Your Creator Ikigai: Why It's So Damn Hard To Find Your Niche, Audience, and Build Your Brand
My personal creator journey of how I landed 3 jobs, quit them all, and paved my own path online.
When I started publishing in January 2021 I had one goal: Destroy writers block.
I was tired of leaving my drafts unpublished.
I was sick of lurking all the time.
Moreover, I was desperate.
Is my life’s work going to be a list of unpublished essays under my drafts folder?
or was I going to take a risk and see what happens?
*Cue rocky music* 🥊
So I published.
30 essays, 60 essays, 90 essays, on and on it went. I was on a publishing streak hotter than a Texas Summer and I finally became a writer sans writer block.
Life was good— like really freaking good. My mornings were spent writing. My evenings were spent teaching. And when my head hit my pillow at night all I thought about was what to write next.
Writing was effortlessly joyful.
But after a while…I got bored, sloppy, and complacent. 🦥
My essays didn’t spark joy anymore. My writing felt stuffy and stagnant. Publishing became a subconscious habit I kept around like flossing my teeth.
Shit…
I figured by now, the online creator’s heavenly gates would burst wide open and welcome me in with open arms.
So what gives?🤔
Isn’t creating online suppose to be the cure-all answer to finding my purpose?!
Where’s the tons of followers? The affiliate marketing moolah? Is this Ikigai thing a bunch of BS?
Writing was suppose to give me more clarity, but instead it gave me more questions.
It wasn’t until I went through “freelancer hell”, quit 3 jobs, and lost all my money… that I realized had all the pieces of the puzzle to build my online business.
Story Time 👇
Act I: Ghostwriting-Brian👻
In early 2021, a random internet stranger (lets call them “S”) read one of my essays, fell in love with my writing, and asked me to be their ghostwriter.
Being a ghostwriter sounded cool. Like I was some sort of secret agent + writer🕵️. And it felt like the “logical next step” in my writer journey
—so I accepted the job.
For the first time ever I was making MONEY from my words.💸
Until it dawned on me. I wasn’t just writing for myself anymore.
I had to DELIVER.
Tweets
Threads
Followers
Results
and more results
The whole shebang
Shit was getting real, uncomfortably real.
At first, it was exciting to see my words make an impact for someone else.
Every day of freelancing felt like a crash course in business 101. “S” was an amazing business and life mentor. They were patient, kind, and extremely generous. And I couldn’t have asked for a better first client!
But, after nearly a year of ghost writing…
I realized it wasn’t for me. 😓
Freelancing was a great way to make quick cash and even gave me the opportunity to hone my craft… but growing someone else’s Twitter account didn’t feel motivating to me.
Once again, I lost that spark of joy I had when I first started writing.
*cue rocky music— except this time he lost his fight and is down in the dumps*🥊
Act II: Copywriting-Brian✍️
Around the same time I started digging deep into copywriting.
All the copy gurus preached about how easy, simple, and fast it was to learn copy, and they were very persuasive. After all, I just needed a fifth grade English level to monetize my love for writing and write my way to freedom right?
So I became Brian “The Atomic Copywriter” for a year.
All I could think about was copy. All I read were copy books. All my online friends were copywriters.
I lived, breathed, and sweated copy.
Copywriting was my one-way express ticket to success and I paid the fare everyday.
One day, an internet stranger named Christine noticed my love for copy and reached out to me about a mentorship/job opportunity.
Yippee! My first copywriting job. I smashed that yes button faster than a bullet train.
(Little did I know it was a blessing and a curse in disguise.)
I started writing copy professionally— TONS of it.
15-20 emails per week. Researching. Editing. Sales pages. Sequences. It was a whole new world except I didn’t get to chill out on a flying magic carpet with a sultry Arabian princess.
And I was loving it…
…Until the novelty wore off.
Mondays came around, and I had that same shitty feeling I experienced when I got tired of ghostwriting.
Dread. Absolute dread.
Despite:
Growing faster as a writer than ever before…
Making more money than I ever did teaching…
Having supportive mentors and amazing resources at my fingertips…
Literally everything I needed to succeed as a copywriter…
I didn’t feel happy.
Copywriting professionally was a great chance for me to hone my skills with other professionals but it always left me feeling empty at the end of the week.
So I quit that copywriting job in September, 9 months after I started, with no plan b and nearly $-10,000 out of my pocket from copywriting course fees.
