There are some things I get pretty annoyed with, and this is one of them.
A beginner starts their creator journey.
They learn writing, marketing, branding, and other skills paired with their craft that allow them to be a one-person business – because as a creator, you need to be a specialized generalist.
In other words, you need to have a general understanding of all digital business skills but also be specialized in the one thing you love doing every single day. Good at many things, incredible at one thing, as that general understanding is what makes you incredible at that one thing.
The beginner creator wants to start making money. That’s reasonable. There’s nothing wrong with trying to sell your own product so you can stop selling someone else’s.
Now, here’s the tricky part:
The beginner creator wants to help other creators with the skills they’ve learned. Marketing, sales, branding, writing, whatever it may be.
They want to help other creators with the skills they’ve gained experience in, in the business model they’ve gained experience in. Makes sense.
Where I get annoyed is when people call this a ponzi scheme.
They don’t understand business, so they only see the surface of what’s going on and reduce it to that.
“You’re just a creator helping creators become a creator.”
“You’re just a coach coaching coaches to become coaches.”
I get it, it looks bad on the surface, but so does everything else in life if you fail to look a bit deeper at what’s actually going on.
The first thing this narrow-minded crowd doesn’t seem to understand is what a Ponzi Scheme is. They just seem to think that helping other people do what you’ve done (AKA, the only thing you’re actually qualified to do) is bad, so they call it a Ponzi.
A Ponzi Scheme, by definition, is a type of financial fraud that pays returns to earlier investors with the capital of newer investors, rather than from profit earned by the operation of a legitimate business.
That’s not what a creator business is. I’ll handle more objections on this later, but what you need to understand is that a creator business is a business. Creators can operate as one person or with a team. By the narrow-minded’s logic, all of B2B business is a Ponzi Scheme because they help each others businesses with skills they’ve learned.
Ponzi Schemes are characterized by dependence, deception, and manipulation. Business in general, and especially the creator model, is characterized by independence, persuasion, and choice. Nobody is forcing you to listen to anyone or buy their product. Just because it isn’t a fit for you doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable and worth paying for to someone else.
Now, let’s look at this from an evolutionary perspective.
There are 2 types of hierarchies:
Dominator Hierarchies – systems where the structure is maintained through force, power, control, and domination. The relationships within this type of hierarchy are typically characterized by coercion, top-down authority, and fear.
Examples of this include most corporate structures, the animal kingdom like alpha male apes having their choice of food and mating, and certain political structures i.e. dictatorship.
Hierarchies reflect in everything. On a biological level, a cancer cell can begin to create a dominator hierarchy unless reintegrated into the natural hierarchy of the body.
Ponzi schemes aren’t exactly dominator hierarchies, but they are in a similar league.
The people claiming that the creator economy is a Ponzi Scheme are usually doing so trapped within a dominator hierarchy. Which is sad, because they are closing their mind to one of the only ways out of their misery.
Actualization Hierarchies – inspired by theories like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, are structured to support the growth, development, and self-actualization of its members. Leadership in such hierarchies aims to empower individuals rather than control them.
This is where innovative startups, the creator economy, and progressive education (also the creator economy, teaching about their skills and interests) come into play.
Creators don’t control what you do. They are literally just media channels. They distribute information. If you feel like that is bad, refer to the Tyler The Creator tweet about cyber bullying and turn off your screen.
The defining characteristic of the creator economy is improving yourself and improving others.
The exchange of value.
Solving problems and distributing the solution.
A creator who helps another creator is perfectly within the realm of reason, and it’s arguably one of the most fulfilling things you can do.
Taking into account the independence, high skill cap, high earning ceiling, high agency, and everything else that makes life worth living, being a creator, in my eyes, is the way of the future (and many other influential people who have predicted creators as the future of work).
Here’s what to expect in this letter:
- Why the Creator2Creator market is new, weird, and the opportunity you’ve been waiting for (because you’re always “too late” to the rest).
- My secret weapon for being perceived as an authority, so you can overcome imposter syndrome and stop questioning everything you do.
