Matt Ragland and psychologist Corey Wilkes discuss why creators stay stuck in one niche despite losing interest. Ragland left his 70k-subscriber productivity channel because he felt pigeon-holed, but faced engagement drops and algorithm fears. Recognizing these psychological blocks can help creators break free.
Common creator advice is that you should stick with one niche, but hot take: you should change your niche if you want to. Recently, I was joined in the Hey Creator community by Corey Wilkes, a psychologist and executive coach who helps creators like me and you get unstuck. One of the things that I've been stuck on is sticking with a topic even if it doesn't serve me anymore. Today, Corey's going to help us solve that.
And I've talked to people of like I have this many hundreds of thousands or millions of followers or subscribers. I want to have a new content bucket, but I'm so afraid the algorithm will bury my channel or that my, my current audience will hate it. What do I do? And then they experience this like cognitive dissonance of, I believe this is right for me, but I'm so afraid to do it over here that I'm not. And then now I feel like as a person I have evolved, but as, as a creator, as a professional, I'm afraid to evolve because of this fear of ridicule. So then that is another thing of like they continue to cycle regardless of how quote unquote successful, how big you become. If you are emotionally invested in what you're doing.
It's a great answer. Definitely hits with me on a few different levels. I mean, these are things, these are things that I've experienced. You mentioned different content buckets. Hey Creator is a different content bucket for me. Like when we first met, I was doing productivity stuff on YouTube. I got to a point where I was like, wow, I have 60,000, 70,000 YouTube subscribers, I have 15,000 email subscribers around this productivity stuff. I don't think I can say anything else about this that I really feel compelled to say. I'm really afraid to change. And even some of the initial videos, even still, but even some of the initial videos, like, okay, I'm going to do something a little different. They don't perform well. Don't get as many comments. Oh no, the algorithm doesn't like me anymore. I've been put in this like bullet journal vertical and that's the only thing that I can talk about now for the rest of my life if I want to be a creator. I do like you saying that they're showing up because you care. And I don't know if I'd thought of it in that way before.
But another thing to consider is largely people don't follow you for your content. They follow you for you. Bullet journaling. There are plenty of other people who do journaling or bullet journaling or productivity, but people follow you for a specific reason. And it isn't just your editing, it isn't just, you know, whatever. It a lot of times comes down to you and something that makes you unique, right? Because like when, when any of us think about our favorite creators, we spend more time describing the person, not the content. The content must be good, but the person is a key differentiator, And the other thing is like, you know, oh, my audience won't like this. That makes it sound like your audience is this homogenous entity that everybody's the same, but it's like the audience, the audience, right? My audience, it's like your audience is a collection of individuals, right? And that's where I think people like, for example, like Dan Coe, right? Dan has done a phenomenal job of continuing to evolve and basically becoming nicheless almost. Yes, he does solopreneur things, but even that he doesn't really use the term anymore like he used to. Just like Justin Welsh can have it. I'm going to move on. And but like, if Dan Coe came out with shoes or an EDM record or, you know, what he is coming out with, Cortex, everybody's like, that tracks. It's Dan Coe. Dan Coe does what Dan Coe wants to do, right? He can talk about fitness. He can talk about spirituality, philosophy, business, writing, because his audience— like, maybe I don't care when Dan talks about fitness, but I care when he talks about writing. I am part of the audience, but I have different interests, right? That is another— like, you can— you're allowed to evolve as a creator. A lot of it comes down to, like, really facing the fears of, like, what am I actually afraid of? How can I evolve meaningfully? Because what I consistently see from creators who allow themselves to stay locked in, they eventually hate what they do. And they burn out because it feels like a job, right? Like, I became a creative for freedom, but I feel trapped by my channel, by my niche, by my newsletter. More than likely, there, there may be some growing pains, but more than likely, your audience, or at least subsections of your audience, will continue to stay with you and evolve and grow.
