What it really means to be a creator and to 'play the creator game'

Part 1/3 on creators and online business, ft. guest expert and creator John Bardos, IdeaEconomy.

Mar 02, 2022

Before we get into today’s post a message goes out to those affected by the excruciating events happening in Ukraine. At The Ask we send our thoughts and prayers and donations for the country’s population, made via the Red Cross.

To be or not to be… a creator.

Being a creator is a topic of interest to many, given that the ‘creator economy’ has become one of the biggest trends in business, accelerated exponentially by the pandemic and web 3.0. Today’s younger generation are 3x more likely to want to be a YouTuber than an astronaut.

Our guest for this post has not jumped on the bandwagon in recent times, however. John Bardos, in one of my favourite conversations for this newsletter to date, shared with me his ‘creator’ journey. It dates back to starting his first website in 1999, at this time John was curating links and articles using a discussion forum he customised.

My interview with John explores some of the shifts in the last decade in this space, his take on playing the ‘creator game’ and what this means for readers.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately. Through research and speaking to people, I’m building up a perspective on what makes being a creator so appealing and importantly, how it distinguishes from other entrepreneurial career paths. If you’re new here, entrepreneurial career paths are my jam, as a biz coach, founder and newsletter writer.

To begin sharing my learnings with you, I bring you today’s post which is one of three in the next three weeks. (Yep, a bonus post).

I also have a personal announcement…the internet has afforded me so many opportunities in my journey as an entrepreneur that it has enabled me to take my business on the road and do the ‘nomad’ thing. So here’s what I’ll be writing about:

Today: John’s take on the ‘creator game’ and broader shifts in the landscape
Next week: How to work out if you’re on the ‘creator’ or startup ‘founder’ path and making decisions between the two
Two weeks’ time: BTS on my journey to take The Ask on the road and how I’ve moved things around in my life and business to do it. This will be shared on day three of living in Lisbon!

Subscribe for all three posts and join 1200+ early stage founders and creators.

John Bardos is a player of the ‘creator game’

John tells me about the ‘creator game’ which is what he calls ‘playing long term games with long term people’. More of his take on the creator game can be found here.

He believes that creating an audience can help build your business and bring new opportunities to you. But importantly, John says that you never know what opportunities will arise, it is only if you have a track record of success that things will evolve. “People who do things get opportunities” — you have to do things online if you want people to find you.

John breaks the ‘creator game’ down into four components:

Creating something
Promoting your work to get an audience
Connecting and networking to develop opportunities
Learning and levelling up your skills

Find John on his Twitter and Newsletter.

John has been creating work online since 1999 and 2009 he announced via his blog Jet Set Citizen that he would be selling his company, house and possessions to become a digital nomad with his wife.

At this time, becoming a digital nomad was in vogue albeit at the very early stages compared to today. Books like Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Work Week were flying off the shelves and John was one of the few people to actually enact such a drastic lifestyle change. Here’s the post in 2009 where John announces how at 40 years old “this may be the last chance have to start over”.

Today John spends his days on the ideaeconomy.net newsletter, which is he started 18 months ago to curate information about online entrepreneurship, startups and creators and his business Bundles for Good, which sells bundles of creator’s courses and donates 25% of profits to charity.

I interviewed John on a Zoom call and have written my notes from our conversation below:

What were the early days like of blogging as a nomad, did this make you money?

The blog made me a small amount of money, via sponsored posts and backlinks, but making money was not our main priority after selling the English language school. We just wanted to travel. We lived off our savings for many years.

Was it easier to run a successful blog in those days?

We had about 300-500 visitors per day on average, which would probably be harder to come by today, but I was in no way that early into the blogging space. It was the people who started in the early 2000s who were in a wide open market with real advantages. By 2010 the space was more saturated and you still needed to write great content and get backlinks to do well. I wish I had the knowledge that I do now back then.

So the blog helped you commit to taking the leap to the nomadic lifestyle. When it didn’t bring in much income, what was your motivation to keep it running all those years?

It was about connecting with people which I believe is an undervalued part of doing online work. The creator game is an opportunity engine. I've meet many lifelong friends, it's helped me get consulting work, and I've gained many invaluable skills.

Without my blog, so many things wouldn't have happened for me. As we shift to more remote work, connecting online through our content and work will become even more important.

I met hundreds of people in person in different locations around the world. For example, Chiang Mai, Thailand is a big digital nomad hub now and was back then, too. If you were into travel, SEO, or even online gambling, there was lots of events and meet-ups happening there.

I held my own meet-ups and events in different cities on topics like travel, social media, and social good. In-person events are one of the best ways to build connections with other like-minded people and establish yourself as an authority in that niche.

I met people like Matt Kepnes of Nomadic Matt, early on their creator journeys that went on to build large businesses.