*cue rocky music— except this time the bank takes his house and he’s homeless* 🥊
Act III: Existential Crisis-Brian 😔
The first few weeks of being jobless was a relief.
Finally, I was free from the golden handcuffs of copywriting for cash!
But now what?😱
Now that I couldn’t hide behind my shadow career of writing for other people… what was I suppose to do?
I went into a downward spiral.
What’s my purpose in life? What am I trying to do? What’s the point of all of this?
It felt like the lowest point of my entire adult life…
I was jobless, broke, and broken.
And I was starting from zero again.
Out of desperation, I joined Kevon’s “build in public” course.
When all else fails, I’ve always found that learning was a safe haven for me. As long as I’m committed to learning something, everything somehow works out.
And I was right.
Once I began building in public:
I reconnected with the creator side of me.
I launched a product that eventually got 3rd place in a world-wide competition.
My calendar was constantly filled with zoom calls with other creators.
I met an amazing coach (Shruthi) that helped me dig deep into my creator business.
Writing became fun again.
Quitting a job can be a freeing experience… but nothing can prepare you for the anxiety, fear, and desperation that comes after. The worst case scenario is stagnation. But as long as you’re continually learning it all works out in the end.
*cue rocky music where he meets an amazing coach that shows him the ropes* 🥊
Act IV: Coaching-Brian 🤔
After Build In Public Mastery, I decided to ride the momentum of my success and work with a coach to set up my coaching business.
And holy crap it was intense.
Coaching was like having a fine tooth comb delicately brushing through every inch of my business, vision, and life— except this comb had a bullshit detector.
For the first time I had to ask myself:
Why do I want to be a writer?
Why was writing so important to me?
What does being a coach mean to me?
Why am I building online?
Why why why why why why why?
Suddenly, It wasn’t just me and a journal anymore.
After 2 months of working with Shruthi, I began coaching other writers.
I’ve coached people before, but this was different.
I was talking to my people. My tribe.
Suddenly, I started seeing things I never saw before:
I coached writers through their obstacles, fears, and worries…
I dug deep and helped them uncover what was truly valuable to them…
I saw their eyes light up when they came to a realization or turning point…
And something inside of me starting shifting as well.
After a delivering a couple of coaching sessions and having many conversations with writers, it was time to craft my offer.
But for some reason I just couldn’t.
Every moment I sat down to create a coaching offer it was like scraping a bag of bricks against a chalkboard.
The DREAD was coming back.
And I heard this tiny voice in my mind whisper:
“Do you really want to be a coach? or do you like the idea of being a coach?”
That’s when I had the biggest breakthrough in my creator journey.
Ghostwriter. Copywriter. Creator. Writer. Coach.
These were all just labels and identities I chased after because I thought they would give me what I truly wanted…
Act V: Connection. Freedom. Fun.
It feels absolutely bonkers that it took 2 years of trial and error for me to realize this… but sometimes you just don’t know until you know.
As creators, we all start off our journey with gusto, eagerness, excitement— and it’s easy to lose sight of our values through the process.
Without values to anchor our decisions, every new step feels like we’re wandering in a sea of possibility.
And no.
You can’t simply fill out a writing exercise, choose from a list of 100 words, and have a value.
A value is gained when you sacrifice something for it. A value is ingrained when you have a ‘struggle’ story about it. A value is cemented into your soul when you feel like without it your life would be diminished.
I say all of this not because I want to be Yoda on a pedestal sharing sage wisdom…
but to tell you that YES it IS hard. It’s SUPPOSE to be hard. And anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you.
You’re going to want to quit, start, and pause a thousand times. You’re going to make mistakes, trip, and fall. And you’re gonna have a hundred struggle stories when it’s over.
Because at the end of the day, people don’t follow you because they like you…
They follow you because you mirror a part of them they want more of.
The key to finding your purpose, creating your niche, and building your audience comes down to this:
Having an unwavering confidence in what you stand for and why.
Being able to clearly communicate your values in your writing, words, and speech.
Helping other people who have similar values to you get closer to their dreams.
Being on this path of creating online is an emotional, exhaustive, and damn near spiritual journey— but if you’re willing to stick with it, the rewards are well worth the sacrifice.
Until then?
Keep on writing.
-Brian
Great insight and great story Brian!