- The best path to starting a one-person business as a creator. How to start, skills to learn, and what to sell.
These are my favorite letters to write.
I love ripping arguments apart.
The C2C Market
A “content creator” is a business model.
Meaning, a creator helping creators is a business helping other businesses.
There are a metric ton of creators out there. Most of them don’t understand business. It’s quite obvious why other creators – who learn marketable skills like everyone tells them to – would want to help and teach them.
By the narrow-minded’s standards, they are essentially saying that the entire B2B market is a Ponzi Scheme.
Yeah… that’s a reach.
Another thing they fail to realize is that creators aren’t just one-person businesses. Creators can have small or large teams. They are businesses. They just use social media, put themselves in public, and generate more business by putting who they are on the internet.
Creators, in my eyes, are people who want to do what they enjoy for a living and finally make the realization that business is just a legal structure to do what you want for payment.
The weird thing is that the creator model is so new. Creators are both businesses and consumers. Meaning, they buy from other creators to learn (because that’s who provides the education and courses) and they run a business with what they’ve learned. Creators are in the center of a B2B and B2C venn diagram and the lines are becoming more blurred every single day.
The reason people label this as a Ponzi is because they don’t understand the model yet. It isn’t a normal part of society. Boomers will still tell you to “get a real job” no matter how much you make as a creator. They still think internet bucks are some imaginary currency and that it doesn’t count unless you break your back over some manual labor that robots should and will eventually do.
People calling the creator economy a Ponzi is more of a sign than ever that there is opportunity in the space and you are still early to the party.
The Creator2Creator market is growing and thriving every day.
Creators, as a business, have to learn so many skills and span across any interest imaginable. So when they go to teach that thing, and the person learning it can become a creator with it (because creators can build an audience around any interest), then I understand how that can be seen as an illegitimate thing. But in that sense, everyone online is a creator, teaching their audience how to be creators, whether directly or indirectly. So even if it was a Ponzi, it’s reality, and you’re life still won’t be very good with that pessimist mindset.
Makes sense, but what about creators who are helping beginner creators with a skill they just learned (like content, branding, or marketing)?
That’s gotta be a Ponzi, no?
Well, what if the beginner creator is an established business owner who just doesn’t understand those things? Why do businesses hire people to do their content, branding, and marketing in the first place?
Why did Alex Hormozi hire a ghostwriter that had no previous clients or experience to write for him on Twitter? Is that a Ponzi? Alex wasn’t a Twitter creator, but he was just a beginner in that context, so he paid someone for help because he understands the value in that.
Context context context.
I’ve helped 8 figure e-commerce CEOs start as a creator. You’d be surprised how little they know about the space.
If you were to purchase a course on SkillShare or Udemy (created by creators) to learn about email marketing, would that be a Ponzi? So when you learn it from someone who is a public creator who actually has results, why do you not apply the same mindset? Is it not better to learn from someone who can get customers from an email list itself if they are teaching email marketing rather than relying on SkillShare or Udemy for the distribution of said course? That’s the entire point of email marketing, no? Why would you bias getting less results for yourself because the person teaching the skill does so from a place of public, real world experience? Anyone can create a course, but since creators on social media are a business, they are the ones with real validated results.
Now, as a new creator who is just learning skills, is it ethical to help other people in exchange for money?
If your answer is no, apply that mindset to other ways of making money.
How do freelancers gain experience? Not by learning, but by helping clients even if they suck, often in exchange for a low amount of money. You have to suck first, and that may piss some people off. That’s okay. Welcome to business.
The beautiful thing about this is there’s a thing called a refund. If the freelancer can’t deliver, they give the money back. Good luck getting your money back in a Ponzi. The creator economy also has natural checks and balances. If you screw up, you better believe someone is going to post about it or attack you for it. You can be a scammer, but not for long. The mob will come after you.
By the way, I’m saying all of this to shatter your limiting beliefs so you can finally take action on being a creator. I can guarantee you that if you just think it through, most other options to make money aren’t as good.
Last scenario, what if the creator is just starting out and charges another person who wants to become a creator?
