What You Need to Thrive in the AI Creator Economy

It's not mastery of a tool

I know so many people in the creative industries are afraid of getting left behind, of becoming irrelevant or obsolete with tech moving so quickly.

I’m happily in the front wave of riding the tech and I get afraid of this, too.

And I think this is a valid fear. Tech is moving so quickly. The systems around us as creatives are changing.

And even if you’ve dived head first into AI, now suddenly you’re confronted with the tech taking leaps and bounds around you—as soon as you learn one tool or workflow, another better one pops up.

I read this excellent essay this week by Dan Koe on how You have about 36 months to make it.

On how the tech and change curve is moving so fast, that if you’re not building and seeing some successes now, and integrating the tech now, you’ll have a much harder time and much wider gap later.

I agree with all of this, and I think it has less to do with the actual tech, and more with your ability to adapt.

Also, I think the runway is a lot shorter than 36 months.

I also have been mulling a lot on Steph Pajonas’s excellent The Joy Factor: How to Use AI Without Losing What You Love About Writing

In working at hacking the AI films process, one of the things I’ve absolutely had to do for sanity is STEP WAY THE HELL BACK. Not out of it, but, pull back from the buzzy “omg I need to know everything now to make the best stuff ahhhh or I’ll be left behiiiind.”

(Not that I don’t still do this at least twice a day, but, yeah.)

There is no forefront. Everyone here is on the forefront. It’s so new that it’s all the forefront in AI video, basically. And that…is something else entirely.

Fomo can be a real joy killer, too. What in the world is it all worth if you forget how to breathe along the way?

(I asked Midjourney for people standing on the edge of tech and the future, and it was wonderfully trippy about it.)

So, I’m a very thinky person, four of my top five strengths are thinking strengths.

And I’ve been thinking. A lot.

What do you actually need to navigate what’s going on now, and what’s ahead? What skills do you need to be able to not just get ahead in the short term, or even the long term, but to thrive? To be a thriving, happy human with a thriving, happy business that brings you all you need and all you want for a joyful existence?

The toaster oven of my brain dinged after reading Dan Koe’s essay, because: the runway isn’t about learning AI, though that’s definitely a part of it. That’s a big part of it.

But the runway is actually about adaptability. And the ability to see yourself as an activator of the future, not a victim of it.

So I think these things are key:

• Ability to think adaptively: when you can look at the current landscape, identify which tools and strategies fit your needs right now, and integrate with them.

• Ability to think without limits: there is no box. There is literally nothing you can’t do right now, or start to work toward, in your business. (I mean, take that in the spirit it’s meant.) You want to build an app but can’t code? You can build an app. You want to market but you never have? You can learn how. You want to move to another country and start your business there? AI can help you learn the language, and get you going on translations on the way. THERE IS NO BOX. Boxes are so last year.

• Ability to market with your whole chest: you can tear into your work or your products and know them backwards and forwards, know your hooks, know your audience, be cringe, go full volume, go for broke.

I think these are what will make the difference.

And you don’t need AI, on the surface of it, to do these things.

Smart business people and creatives have been thinking adaptively for years. This isn’t something that’s new.

You don’t have to use AI to build an app, you can figure out how to hire someone to build your vision, too. If you’re after an app for production, it’s probably smart to do both.

You can sell products or books or whatever you’re selling without broad marketing knowledge, but you have to know your niche.

But…how many people pursue all of this? Or have the time, privilege, or funds to jump in out the gate?

And that’s where I think AI takes all of these ingredients and drastically shortens the runway.

If you’re not used to thinking adaptively, you’ll learn how to in a hurry with AI. You’ll have to. You’ll learn that you get better results by asking better questions. You’ll learn how to integrate new systems to free up time, cash, and bandwidth for more. And learn how to flow with the changes and embrace them rather than dig into old systems.

Because old systems aren’t ever what’s going to get you the edge, just the slumpy middle of the couch.

(Lol, MJ, that…is something.)

I talk with AI positive friends a lot about how using AI in the way we do is literally rewiring the way we think about things, and a lot of that has to do with possibilities. We have learned to take off the training wheels, or the bowling bumpers, or all of that. We have an idea, then go dive into a chat with AI to figure out not if it’s possible, but how we can do it.

I’ve built two apps now. I only know a smattering of HTML and CSS from 2000s era, very little of which is in the code to these apps.

And yet I built them, with AI, going back and forth, learning how to troubleshoot, learning when it’s lying out its eyeballs and that problem three problems ago was in fact THE problem, and now we can fix it thankyouverymuch.

And the ability to market?

I honestly think this is the one everyone’s scared of. Because if there are more books and more movies and more everything out there, the edge then becomes the marketing.

And I don’t think AI is ever going to fully take away marketing smarts, because if everyone has access to the same abilities, that’s no longer the edge.

Good marketing involves rewiring, too, to know that you’re always telling your readers or customers or clients stories about what they can experience or who they can be, not about what you’re selling them. Good marketing involves being out there and vulnerable and willing to be cringe and taking chances. It’s a lot of work. And a lot of it can be heavily automated now, but I think the authenticity is still going to pull ahead in strategies that center it.

BUT AI can help tremendously with this. It can help with videos, and hook pulling from books and market analysis and research. All of it. Like all the stuff that Cassie’s doing with the foreign markets!

All of these things.

You can do these without AI—to some degree. But you can do them so much faster, with more knowledge at hand, with much less financial barriers, with better intel, and with more concentrated fury, with AI.

And that, I think, is the runway.

Not actually mastering the tech or any specific tools, but mastering the mindset and the ability to move within it. Then you can dive into tools yourself, or hire people who know them, or direct the flow of all of it.

This isn’t about tools, but about mindset.

The gap between people diving into AI now vs later is that they’ll already have hit on a lot of these things, and learned how to supercharge their processes or ideas or businesses. And yes, a lot of the tools themselves will be much, much easier three years from now. Probably half of the tools we’re using now will be obsolete and other tools and companies will have risen in their place.

And yes, three years from now, creating a book will be as easy as saying an idea and boom, you have a book. It might be just as easy to make a movie. We’re already building those types of systems now.

But if that’s the new normal, then that’s not where everyone who’s already hacking at AI now will be. They’ll be out making generative VR worlds or whatever is the new tech of the day. And they’ll still have the edge.

And the push-button things will have a much, much harder time in that ramp for platform building, and marketing, etc.

The completely hand-crafted businesses who aren’t adapting will have a much harder time, they will, because the systems they relied on aren’t the systems that are current. And that’s hard.

It is hard. And unfortunately, being hard doesn’t make this all untrue.

I’m not saying you need to do anything with AI, though—you don’t have to use AI to adapt.

I’m saying you need to start thinking now how you’ll build out your business to position yourself to ride and embrace the wave of change, not oppose it.

You’ll have a much easier time of that with AI, but if you don’t use it, you’ll need other levers—time, funds, a team.

You’ll still need to expand and learn and grow as a marketer and as a brand. Probably as a person, too. I’ve certainly done a lot of that, since diving in two years ago.

And, that’s humanity. We hate change. We love change. But we’re always going to change.

So, we’re already on that runway.

I couldn’t do so much of what I do without the help of AI, not to the level that I do it. I already have that edge.

I’m one of the first authors working at adapting books into AI movies. That is an immense edge.

But really—I’ve learned to embrace all of these things, not fight against them.

No matter what else you’re doing, no matter what you believe, no matter what you love to do yourself in your business vs automate or outsource—do this.

Take a good look at where you’re at, what you’re pushing against, and what you’re allowing to rise. I think that’s where to start.

-Novae