For Every Creator...

I feel quite vulnerable opening up to you about this as it is something that I’m figuring out myself. Here goes 😆 

Whether you’re an employee of a company and making content on the side, or you’re full-time and thinking about bringing on the first person to support you, this email is for you.

The tweet below comes my own experience of being a content creator and starting a company. I believe that being a creator is the exact same as being an entrepreneur.

I’ve also worked with thousands of creators over the last 10 years and I wish I could tell you that it gets easier… but I’d be lying! 😌

Getting Support is 🔑 

Some problems get easier, many get more complex. Now that we have a team of almost 40 people at Zygo Media, I am hiring for our first HR Manager (p.s. if you know someone great in the UK, let me know!).

There’s still new challenges that I’m learning to navigate. I continue to seek mentors who are further ahead in the entrepreneurial game than I am so I can learn from them.

My hope is that I can share some of what I learn from them and my own lessons with you so that you can have more perspective when you face similar challenges.

It’s still going to be tough but my hope is that you get to move through it quicker than we did and this saves you time!

You might think you’re not ready to bring someone on yet but you can actually do that much sooner than you think. It isn’t crazy expensive!

We cover this in depth in our Gaming Creator Accelerator program, you can join the waitlist for our next one here: join waitlist.

My Lesson’s Learned 🙈 

Here are some of key mistakes I have made learning to build a team over the last five years that you can hopefully avoid.

1. Expectations: Believe others should be as motivated as I am.

2. Delegating: Before I had a good understanding of the scope.

3. Low Leverage: Telling people what to do instead of first asking them

4. Paying $$$: Hiring senior but haven’t actually done that specific task

5. Skills over Attitude: Short-term results but long-term headaches

What’s interesting is that I read different books on this as I was starting to build a team, listened to different podcasts but it wasn’t until I was “IN IT” that I realized how much harder it was to actually do.

I’m sure you can relate … I mean, how many times have people said “you’re just playing video games…” 🤣 if only they knew!

Sometimes you hire a bad egg (we’ve all been there!), especially when we hire someone off fiver or Twitter to edit a video.

In hindsight, I always look at my decision to hire as something I can improve.

These are questions I ask myself when reflecting on hiring a freelancer, contractor or full-time position that went wrong:

1. Why did I hire this person over alternatives?

2. What expectations did I have?

3. Were those expectations reasonable?

4. Did I set them up for success?

I go into more depth and detail over in our latest episode of The Creator CEO Podcast. 

You can listen to the full episode below on Spotify or Apple.

That’s me for this week ! Always love dropping in with you each week and know that I’m in your corner. You got this! 👏 


- Stephen