Well, I don’t see anyone better to learn from than the person who just freshly achieved the goal. The person on the purchasing end also has a choice to learn from that person and buy what they’re offering.
And, since the creator economy is so new, it makes sense why there’s an abundance of education. Supply and demand. People want to become creators because subconsciously they know that’s where the future of work is heading.
The only “scam” in this scenario is your inability to think for yourself.
By the way, I teach you how to be a creator in Digital Economics (in reality, I just teach you every modern skill needed in business nowadays, but if you want to call yourself a creator after, feel free.)
The Secret Weapon To Being Respected
All of that is to say:
I’m probably not going to change the minds of people who don’t want to be changed.
It’s like trying to convince a hardcore Democrat (or Republican) to become a Republican (or Democrat). It is an extremely rare yet valuable trait to drop your beliefs in an instant when provided with a better argument. Most people don’t because it would mean they have to change. If people had to stop considering any new opportunity as a scam or Ponzi scheme they’d actually have to do something other than sit around and wallow in their own misery. They’d remove their source of cheap dopamine: trolling.
I want to help those who want to be helped.
I want to give aspiring and current creators the secret to being respected and earning more by doing the same thing.
I’m a writer.
I teach people how to write.
Some would say that’s a bit weird, but as I mentioned, what else are you more qualified to teach than what you do and have experience in?
Now, where it gets tricky is that I’m also a creator.
So, when I teach writing, I’m technically teaching people how to become a creator.
I’m a writer that uses social media (because as a writer, designer, musician, or anything it’s a bit stupid not to be on social media, because media is how you attract an audience to your work (so you actually get paid) and social media IS the media right now) so that makes others perceive me as a “creator.”
In other words, if you:
- Actually want to earn a living doing what you enjoy
- Want to teach or help people with what you do (because you are qualified to do that and is a perfectly valid and impactful business model)
You are at risk for being perceived as a “Ponzi” by stupid people.
The secret to avoiding this is to understand positioning.
It’s suboptimal to say “I help people become a creator.”
It’s more optimal to say “I teach writing so you can attract people to your work.”
(I’m not trying to put on my marketer hat right now by the way, these won’t be the best ways to position yourself.)
It’s suboptimal to be a coach that coaches coaches.
It’s more optimal to have a lead generation system for service businesses and to bias your content toward attracting the coaches you want to help.
You can teach other creators and/or people who want to become creators.
There’s nothing wrong with that, as technically anyone on social media that has a business (which is a lot of people, including most of the B2B market) is a creator.
Just position yourself as someone who teaches X for Y benefit.
I don’t teach creators how to be better creators literally, because that’s not that persuasive.
I teach people how to write to attract people to their work. When I teach this, I teach it on social media because that’s the most effective medium for writers to use. I’d be doing them a disservice by teaching it any other way.
If you want to teach marketing, branding, or content… then teach it to whoever you want to teach it. You don’t help people become creators explicitly. You teach them a skill that solves a problem in their life and helps them reach their desired lifestyle, and just by the landscape of work and business, they become creators.
How To Start As A One-Person Business
Another common piece of advice from people who don’t understand the creator model is:
“You should start a real business first. Then do the creator stuff.”
I get it, I really do, but listen to yourself.
You’re telling me that I shouldn’t leverage one of the best ways to generate traffic for a business just so I can suffer with your methods of cold email, cold calls, and paid ads? That’s not very beginner-friendly now, is it?
I get that you have an identity to defend because your business mind was raised in an older generation of tactics, but there are better, more accessible ways to do things now.
Technology has allowed people to build one-person media companies, make a great living doing so, attract audiences that older generations would be jealous of, all at minimal to zero cost thanks to writing on social media.
The benefits of becoming a creator right now are difficult to contain all in one list, but I’ll try.
- You are forced to learn every skill required to run a modern business. This is easier than ever thanks to courses, tutorials, and ease of access to tools for practice.
- You build an audience, AKA social capital, so when you want to build a startup or the business you’ve always dreamed of, you don’t need personal capital or venture capital. You have users for your app and customers for your products.