What professional benefits did you see at this time?

There was so much skill development because if you’re working online you have to know about SEO, development, design etc. These became transferrable skills I could apply to a marketing business I ran for four years.

Any business with an online presence can benefit from the skills of the creator game. Whether that’s creating backlinks to your content, or connecting with others in the space.

To me, a big part of the greater game is about building connections with interesting people. No one is your competitor online. I believe that generosity gets reciprocated over time. I try to create as much value for others as I can.

What are the main shifts and changes you’ve seen in this space in the last decade?

Well the name has changed: ‘creator economy’ is new as a term but people publishing content online is not new.

I had the domain ‘idea economy’ for my blog back in 2008. I wanted the creator economy to be called the idea economy!

Some terminology ends up winning. It's a major advantage if you can coin and own those terms.

Some good examples of this are Tim Ferriss’ 'lifestyle design', Seth Godin’s ‘The Dip’ or David Perell’s ‘Personal Monopoly’.

[Side note to readers — It’s so true; I’ve even talked about each of these books and concepts in this newsletter before: Tim Ferris, Seth Godin and David Perell].

If you can coin a term and make that a conversation topic, that is a driver to make people think in a different way. So finding ways to describe things is really powerful. Whilst creator economy is a new term, it is describing something that has been around for ages, but terms like ‘blogger/vlogger’ were clumsy. Creator, however is a term that people can really rally around.

So whilst the overall concept of publishing online has been around for a long time, today we have many different ways of earning money. Early bloggers started with ebooks and Google ads, but shifted to courses, membership communities, creator tips, paid newsletters, etc. Whole new platforms exist for creators like TikTok or Gumroad.

So if a reader thinks they might have one of these terms to coin, what should they do tactically?

Branding is not a logo or what you call yourself. It's how others’ perceive you. You have to win for your term to catch on. It can take a lot of work.

Listen to Seth Godin's podcasts and presentations. Even he repeats the same phrases over and over again because that repetition is needed for an idea to spread. We only talk about the ‘lifestyle design’ because Tim Ferris promoted The Four Hour Work Week so well.

To win requires combining a good idea with effective promotion so that it can get popular.

I think of Jack Butcher being incredible at this, with his ‘Visualise Value’ concept

Yes, Jack Butcher become very popular in 2021. He was almost unknown until Naval Ravikant shared his Tweets. You need great content AND it has to be promoted well. Creation alone is not enough.

Let’s talk about newsletters since we both run one. Why do you think newsletters are so popular right now?

Newsletters are trendy now because of the success of The Hustle, Morning Brew, and The Skimm. Substack has also been a major influence because they made paid newsletters so easy to start. Paying high-profile journalists to start paid newsletters on Substack definitely helped, as well.

But newsletters are nothing new — it is a blog with a sign up form and that’s been around a long time.

Newsletters have a low barrier to entry with a large potential upside, so they've become the next big thing. It's much easier to start a newsletter than it is to record a video or podcast.

Pssst! Do you love learning from newsletters?! Refined shares links from across 10k+ sources to make you smarter every day. Sign up for free here.

What would you say is your main win from running the IdeaEconomy newsletter?

It’s being known and connecting with other people online. You contacted me last year about doing an interview from the newsletter, you were the first but since then I’ve had at least five requests, and been mentioned in many other newsletters, which is creating backlinks for my content. It’s a flywheel for content that keeps getting bigger.

What makes IdeaEconomy unique?

I spend a lot of time every week screening hundreds of sources for the best content to level up your creator game.

I try to focus on recent links, so you can keep up-to-date with the latest ideas.

I learn a lot every week from the content I curate. I hope my readers are growing as well.

…… John and I then continued to talk about the distinction between being a creator and startup founder.

I will be sharing John’s perspective and my own take on that next week . I believe these nuances are so important to ensure you are making strategic business decisions AND building the right entrepreneurial career path for you uniquely. I can’t wait to share that with you.

In the meantime, if you want to go further on this topic have a read of Packy McCormick’s post on ‘The Great Online Game’.

He likens creating on the internet to video games which have levels, contextual rules, rabbit holes and how these ‘rack up points, skills, and attributes that players can apply across their digital and physical lives’. Packy describes those people who are internet-native and play the ‘Game’ can cash out internet points for things like ‘TV shows, Grammy-winning records, venture funds, companies, and political victories’. I wrote about Packy’s impressive journey to monetisation in a previous newsletter here.

Thank you for reading as always!

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Ellen Donnelly, Founder + Chief Coach, The Ask.

I help ambitious, entrepreneurial professionals decide and plan their next career pivot or business idea so they can feel clear and excited about their future. Apply for coaching.

The Ask, by Ellen.

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