Medium-Sized Creators Are Ruling the Creator Economy
This is an opportunity for us.
I’m going to ask you something. Be honest, okay?
You have to learn how to give better job interviews. You get two coaches who are ready to teach you:
- Cal is 5 years senior and has a track record of cracking interviews wherever he applies
- Ryan is 15 years senior and a director of a company. He doesn’t appear for interviews anymore. He’s sometimes on the other side as the interviewer, though.
Which of the two will you choose?
Who will know your challenges better and can help you solve them?
It’s not the person who was in your shoes over a decade ago. He won’t even coach you himself, but has a team who helps you with ‘robust strategies’.
It’s the one who knows exactly what you’re going through and tailors everything for you to succeed because they’re doing it, too. You’re in this together.
The lies you’re told
It’s a common perception that to be a creator, you must have a huge audience. You must be a guru else you’re not credible.
You can’t preach about your life right now because you need 10,000 followers who’d want to listen to you.
I call BS on this.
Fame and credibility or knowledge are not directly proportional. We have great people who would tweet once in 2 days except for 5–7 times a day like me. Does that make them stupid or make me smarter?
No.
Forget all these lies because it’s your time to shine.
The age of the medium-sized creator
Listen, I know how it feels.
When I released my course, imposter syndrome kicked in really hard. The only other courses I saw were $500 courses by veteran online writers with tens of thousands of followers and people on their email lists.
I have 1/10th of their mailing list.
Why would anybody listen to me? Why would they want to learn from me?
After four successful cohorts, it turns out that they want to learn from me because I was at their place just a year ago. And they trust me to lift them up.
Yes, it’s scary. But this is an example of how you’re the only person who thinks you’re not capable enough.
Truth Bomb 1: You only have to be slightly ahead
People are not always looking for an expert who’s at a far reach. They want to talk to you, learn directly from you, want responses, and want to connect.
You just have to be a bit ahead so you can help them get close to where you are.
This means that
- you don’t need to teach somebody how to write a bestselling book, you can teach them how to write a book without losing motivation.
- you don’t have to teach how to get abs, you can coach about getting a healthy body that makes you feel energetic.
Truth Bomb 2: Followers is a stupid metric
I was out for a walk yesterday with a fellow creator on LinkedIn’s Creator Accelerator Program. We were discussing business, and I was telling her it’s my audience on email and Gumroad that invests in me the most because I’m so active there.
She: How many followers do you have on Twitter to pull off such a thing?
Me: 9500ish
She: Oh, that's it? Wow!
Well, it’s taken me a lot of work to even reach this number, which may sound less to somebody.
Truth Bomb 3: Audience vs Followers
These are the three people I personally know:
- Under 10,000 Medium followers and makes $5,000 a month
- Over 40,000 Medium followers and makes under $1,000 a month
- Under 5,000 Medium followers and has a thriving course worth $300
Your followers aren’t where the money comes from. My tribe on Twitter are not super famous people but have thriving creative businesses whereas some big people on Twitter hardly get any engagement at all.
Do you know why? Because they don’t have fans, they have friends.
They have an audience that engages and they have conversations with them.
Truth Bomb 4: Easier to have relationships
It’s scary to DM a big account. You might not even get a reply.
It’s easier to DM an account only slightly ahead of you, and you two talk. I’ve made so many friends this who I learn from and they cheer for me selflessly.
After all, relationships are where ideas are bred and discussed. It’s what makes your business from good to excellent.
My advice on online products comes from friends online.
Being a middle-sized creator leaves you with slightly more time.
Time to look at what's going around on the platform. Catch a pulse of
- what people are experiencing
- the problems they face, and
- work to solve them
Now that’s a business idea right there because people don’t buy products, they buy solutions.
Don’t think you need to go big or go home.
You just need to start and figure it out later.