- You have a network beyond your audience. You can reach almost anyone on the internet for what you need. If you have 10K followers, and each person following them has 500-1000 followers, and the same for the people following them, you effectively have a network of 10x your audience. (No, you obviously don’t need a lot of followers to earn a living).
- You can do what you enjoy, attract like-minded people, introduce new people to your skills and interests, and create a meaningful business model you love showing up to every day, even if it’s difficult at times.
- Since your only levers are writing and building products or services, you can cut your work times down as much as you want. If my audience is growing with 30 minutes of writing, and I send them to a good product, I technically don’t have to work any longer than that – especially if my 30 minutes of writing generates more traffic than someone writing for 8 hours on a book that won’t be seen by anyone.
I’ll leave it at that for now.
How do you actually get started?
1) Start, Then Learn
The best way to learn is not by taking course after course after course until you find yourself in tutorial hell with nothing built, no results, and no money.
The best way to learn is by starting, being overwhelmed, and having no idea what you’re doing. That way, your mind is hungry to learn and has something tangible to apply that learning to.
I will tell you right now that you are wasting your time learning from a course if you are not actively building along with it.
Everyone can watch a video on exactly how a top CEO built a billion dollar business in record time, but how many people have actually replicated that? If it was as easy as following a step by step tutorial (I’m talking to you, people who want these letters to be shorter and “to the point”) then everyone would be billionaires by now.
You need both the right idea at the right time and experience.
Experience experience experience.
Experience is king.
Experience is not only progress.
Experience is determined by frequency of failure.
Like fighting a boss in a video game.
You try once and get destroyed.
You change your strategy a bit, try again, and still lose.
You have a better idea, try it, and almost win.
Then you lose 5 more times and question your sanity.
You turn off the game and touch grass.
Then, the perfect idea crashes into your mind when you least expect it. You boot the game up, go in with confidence, and win with ease.
Remember this process whenever you are discouraged with your progress. It’s all a game.
Here’s how you learn:
- You need a goal to frame your learning. In this case, it’s building an audience and making an income. If you aren’t making progress toward those, then you need to continue learning, testing, and failing until you see follower and income growth. If they aren’t growing, it’s a skill issue.
- You need to start with what you know. It’s pretty obvious that you need a profile on social media, regular content being posted, and some way to monetize the people who see it.
- You need consistent ideas flowing for how to improve your process. Buy courses to see other peoples systems and experiment with them. Have some form of inspiration entering your mind every day.
- You need specific information when you encounter a problem. Research how to solve a problem when you experience it, not before. Like how to start a newsletter or design a profile picture or build a website.
There has never been a point where I learned a specific skill like email marketing or graphic design.
I always started a project, researched exactly what I needed to know to reach the goal, then repeated the process.
Now, I have a stack of skills that actually get results. It’s hard to even consider them individual skills at this point, it’s just knowing how to reach a specific goal after achieving so many.
2) Choose Your Domain Of Mastery
Back to the topic of specialized generalism.
Valve, the company that created the video game Half-Life, mentions that their company is composed of “T-Shaped” people.
People who are both generalists and specialists. The top of the “T” represents being highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things. The bottom portion represents being among the best in one narrow field of study.
This works because when you become skilled at one thing, you become valuable in many domains, but you often aren’t aware of how your skill can overlap with those domains if you don’t have experience in them.
I would argue that I’m very good at writing, not because my grammar or structure is the best, but because my other skills help me achieve the main goal of writing: sparking behavior change in a positive direction.
When I consider it from another perspective, writing isn’t my main skill. I actually didn’t know what my main skill was until a few people pointed it out to me.
I’m very good at holding many ideas in my head at once. I can often work through entire strategies, business models, or other complex topics and notice all of the traps and problems, and with enough time, I can come up with a winning solution.
But maybe writing is what led to that. So at the end of the day, just learn a lot of stuff and build a lot of stuff.
If I could rephrase what a “T” shaped person or specialized generalist is, it’s:
A person who can and will learn any interest or skill toward one project, goal, or vision. They understand the mission, their role in it, and what they need to learn to make it happen. This is very difficult in corporate positions or jobs that don’t allow for autonomy or breaking out of your repetitive routine of tasks.
