Behind the Feed: Real Advice for Aspiring Creators
Content creation has become woven into our everyday lives. We used to engage with creatives through TV ads, Tumblr posts, and OG YouTube, but the industry has exploded over the last decade, and for many young people, "creator" has taken on a new meaning as a possible future. If you're in high school or college and already posting, filming, or building an audience, you've probably started asking the next-level questions: How do I actually sustain this? What separates the creators who stick with it from the ones who burn out? What decisions actually move the needle?
There's no single roadmap, but on the Beyond Now Podcast, we asked for real, hard-won advice from people who've built their platform from scratch. Here's what they had to say.
Finding Your Lane
You may be one of Jordan Matter's 47+ million followers or subscribers, and his advice starts with knowing what makes you different: "Find your lane. What does that mean? What is it that's unique about you that you can share with others that is also entertaining? And then be very, very consistent with that."
Vin Matano (Creator Buzz) echoed this by urging aspiring creators to find gaps rather than following the masses. A big example of this is knowledge creators: "There is this real need around knowledge creators. Someone you can go to, to just like learn something from every video, not necessarily go deep into that person's life." He also sees real opportunity in the tech world, helping startups and founders share their story is, in his words, a genuinely valuable skill.
Sustaining It Long-Term
Consistency is only half the battle. Everyone agrees that failure is part of the process. Haven Lough (Haven Skin) put it simply: "I strive for failure... Posting every single day, you're going to fail, you're going to have flops, but you're going to learn what does well, what doesn't do well. So the failing is what helps me get further and further and further."
Jordan Matter echoed the same idea with a nod to an old cliché: "It's such a cliché - perseverance. Just like get the frick back up again... If you have grit, you can do anything in life."
Vin's advice for the long haul is to keep it personal. Focus on the personal side of whatever you're working on or interested in, so your audience sticks with you even if your career takes a turn.
The Decisions That Mattered Most
The biggest turning point (so far) in Haven’s career was learning not to care what everyone else thought. That mindset shift, paired with a fear of regret, shaped how he's approached his career, "With everything I did, I just wanted to make sure I didn't have regrets... That's what I envisioned for my future: always chasing every single dream."
Jordan Matter's version of this lesson is about flexibility, "I think the most important thing is not the job path but your ability to pivot and be aware of the circumstances and make changes."
Mindset and Skills for the Road Ahead
Across every conversation on the Beyond Now Podcast, our guests kept coming back to a few ideas worth carrying with you. The first is positivity. As Haven put it, that's the best quality a young person can have. It doesn't mean pretending every post lands. It means seeing the whole process in a bright light, flops included, and letting the sense that you're getting a little closer each day keep you going. They also stressed knowing your platform inside and out, and Vin's three buckets for LinkedIn content (news and trends, career advice, and workplace stories) offer a framework that works on any platform, because once you understand what your audience shows up for, the question of what to post starts to answer itself. Above all, they agreed that there's no downside to building a personal brand, so consider this your permission to put yourself out there. Every creator we've talked to started with a single post from someone who decided to be seen, and the road ahead of you starts in exactly the same place.
