How To Go From Corporate To Full-Time Creator

My number one thing, and again, like, I'm coming to this from the context, from the perspective of someone who's, you know, you've been in a, you've been at a job or maybe multiple jobs for several years, maybe you're like, you know, mid-30s, you want to make some, you want to make some extra money, or you want to do a business, or you just, you want to share something more creative, um, like in the hours that you're not working. The number one, I piece of advice I can give you is that you can only focus on one thing at a time. So when you're doing this, like, just focus on like one topic, one platform, one type of content, and like, don't try and stretch yourself too thin early on. So like, for example, one of the things that the way that I would think about this and the way that I started with it was, I'm going to make videos on YouTube, telling my story for people who are like working remotely at a tech company and trying to grow their career. That's, that's what I was making videos for. And I just did it on YouTube. And that's all I focused on basically for 18 months. My topic kind of shifted along, along the, like, as that year went on, that's when I started talking about productivity and then bullet journaling. But I, I saw the most success by far when I was just focusing on put one YouTube video out every week for this particular, like, type of viewer. I did have a newsletter, which we can talk about. So I guess that's a little— I was collecting— here's, here's an important thing. I was collecting email subscribers. I wasn't actively writing my newsletter yet. Now I know, like, other ways to do a little bit of both of those things. But early on, like, don't spread yourself too thin. Don't try and be everywhere at once, which, you know, we'll talk about like bad advice later, but just focus on one thing and one outcome for yourself, for that ideal person, and do that for at least 6 months. I would say even more like a year.

Yeah, that resonates. As you were talking, I'm thinking about like where I'm at in my creator journey right now. On the day we're recording this, tomorrow, my first like reset into YouTube. Will come out, right? And my plan is YouTube video and newsletter, both with entirely the same kind of like script and text. Um, and that's gonna be like my one thing, right? It's the same content just in two different places. So it's actually funny that you said that because I, like, I'm at the point where I need to live that, you know, this YouTube thing is a side project away from all this work we do at Hey Creator, away from our client work. I like, I am about to be the test case for do this thing on one platform because it really is all I have time for. And I know that I want to do YouTube and I want to have a newsletter. So that's the same content both places.

I would agree.

I think there's a glamorization of the people who are on every platform. And like when you come into this creator world and you see like Gary Vee who's posting 8 times a day on every platform, you think like, oh, I want to do that. I can do that. I have all these good ideas and I have the time to do this and you really don't. You, especially if you're hard at a full-time job.

Yeah. I mean, we love repurposing. We have a whole agency that's based on repurposing and remixing content. But like the big like point that I would make here is that even if you are using the same exact ideas across multiple platforms, there's still a like very literal attention cost to that that is very difficult to overcome. And yeah, just. Adds, adds extra mental heft to your plate. Number one piece of advice is like, just have one clear focus when you're doing this. One clear, one clear viewer, reader, listener, one place that you're posting, one type of content that you're doing that, and focus on that for, for at least a year. Because again, like, we're, I'm coming at this from the context of a side hustle. Like you, if you're listening and you have a team where you can just say like, here's my podcast, go for it, then great. But that's, that's not where I'm giving this advice from. The next one that I have is something that I wish I had figured out so much earlier. And it's asking myself a really clear question is like, what do I want out of this creator content? Like, is it for fun? Or is it a business? It took me way too long to answer that question. Because like, looking back, I realized I was doing too much of the content for fun. And you might think to yourself, well, content is supposed to be fun. And yes, it is. But when you're just saying like, oh, I'm gonna have fun doing this, then often we've talked about this, it can lead to too many like differentiated topics. People don't know what to associate you with. Like you are just talking about whatever like seems fun to you. And unless people already know you, we've talked about this, unless people already know you to be like, well, he seems fun, but he's all over the place. I don't know like what I'm actually gonna get out of this. When you are making this a business. I'm not saying you have to figure this out from day one. We, we've talked about the hourglass effect, but you need to figure out pretty quickly if the answer to this is money and it's okay and great. If the answer is money and figuring out the business of it, then that's where you need to, like, as soon as possible, figure out what's your niche, what's the primary topic, who's, what's the ideal customer profile, what kind of problems do they have, like understanding each of those pieces is something that took me a couple of years to figure out. And even when I was starting on YouTube, I spent like 10 months having fun. And I do think that's important because you need to get the reps in. But eventually, if the outcome is I want to have a business around this, then you got to get focused on what the elements of that business is.

