Here come the creators.
According to Goldman Sachs, the creator economy is expected to roughly double to $480 billion by 2027, up from about $250 billion in 2024
Creators build communities and drive engagement by producing original content, often leveraging social media platforms to connect with their audiences.
As a leader, you might think you have nothing in common with cheeky online entrepreneurs, but think again. Creators have mindsets and skills that you can learn from to help you drive more impact and growth.
Here are 7 helpful ways you as a leader can gain from taking on a creator mindset:
1) Ownership
Being a creator requires you, above all else, to drive your own agenda . Nobody else is creating if you’re not. Nobody is telling you what to do.
This is a good mindset and practice for any leader, not just creators.
“Leadership requires ownership, especially when things go south,” said Justin Welsh, a solopreneur and advisor. “The best leaders I’ve worked for have taken accountability during the bad times, and praised others during good times.”
There are a lot of things at work that can get you down. Taking ownership for what you can control and helping your team navigate challenges gives you a powerful stance as a leader.
And modeling ownership for your team encourages them to mirror you, building a stronger team with tight accountability.
2) Optimism
Ownership is made more possible by optimism. And creators embody optimism. The best creators are not beaten down by outside forces, but instead focus on moving forward.
“The creator mindset is about taking charge of your future,” said Nathan Barry, the founder of Kit and creator of the Nathan Barry Show. “Creators tend to be optimists. They believe the future will be better than the present because they’re going to play a role in making it so.”
For any leader, today’s business landscape is challenging. People are burned out; return to office is clunky; managing employees under the best of times can be stressful.
But when you maintain your optimism you realize that there are a lot of things you can control. You may not be able to resolve the return to office process inside of your company, for example, but you can help your team work together better and adjust to whatever circumstances are prescribed by your company.
3) Platform building
Your actions and your accomplishments can’t have impact, though, unless the right people know about them.
The same is true of creators, who have to build an audience or die.
“The creators who succeed do two things at once – create great content and build their platform,” said Mo Bunnell, author of Give to Grow. “Leaders need to do the work, of course. But they also must build platforms so that people know about it and collaborate or participate in it.”
You can build your platform through an internal blog or newsletter, by building your brand as a speaker, or in a myriad of other ways. Getting the word out about your work requires attention–just as much as doing the work itself.
4) Collaboration
One of the best ways to build a platform as a creator is to collaborate. The most successful creators know that when they band together they can support each other’s work and build audiences together.
According to Jenny Wood, former Google executive and author of Wild Courage, many leaders don’t understand this. “Leadership at companies is too siloed within departments. Leaders don’t leverage communities and people around them,” she said.
As a leader there are many ways to do this. Wood suggests bringing together a set of marketers or HR people or finance professionals to talk together about common topics and challenges. You can speak to a peer’s team and get your peer to speak at your team meeting to offer a fresh perspective.
5) Vision
“A creator’s greatest skill is being able to paint a high-resolution picture of the future that others can see,” said Mike Seckler, CEO of JustWorks. That’s equally true of successful leaders. “By helping others see clearly how the future can be different and better than the current state, leaders can inspire their teams to pursue and embrace change,” Seckler added.
Ethan Evans, a former Vice President at Amazon who left to become a creator, did this in reverse when he left Amazon to become a creator. “I created a very clear mission statement for myself: ‘to help professionals find career success and satisfaction.” This helped him move swiftly and allowed him to explain his reasoning to others rather than let them fill in the blanks with their own points of view about why he left Amazon.
6) Creativity
Creators are, by definition, creative. Too often leaders forget about the creativity they need to bring to their work.
“Many leaders see their jobs as executing the plans of others or getting the work done,” said Evans. “ This is actually management, not leadership. Leaders always look at what is being done and seek ways to change it to be better, more efficient, or higher value. That’s a creative endeavor.”
7) Consistency
All of these tools of leadership only work if you work them consistently. You need to do the hard work, day in and day out.
“A successful creator must honor the monotony of consistency almost religiously to stand a chance of growing day after day,” according to Jo Franco, a creator with an audience of over 1 million followers.
It’s the same for leaders. You need to regularly push yourself to learn new skills. You need to make sure you build your team.
The best way to do this, according to Franco, is to commit to tiny actions consistently to help grow their team’s sense of agency and ability.
For example, you could start a weekly team meeting where everyone articulates their main focus for the week. Or you could set a quarterly goal for everyone to build their professional skills in a certain way.
By adopting a creator’s approach, you can keep your team – and yourself – energized, adaptable, and ready for whatever comes next.