The larger your awareness surface area, the more valuable problems you can solve. You stop competing with specialists in a given niche and start solving problems that nobody else can solve.
To start as a creator, you need value to share. You need content ideas. You need something to monetize. You need a reason for people to follow and pay you.
I don’t think it helps too much to write these things out and put them in specific boxes.
Instead, I’d encourage you to write out 2-3 broad topics that you are very interested in and start there.
This could be specific skills like marketing and programming or certain interests like self-improvement or fitness. As long as they align with goals and projects that improve yourself and others, you’ll be fine.
Make noise, find signal.
Start writing and creating about what you find interesting and valuable to your life. You will slowly find what you are good at or want to be good at.
3) Learn The Right Skills First (Habits)
Along with your current skills or interests, there are specific skills you need to learn to make your creator business a success.
- Writing – you need to write posts, emails, video scripts, landing pages, courses, DMs, and course material. I teach this in 2 Hour Writer.
- Speaking – an alternative to writing for distributing ideas in a consumable way, often enhanced by writing first.
- Marketing – understanding how your writing or speaking reaches people, where it reaches them, how it impacts them, and what the result of that is (do they act or engage toward the goal you are leading them toward?)
- Sales – crafting your writing in a way that makes people perceive what you offer as valuable. Sales is the antidote to starving artistry.
If you were to combine all of these, it would simply be persuasion. That’s the skill you need to learn. We will discuss it in next week’s letter.
These are more habits than they are skills. They are habits of successful individuals. If you go to any creator, or any successful person for that matter, I can guarantee you that most of them (if they are still working in/on the business) are writing every single day. It’s a habit. It’s a way of life. It’s the main lever to success.
If you don’t write, how are you ever going to produce anything?
Writing is the foundational medium of communication.
Writing is tangible thinking, and you won’t get anywhere if your ideas stay in your head.
Writing is how you build and spread your ideas.
So, where do marketing and sales come into play?
These shape how you write and speak.
If you just write whatever you want, however you want, you’ll end up as an author with zero readers or a startup with zero users.
This doesn’t strip you of your creativity because creativity happens within the limitations you provide. In fact, it takes more creativity to remain authentic and get your message across in the most impactful way possible.
As an example, it takes much more creativity to build a business 4 hours a day without sacrificing your relationships or health than it does to build a business while forgetting about anything important in your life. The former also leads to much more fulfilling results (and more knowledge/experience).
The best marketing and selling aren’t detectable. The most creative people make it seem effortless.
4) Focus On Eyeballs
The greatest mistake I see beginners make is that they just don’t understand business.
Rule 1) Generate traffic.
Rule 2) Sell a product.
Rule 3) Optimize the system that bridges 1 and 2 according to your ideal lifestyle.
I don’t know what goes on in people’s minds, but if your audience isn’t growing… you’re doing something wrong. If you aren’t making sales… you’re doing something wrong.
What does that mean?
It means there’s a problem.
And since you’re an entrepreneur, it’s your job to identify it and solve it through experimentation and education.
I’ve given exact strategies for how to control your growth on social media before in a bit too much detail. You can find them in this article: How To Actually Grow On Social Media.
For now, understand that you need to try everything until something works, then systemize it as a habit in your deep work blocks, then continue experimenting for life.
It may be replies to large accounts, paid growth, building a network, or cracking the algorithm. Everyone will scream about which ones are better, which ones are unethical, and which ones suck. If you listen to them, you may close your mind to the one that would have worked for you. Then, you quit and call it a Ponzi, lol.
Try everything, see what sticks.
A life well lived, not survived, is a series of experiments.
5) What To Sell, In What Order
I’ve also talked about this many times before.
In Zero to $1 Million as a One-Person Business I break down how creative work must evolve if you want to work less while earning more (without hiring others).
In my eyes, here’s the best thing you can do:
1) Create A Minimalist Offer
This is a new concept of mine that I’ll expand on in another letter.
