Battling Burnout

The titular question of a recent NYT article, “Is there life after influencing?,” has long been contemplated by many embedded in the ecosystem. Creator burnout has never been more prevalent; creators are faced with a pullback in brand marketing spend, platform changes (e.g., shorts), AI doomerism, and general social media fatigue – all while tasked with meeting increasing expectations for content volume.

The “dream job” repute of content creating masks the profession’s demanding realities. In addition to the requisite, and self-motivated, commitment of time and effort, creators must contend with near-constant performance and personal sharing. This combination of overworking (which is common across many professions) and maintaining a (seemingly intimate) public persona is a particularly dangerous cocktail. Consequently, some creators are opting for a 9-5, “in-house” position at a brand or company, where there is a natural constraint on hours worked and where the creator can focus (mostly) on the brand instead of themself. Others choose, intermittently, to step back in the form of a multi-month or multi-year hiatus, only to return refreshed and inspired.

But if the goal is to maximize long-term value while minimizing this flavor of burnout, one might consider building a diversified creator business. Optimizing for equity ownership is, ironically, less subject to the burnout experienced by those focused on earning a “salary” from independent content creation. This path, which (to be clear) still requires a herculean effort, eventually transcends the creator themself and may offer long-term career sustainability.

Building this business means hiring a great team, thoughtfully expanding into income pools other than ad monetization, and developing the core infrastructure to efficiently scale creator decision-making. Ideally, the creator’s business can stand on its own merit; growth, once kickstarted by a creator’s distribution, is ultimately reliant on the quality of the product or service. Such an effort necessitates upfront time and capital investment without any guarantee of success. If executed correctly, it can yield exponentially compounding rewards (instead of linearly, according to hours worked).

Take MeatEater, for example. Much of the early success was driven by their embedded audience’s attachment to Steven Rinella’s personal content. As their products and curation developed their own reputations for quality, however, they became increasingly detached from (and some are now almost entirely independent of) Rinella himself. This is the ideal outcome for creator-led businesses: the average consumer knows about your brand but not necessarily about you, the creator.

Creators represent a huge population with varying goals and interests. Some may thrive on the demands of full-time content creation, or be unmoved by the idea of business building. We suspect that those most affected by creator burnout, but who are aiming for career longevity, sustained profitability, and potentially a legacy that outlasts them, will largely look and act increasingly like entrepreneurs.