Over the spring I had the chance to collaborate with a good friend on a project around bringing creators/entrepreneurs together for an in person event. We were excited about collaborating with other creative individuals in our community and hearing their stories from what they’ve learned or created during COVID. The project didn’t end up as intended but upon reflecting, I actually learned a lot and enjoyed the experience. As part of wrapping up our work together, I jotted down a few thoughts on what it means to me to be a creator.

What has COVID taught me?

As we emerge from our COVID slumber, we’re entering a whole new world. Although this world may look and feel somewhat the same to what it was before, in many ways things other things will be different. During COVID, I did a lot of reflecting on what’s important in life, and it gave me a chance to think about how I would do things differently.

I also wrestled a lot with my passion for entrepreneurship vs. my current employment in the corporate world. I’ve always thought of myself as an entrepreneur but never was able to achieve the success that I have had in my head. Of course I stayed busy during COVID, and had some fun building a Contact Tracing Jobs site and a Cryptocurrency site.

After networking with some other young professionals, I was challenged on my vision of success, and presented with the idea that you can be an entrepreneur in the corporate world; it might just look a little different. I was also called a ‘creator’ rather than an entrepreneur, a term I’ve quite taken a liking too. I wanted to share a little of my journey around what embracing the creator ethos has meant for me and what being a creator looks like for me!

Being a creator may not look like what you expect

Early on in my working career, I had a very specific vision of what I wanted to do with my life. I was an entrepreneur, or at least that’s what I told myself. I was going to start a tech-startup and become a successful young CEO. All my life I had tried, some successfully, others not so much, a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors. In 3^rd grade it was selling the pencil that everyone thought was cool, in 7^th grade it was selling tech decks (the miniature finger skateboards) that my school was obsessed with, and in college it was picking up beer bottles and cans for recycling.

In life, things don’t always turn out the way you’d hope. Here I was in my early 30’s, not having achieved the success that I had so yearned for. There had definitely been attempts to do so; like the medical record sharing idea that I worked on for 1.5 years only to be pushed out by a slimy partner, or the local news sharing site, or when I tried to help foreign exporters better improve their English websites. In a way, I felt defeated for not having achieved my goals.

It was during COVID, when I had plenty of time to reflect and consider, that I realized that maybe in some ways I had achieved my goal. I have my main site, YoungMoneyFinance that I’ve been running for 8 years, have had 100,000 visitors and earn money from. It’s not money that I could quit my job over, but it is enough to where I can enjoy a few more little things each month in life. I also had a great job at a large corporation, but a job that I have lots of autonomy, am allowed to be creative and try new things, and one where my success is rewarded.

Although I haven’t achieved the specific vision I had in my head, in many ways the elements of what I was looking for are present in my life today.

Being a creator is a verb

Early on I heard a saying that being an entrepreneur is just throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall until something sticks. I’ve rephrased that and like to say that being an creator is a verb. I’ve also been getting away from the term ‘entrepreneur’ as I feel that it places me in a box to where I don’t feel like I belong or places success metrics and constrains that I no longer am chasing after. Being a creator is a verb. Creators create, and they are frequently doing so.

Creators create beautiful things. Whether these are pieces of art, poetry, or something written (like my blog!), creators add value to the world using their talents.

Learn to focus on fewer things

It often feels like my mind is racing 100 mph, always thinking, dreaming, and engineering how I’d build or setup the things I’m thinking and dreaming of. It dawned on me during COVID that I’m actually not a superhuman, only human. As such, there’s only so much that I can accomplish during the day and now as a father, a husband, a corporate employee, a friend and a fitness junkie. I can only do so much, and by focusing on more things, I was actually holding myself back!

I found that by focusing on too many things, I was actually not accomplishing that much at all. I was essentially jumping from one idea to the next, and not following through or making much progress at all. What I learned was to focus on less things. It was (and still is) actually quite a task, I would consciously have to tell my mind not to think about this other thing that is not currently a priority for me, and instead focus on what is important. By focusing on less, I will be able to accomplish more.

