different ways, and you can potentially own those contacts and connections by moving them off of social media to your private email marketing lists, phone numbers or 3rd party online communities (like Circle or Kajabi). 

This is a diagram of what content marketing looks like, using social media to cast a wide net of followers. Once you find out who is interested in your content, they become followers, then they join your community or email list, at that point they 'know, like and trust' you and will buy from you. 

How do I start participating in the Creator Economy?

In July of 2020, I was in limbo at my job in sales and wasn't sure how that would pan out and needed a back up plan. So I used LinkedIn to help me grow my following by creating content around Mindset & Personal Development which is one of my big passions. Even though I really didn't understand content creation on a deep level, or the creator economy, I knew that it would be a good idea to consistently post content and growing that audience could be a pathway to me getting paid to coach.

That content allowed me to start an email list and launch my very first course Leveraging LinkedIn in October of 2020. After that, I re-launched it several times until it became a 6 figure course, then started launching other offers while also understanding more about the nuances of creating great content. 

If you'd like to start using the exact step by steps that I did, please check out my digital courses.

I'd also encourage you to subscribe to my Digital Entrepreneur Newsletter and High Value Skills podcast where I talk at length about the creator economy. You can also listen to an expanded version of this blog post on my podcast: Hate Your Job? Do What You Love Instead | The Creator Economy Explained, available on Spotify or Apple. 

In that podcast, I'll also teach you a simple exercise that I do inside some of my courses to get some clarity around your Niche, which is a great starting point. You could simply start documenting whatever you are passionate about, if that's fixing cars or doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, start to be more vocal about it online and start with asking your friends who also love that topic to follow you. 

Over time you'll get better and better at creating content that resonates with that audience, then you can start to learn about Digital Marketing and how to monetize this.

You only live once, do what you love in that time!

Simon