Yeah, this is so connected to my last one. And I think it's so like, So, so, so, so important. I'm glad you said this one here. Like you have to know what you want out of it. When I was writing about the Pistons and sports and trying to be a sports creator, it's 'cause I wanted to be a beat reporter. I wanted to be like a famous like sports name, right? Then like connected to my next one, like I, I want the money, like wasn't really clear how I'd make the money on it, right? So I wanted the position and like I put everything into it, but I realized it's not, actually what I wanted, right? The, the same thing with like my foray into becoming a videographer. Like everything you do, you, you can't like succeed in it if you're not clear about what you want out of it. And an add-on to that is that I think everyone should have their small little project that is only for fun, right? You don't even ever have to publish it.

Right now, like my fun project is like working with dads. Uh, and so like I have a little community for that and I send out a newsletter sometimes, but it's not a business. It is focused, so like it probably could become a business down the road and it's, it's just fun. But because it's just fun, I'm not in there every day, uh, like posting and asking questions the way that I would for Hey Creator. I'm not writing a weekly newsletter like I do for, like, like I do for Hey Creator. I'm not publishing, like all these things that I do for the business, those aren't things that I'm doing for the thing that's fun, but it's still there and it's fun, which helps, you know, like me release some creative energy that maybe I wouldn't get in other places.

Yeah. That's so valuable. I'm, I'm really glad you brought that up.

I. But I'm not trying to make it a business. I'm not like, hey, I've got to make $100K out of this. Like, that's different.

Yeah, I highly encourage everyone, you should have a business part of it if you so choose. But if you only want to create for fun and create for fun, you don't have to listen to us on this monetization stuff or anything like that. Like, we'll focus on like the more mindset episodes that we do. You should always have a little fun outlet. No one has to see it, right? Like, or if you want to keep track of something or if you want to follow something Maybe you just like post into the void on a separate like Twitter account about like a— maybe that's your anon thing, your anonymous, your anonymous account, like whatever you want to create about for fun, I highly recommend doing it.

My next piece of advice for creators is as you start to build this like recurring consistency, cuz a lot of what we talk about when it comes to content is like, is weekly, weekly or daily, but let's just say weekly for the sake of like not like making people break into hives thinking about daily content on, on the show. When you start to like get in a rhythm and you're like, okay, this thing that used to take me 6 hours to do each week now because I have like, I'm more confident, I know what I'm talking about, I know how to do things easier. Now it's down to 4. If you want to add in a couple more hours to something else, what I encourage you to think about is like, what is, what is a long-term, a longer-term goal that I can work on that will help me, like, improve my content or improve or build my business going forward? And what I mean by this is, like, if you're doing, say, the weekly— this is what I did. If you're doing the weekly YouTube video, now you can start to add in, like, okay, can I work on a newsletter for, like, a couple hours every week? And the other way to think about it is What kind of product or offer could I build in? And how can I say like for a month or a quarter, depending on what my expectations might be, can I work on a course? Can I work on some kind of template for, for the next month to see like, is there something I can add into this? So like after you have established the habit and the confidence and the consistency, next part is like start to protect a couple hours each week at minimum. For a goal that might take you 4 to 6 to 8 to 12 weeks to just steadily build on is to work on, work on your goal setting, some of your project management skills to be able to build something that isn't just weekly recurring, like build something that has more of a lasting asset to it. And like, this could be, this could be an ebook, a course, any, any number of things, but it's giving yourself something that isn't quite as like being on the hamster wheel, something that you can use as a, as an ongoing asset. You just, as Jack Butcher likes to say, like you build it once, you sell it twice or thrice or however many times you can do it.

Yeah. What you're saying, like in regards to like the actual business side of it is don't work in your business, work on your business, right?

Yep. Yeah. That's a good, good way to frame it.

On the content side, like you are building something that can become the business part of it, right?

Mm-hmm.

So many creators only see like the YouTube ad revenue or like the monetization coming from like platform-specific outputs. But if you can have something that you own and build and sell in the background of everything that you're already doing, like that's, that's massive, right? Like that's, it's not the obvious thing, but if you spend a month on a course in the background of your content, you've probably already built enough people to where you could test it out with some of them. And then when you get to a point where you want to, or if you want to sell it immediately, like you, you just have something else.

Yeah. And when you take time to do this, you're going— the audience will help you figure out, like, literally just through the way that you talk to them, the way that they comment on things, the email responses that you might get, the comments in videos or on social posts, you will be able— through direct outreach and DMs, you will be able to, I promise, like, you'll be able to figure out what the best type of product for your audiences. Like, it will, it will come to you. It will become clear.