Quit Your 9-5 & Join the Creator Economy (Step by Step Guide)

If you hate your job and want to do something meaningful, the online “creator” business is the best opportunity you have right now.

You may know this, and may have even fantasized about the idea. Who wouldn’t want a business that allows them to help others, make an insane income, work from anywhere, and have “the lifestyle”?

I’ve been doing this for 8 years now—earning six figures in the coaching/creator space—while working 4 hours per day from the coffee shop.

The work I do stretches my creativity. It’s just fun to learn and share wisdom for a living, and get paid for it.

Sometimes I look up from my computer and think:

“This is unreal. How am I getting away with this?”

But, I want to be honest with you. I had an easier time getting into this coaching and creator space than most people.

I pivoted into this from a successful career in real estate investing. I had 3 dozen rental properties and a lot of cash. I had time to figure it out.

I was broke and barely scraping by for my first 12 months when I got into real estate, but not when I got into coaching.

Most people don’t have this luxury.

I have a friend who badly wants to become an author and Youtuber. But, he works full-time, has kids and a wife, and always has plans on the weekends.

He doesn’t have time. And, he can’t quit his job because his creator business won’t replace his income anytime soon.

What’s he supposed to do?

Well, even though I didn’t go through the same struggles as some, I did learn something from my real estate career that I carried over with me. If I was in my friend’s shoes, this is what I would do.

This will work even if you are strapped for time. You won’t have to quit your job and risk it all, either. This approach essentially guarantees that you will be successful, at some point.

Let’s dive into the backstory behind how I realized this…

The book that got me into real estate is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It talks about viewing every dollar like a little soldier. The more soldiers you send out to work for you (invest), the more fruit they bring back. Once you have hundreds of thousands of soldiers working for you, they bring back more than enough to cover your expenses.

When passive income = expenses, you are financially free.

I took this mindset and built a rental portfolio. The rentals sat there working for me after I worked to obtain them. When I switched to the coaching space, I wanted to create the same type of effect.

I wanted to work on a project that—when it was done—would sit there and work for me forever.

I wanted to do work that does work.

So, I decided to write a book. I knew that books stand the test of time. They act like little soldiers, out there spreading your message and establishing your credibility, all while you do nothing.

My first book was called Fire Yourself, about how to grow a house flipping business. I made 90K in my first 12 months as a coach.

Most of it came from clients who had read my book and wanted help with implementation. The book sold on Amazon and my website. It wasn’t even selling a lot of copies, but it was a niche enough topic that the readers turned into clients.

I also started a podcast. Podcasts are different from other social media because an episode you create today could still be getting downloads one year later.

Also, the more episodes you create, the more the audience grows. Once my podcast was getting over 1,000 downloads per episode, this created an average of 4 clients per month for my program. That took me to 25K/month.

I bring this mindset into everything I do. I don’t want to work on anything without leaving something behind that works on its own.

Naval Ravikant, mega successful entrepreneur and angel investor, has spoken about this using the phrase:

Productize Yourself.

This means to take what you do and put it in the form of media:

Books, podcasts, videos, etc.

The two key benefits of taking your wisdom and “productizing it” are:

1. The media you create teaches for you, establishes your credibility, and warms people up to buying your other services
2. The platforms upon which you publish the media grow you an audience in compound fashion

For example, if you put videos on Youtube:

1. The videos teach hundreds of people for you at the same time
2. The platform brings new viewers to your videos consistently, some stick around and subscribe, and this grows in a compound way over time

Books work the same way. Once you have multiple books, there’s something called “readthrough”. When someone reads one of your books and likes it, they see if you have any other books.

One book makes someone aware of another book, and so on. The books feed each other. The more books you have, the more your author career grows, in compound fashion.

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“Work on things that compound, so that when you do it long enough, it’s unreasonable to think you will be broke.”

                                                              — Alex Hormozi

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Let’s get back to my friend who has no time and needs to be certain that any effort he puts toward his business won’t go to waste.

If I was in his shoes, I would find a minimum of 20 minutes/day to work on my creator business.

Most people that have “no time” could find at least an hour a day. But, let’s be conservative and start with 20 minutes.

I would use that 20 minutes to write newsletters.

Newsletters are the cash cow of most creator businesses. Most of their sales come from their email list.

Newsletters are also writing. Writing is the raw ingredient of all media.

Let’s look at how we could use newsletters to productize ourselves and grow in compound fashion.

Side note: you could also call these “blog posts” or “letters”, since it’s not really news. Most people just know it by the term “newsletter”.

Here’s what I would do if I was my friend:

1. Write newsletters for 20-60 minutes per day
2. Start a website + blog + email optin page using ​Kajabi​ 
3. Publish the newsletters to the blog
4. Take snippets of the newsletter and publish on short form social media (X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn)
5. Use my iPhone to film videos for Youtube, using the newsletter as my video script
6. Strip the audio out of the video and publish as a podcast

All the content I spread everywhere would ask people to opt-in to my email list. It would also link back to the blog.

Inside of my blog posts, I would offer 1:1 coaching and affiliate products, since I don’t have a crisp product of my own yet.

Wanna get a little crazy?

Long term, I will think of structuring the newsletters into a book. If each newsletter is 1,000 words, and a book is in the 20-40K range, I can publish a book using 20 newsletters I write.

(This is advanced and requires the newsletters to be around a cohesive topic, but is possible with proper planning)

Over time, I will grow a library of blog posts. I will pick one to promote daily on social media. This promotes my products without me having to be salesy on social media which no one likes.

I will recycle the short form content, reposting it every 30-90 days (all the gurus do this, it’s how they stay so consistent. Around 50% of their content is reused).

I would use ​Hypefury​ to schedule all my short form posts. This allows you to write something once, and it automatically goes to X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

It auto creates carousel posts and X threads. It allows you to categorize posts and schedule them to be reposted again down the road.

In short, it’s automation + a compounding library of short form, reusable content.

This will allow me to post more frequently as the library builds.

Here’s the results I would expect over time:

• Blog post library = growing
• Youtube audience = growing
• Podcast audience = growing
• Email list = growing
• IG/X/LinkedIn/Facebook = growing
• Books/recognition as an author = growing with each book released

All of these things feed each other. They compound. Everything you do remains and continues to do work for you long after you’ve created it.

If you’re new, this definitely caused some overwhelm.

“You mean I gotta do ALL of that?”

I wouldn’t dare try. I would build it in slowly over time. I’m just showing you what’s possible.

Many creators that don’t have the “Productize” mindset do work that fizzles out. It’s like throwing kindling on a fire. There’s a flare up, and then it disappears.

As for the work that I put my heart and soul into, that’s my worst nightmare. I want to do work that compounds, lives forever, and makes a bigger impact on the world, all while I do less and less.

It sounds too good to be true. It was, until the internet and social media came along.

I believe that the greatest opportunity for the average person today is:

Media.

Media is the ingredient that will allow anyone to achieve leveraged:

• Impact
• Income
• lifestyle of full autonomy

This opportunity will get more difficult to capitalize on over time. It will never be easier than it is today.

If you aren’t clear on the niche you want to go into, my book ​Nail Your Niche​ will fix that.

If you want to write a book but aren’t sure where to start, check out my 1:1 program ​Get Clients With a Book​.

If you just feel kinda stuck and think a single coaching call with me will help, ​grab one here​.

You deserve to make a lot of money, help people, and live a life of freedom.

But, it’s going to take some work.

It all starts here.

Brian