Consumption vs. Creator Mindset

Why Am I Starting a Substack

As a restaurant owner who makes his living in a blue-collar industry—literally scrubbing toilets and rubbing pennies together to make a dime—I sometimes feel a bit nauseated when I hear about the astronomical paydays that “social media influencers” or “content creators” are pulling in.

But if I’m being honest, those feelings come from a place of lack, insecurity, and jealousy.

And as an entrepreneur, those negative emotions can blind me to the bigger picture—both in terms of evaluating a real entrepreneurial opportunity and embracing a chance for creative self-expression, connection with others, and better mindset.

The content creator economy is currently estimated at around $300 billion, nearly double the size of Hollywood’s $137 billion—and that gap is only expected to grow. It makes sense to me. I spend exponentially more time on YouTube and social media than I do on streaming services like Netflix. I actually rarely watch Netflix—it demands too much time and focus. I prefer the casual drop-in, drop-out nature of YouTube.

So while I’m definitely not doing this for the money, as an entrepreneur, you want to operate in spaces with the highest upside. The other day,

Dale

pledged $8/month to support me (probably out of pity), and he still doesn’t realize how over-the-moon I was about it. In the restaurant world, I’d need to sell three bowls of Chicken & Rice to make that same $8—which is WAY more work.

When I say "work," writing probably takes just as much time as making food—but it doesn’t feel like work. It’s way more fun.

Somewhere along the way, as I got deeper into my business career, I lost the joy and art of creation. When you're building and running companies, your mindset naturally shifts toward dollars and cents: Will this make money? Is this a viable business model?

It’s been a long time since I created something just for the sake of creating. In high school, I was in AP art and was very close to majoring in Art (such a difference from business school). I made HTML websites, wrote a 17-page StarCraft tutorial, and ran a Xanga page I loved writing on. After college, I even had plans to start a blog about becoming homeless—until my mom very quickly talked me out of it.

Back then, with youth, when it came to creation I had more time, less bills and less fear.

Now that I’m older, I have more bills, but more capability to pay them, and with that more time again—and what was once fear or disdain has turned into curiosity and excitement for creation and the realization that creation is a previalage.

So much of our lives revolve around consumption—especially in America. Whether it’s social media, news, or video content, most of my day is spent consuming. Even my in-person habits are driven by digital ads. As AI continues to advance, I’d much rather be on the creator side than the consumer side.

I have a general idea of what I want to create—politics, history, business, spirituality, and the occasional wild idea like seawater challenges (shoutout ACE NG Hawaii 2021!)—but mostly I’m going to build the plane while flying it. Don’t over think it, it’s just like trainign for the Ironman. Any time you get out there to run it’s better than not running. And the challenge seems astronomical, but you just focus on putting one foot in front of the other, one at a time, and bam you finished an Iron Man (after 17 hours lol). So I will apply those same lessons here. Just put stuff out there, enjoy the ride, and maybe something good will come out this stuff with consistent effort.

If you have any content ideas or topics you want me to explore, let me know. One big reason I’m doing this is to stay connected with friends.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far 🙏

-Ian

P.S. Speaking of creation, this precious little one is the best thing I have and will have created. Happy 7 weeks Marley!

AI Transparancey Note (For transparancey I am going to include notes on how I used AI):

• Clarity, grammer and spelling

• Fact checking

• Drafts of titles for the article

• I asked it to summarize what it learned from this post to see if I got the intention of what I am writing out.