Regardless of my title, function or experience: I consistently sat in conversations to which individuals, much older and wiser, couldn’t seem to agree on a clinical definition of what exactly “Creator” is.

The “Creator thing” would come up a lot. At dinner, family outings, dates, in a club bathroom. Anywhere. And at 21 or 22-years old, this could be the first time you get the itch that there could be something you can’t mentally compartmentalize very well. It feels like a problem to solve, even if there is no life-changing urgency. It just doesn’t feel like everything is as neatly defined or mentally organized as the people around you make it out to be. This is most commonly described in a “founder type” of person.

If you’re like me, who has never felt worthy of defining myself as the all-consuming and all-selfless Founder; too busy being a young metropolitan person who was still trying to not be 1) an asshole or 2) pregnant, you hear some traits and decide to almost physically shake the feeling off. I am not onto anything and someone else has already figured this out.

The sad news is, at some point, everybody finds “cracks” or “misplacements” somewhere.

Why You Should

These cracks let me feel like the biggest nerd out there. I might as well be wearing glasses with middle tape and holding out a pointer finger with corrections that to just about every single person were (really) pointless. To me, they mattered. It had real value.

And that’s the reason why they have to be worked on. They could very well be almost pointless at that place in time, but it mattered to me. The value of solving “the fuzzy topic” with misplaced words, theories, numbers was worth my entire internship paycheck.

Actually, I even contemplated paying anyone that was willing to listen to just figure it out. Yeah, this seems like an issue right up your alley. It definitely was not. Your life would be so much easier when people finally think about it this way. It would not.

These itchy, fuzzy issues compound, by the way. And when you don’t work on them, the compound, and then get solved; this is where it really hurts. That’s because if it still will 1) not be solved 2) not be right 3) will stay as something considered over with and considered done. But it is not.

Content and Creators

It could be media, it could be social, it could be people. There’s this kind of value and it does that thing. Hilariously, these were issues that I naturally just got to work on and in the best possible places to work on them. Which, by the way, feels way better than just doing it alone in your parents house.

So you decide to do something. Where do you start?

Start asking very particular questions to get some damn answers. You black out mentally for a few weeks and start writing out at least 50 questions. These 50 questions are broad and granular. And you start asking to them to every person until you meet people who actually know what they are talking about.
Don’t take their answers as fact, but listen to the points they bring up.
You go through life, which is crazy.
You write every single relevant thing down and in the off chance you get to work on a project (product or research) you
Absolutely do that.
Repeat.

Why I started C-CPAR

If you are an “itchy” person, it’s as important to be a researcher as much as it is a builder. Actually, I bet your builds are bad until you do this part because:

Even at the most basic level, there are still so many gaps yet to 1) define so that 2) break it.

Academia. All of the definition debating caused me to realize that I might not be the most intelligent or versed individual able to get to a solid definition of the creator industry. And that is so incredibly fine. You know who would be? Academics.

Policy.

If there is a problem you want to 1) define so that you can 2) break it, reach out. Here’s how I start something:

Work to Be Done
Why You Should
Content and Creators
Why I started C-CPAR