Work smart

In my corporate world, as I attempt to sell software to small and large businesses, I always talk about how important productivity is. On an almost daily basis, I’ll say, “work smart…and hard”. I’m such a believer in working smart.

To work smart, it takes a little bit of planning, and a little bit of research. A little forethought will go a long way to helping you achieve the task a lot quicker. I believe it was Einstein who said that if he was given an hour to solve a problem, he’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.

Think more about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you’re doing it. I trust that your results coming from trying things in a new way, trying things differently, or trying things more focused will result in big productivity wins for you!

Take smart risks, and fail fast

I’ve never considered myself to be one who loves taking on risks, nor one that shies away from them. Instead I refer to myself as someone who is a risk mitigator. A risk mitigator is one that takes on smart risks. Without risk there is no reward, so it’s critical to take risks. However, with a little planning and research, you can learn to take smart risks, ones that aim to maximize your return while minimizing your investment (both time and energy).

Those two sites I mentioned at the beginning of the post (Contact Tracing and Crypto) are examples of how I both took smart risks and failed fast. Both sites aimed to capitalize on a movement in time. During early COVID, when none of us really knew what was going on, Contact Tracers appeared as if they would become a powerful weapon against COVID. Contact Tracers aim to track the spread of COVID by identifying who passed COVID onto whom, and whom the infected person had recently been around. With Crypto, there had been a lot of conversation around earning interest or rewards through proof-of-stake mining.

Through building and maintaining this site (YoungMoneyFinance), I’ve learned how to use WordPress and how to do decently well with SEO, i.e. having articles show up on Google. Therefore, putting up each of these sites didn’t take me much time and really my only expense was buying the domain. I probably spent 4-6 hours getting the sites setup and launching them. From there, I probably spend 1 hour each day trying to market the site, on social media and by writing new articles.

Unfortunately, neither site really took off, and although I had a few solid days early on, I didn’t get as lucky as I had hoped! However, I believe I took a smart risk giving it a shot, and because I didn’t actually invest that much, I was able to limit my actual loss. I very quickly got the sites up, and very quickly learned that they weren’t going to be a huge hit, and was able to move on!

Change is inevitable

Another talking point that I’ve been using a lot at work is speaking to how disruptive the year 2020 was for the world. Business was halted and those that survived had to learn to pivot very quickly. The same holds true for creators; the creators’ journey isn’t a straight and narrow path, and instead it’ll be full of lots of curves and bends.

For a long while (and even still some today), change would throw me off. I didn’t like change, I was a planner and I worked hard to control all the variables in my life. However, the fact is that life is unpredictable, but change is inevitable. The sooner that I can understand, and expect change, the more likely I’ll be able to pivot and make the necessary pivots, just like many of us were forced to do in 2020.

Success comes in many forms, celebrate them all  

The last point in my creators ethos is probably the most important one. It’s important to celebrate success, no matter what it looks like and now matter how big or small it might be. Being a creator is a journey and that journey will have lots of milestones.

For a while I found myself not wanting to celebrate until I essentially ‘finished the race’. I almost lost sight of the fact that as a journey, it’s not so much the destination that matters, but also the journey itself. It’s important to celebrate the entire journey, otherwise you’ll find yourself trudging along. I felt this way with the my blog, after 8 years of running it, I was a little worn out. However, upon doing some reflecting, I had a lot to celebrate. I have a profitable blog that earns me more than the hosting fees, and enough for some ‘beer and pizza’ money, i.e. mad money that I get to spend in fun little ways. I also have hit 100,000 views on the site, which is pretty impressive to think about.

Moving forward, I’ll remind myself to do more celebrating, all throughout the journey!

Summary

It feels so great to be able to put a more accurate description to who I am and where I’m at in life – more as a creator, not just as an entrepreneur. The term entrepreneur felt too restrictive, both in terms of what I felt it should look like for me, and where I felt like it should have taken me were I a real entrepreneur. I’ve enjoyed putting together this ‘creator’s ethos’ and will use it moving forward to guide me in my creative efforts!