In short, a minimalist offer is:
- What you can help people with
- A payment link
- Optional: A questionnaire for warm traffic
No landing pages. No logos. No LLCs. Nothing but talking to your audience about their goals and offering to help them in exchange for money.
When you don’t have a large audience, most of your sales will come from direct messages.
You write content that targets peoples pain points.
You respond to peoples comments and take conversations to the DMs.
You ask them about their goals further and give some free education (this creates a network for yourself).
You mention that you can teach them over the next few weeks (and that it would cost some money, but not much). You help them achieve their goal with the skills / interests you’ve learned. You test what actually gets results and refine your own system. Then you can package that up and charge more beyond step 2.
In other words, you learn to create offers on the fly.
Nobody actually needs a landing page to close clients. Especially when your DMs with the other person serve the purpose of the landing page. It makes them aware of pain points and positions yourself as the solution.
The questionnaire you create would ask them about their goals and what’s preventing them from achieving it. You would put it in your bio and in your emails if you write them. It’s a way for people to express interest in working with you if you aren’t the one DMing them first (be sure to ask for their social handle so you can DM them afterward).
This is how I started transitioning from freelance web design to “marketing consulting” for social media businesses (aka creators). I had conversations and mentioned I could help them grow faster (more traffic) and sell more – you know, the only two things you can help businesses with regardless of if they’re a creator. And if they didn’t have something to sell, I would help them create an offer.
Remember, positioning.
2) Optional: Turn It Into A Service Business
If I could go back, I would focus less on services and more on something like a cohort-based course.
And, the first thing I created as a creator was a web design course, not a marketing consulting service. That came after.
Now that I know many respected people like David Perell and Dickie Bush, who started with a cohort (and made much more than me), I see that as the optimal option.
Now, if your account isn’t growing month over month, this may not work the best. But if you aren’t growing, you have bigger problems than what your offer should be. You need to fix that first.
But if you are truly adamant on it, turn your minimalist offer into a service business. Freelancing or coaching. Take your skills and interests, create a system to get a specific result, and start researching how to generate leads and close deals on sales calls.
3) Spin It Into A Cohort
Notice how I’m saying “spin” it into a cohort.
Service businesses are often very specific, targeting more advanced problems.
With a cohort and other products, you are aiming to get more people inside at a lower price (but with a delivery structure that allows you to save more time and leave client work).
At the same time, you can charge very high prices for a cohort and just take on less people. David Perell charged upwards of $7K for his. That’s more than most service businesses. At that point, you would just treat it as a service business and do more manual outreach to close students along the way.
With a cohort, you are usually going more beginner level so you can help more people. You are usually helping them get a desirable result with your main skills or interests – like how I teach people how to write in order to build an audience for work they enjoy doing.
A cohort, by the way, is just a structured course that you guide people through.
You set a start and end date.
You have a curriculum.
You have 1-2 calls every week to answer questions and go over material.
And sometimes you have a community for people to be in.
4) Spin It Into A Digital Product
If you want to start with a digital product, I teach you how in my marketing / product development course Mental Monetization.
Now that you clearly know what you’re doing and have results, spin a portion of what you teach into a digital product.
The best place to start is your main skill or interests.
Don’t overcomplicate it.
Teach the skill or interest in the way you would want to be reached.
Include projects, templates, tasks, and a curriculum that covers what people need to know to reach a desirable end result.
5) Build Something You Want But Doesn’t Exist
At this point, you have an audience, a profitable business, and excess cash flow you can invest into a new type of business.
(Or, you can continue scaling the service business you started by hiring more people).
You know what your audience wants and needs.
You can either compliment your current offers with a digital product or software.
Similar to why we are creating Kortex (and are launching soon to those on the waitlist!).
Notion felt bloated and wasn’t nice to write in.
I didn’t have a good way of organizing all of my ideas.
Most other second-brain apps were too confusing for the average individual
So we created something better.
This isn’t an impossibility for you.
When you have social capital (vs venture capital) you can really build anything you want at that point.
So, depending on where you’re at in your creator journey, I hope this helped and I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you for reading.
– Dan
