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If your feed looks anything like mine, it’s been wall-to-wall Cannes content for the last week or so. And the thing I keep noticing isn’t the festival itself. It’s who’s doing the talking. Young creators, one after another, explaining how they work differently now. No employer, no permission, just them and an audience and a body of work.
On the Pivot Podcast last week, Scott Galloway put the economics behind what those creators are living. He was explaining how media used to work. There was always an expensive machine sitting between a talented person and their audience: the studio, the network, the agency, whoever owned the cameras and the distribution and decided who got seen. The machine held the power, so the talent took a thin slice and was grateful for it.
Then platforms like YouTube, Substack, and TikTok cut the machine out, letting anyone reach an audience directly, and the value moved from the institutions to the individuals.
He used his own podcast as the example. Back when someone else owned the studio and the distribution, he took a small cut of what the show made. Now that nobody sits between him and the people listening, he keeps most of it.
It’s easy to watch all this, creators out-earning a television network from her bedroom, and file it under “creator economy.” A young person’s game. Nothing to do with you.
It has everything to do with you. The same force is tearing through corporate right now, and it doesn’t care how long you spent inside the building
For years, the deal at work was the same one the studios offered. The company was the machine in the middle. It owned the clients, the brand, the budget, and you reached all of it through them. So you took your slice, a salary, and a title, and the company kept the rest of what your work was worth. For a long time that was the only deal going.
It’s coming apart now, for the same reason it came apart in media. The company doesn’t have to sit between you and the people who’d pay for your work anymore.
I think about Sophie, a client of mine I’ve written about before. She gave more than twenty years to one of the big retailers, and then she was made redundant, the exact thing most people reading this are hoping doesn’t land on them. What she had was a deep network and a real reputation. She’s now earning more on her own than the salary she left behind, selling directly the expertise the company used to take the margin on.
These career creators aren’t more talented than you. They just started out after the old deal had already broken, so they never learned to wait for it. You came up inside it. You were trained to get the work signed off before you put it anywhere. That training is the only thing they don’t have, and it’s the thing slowing you down now.
Sophie didn’t wait to feel sure. She started with leadership development, the thing she was passionate about, and quickly saw she couldn’t stand out in it, everyone offers leadership development. So she moved. She narrowed onto loss prevention, the thing she was known for, and now she supports leaders in exactly that.
She found her next move by starting, not by planning it out first.
That’s how it works. You don’t think your way to the right answer; you move, and moving shows you.
This is what I mean when I say: Momentum creates clarity, not the other way around.
If you’ve got years of expertise behind you and the sense that things are changing, here’s where I’d start.
Pick the one thing people already come to you for. Not your whole CV. The single thing colleagues knock on your door for, the problem you solve without thinking.
Put a small price on it. Small enough that saying it out loud doesn’t frighten you. This first offer isn’t about the money, it’s about getting the words out of your mouth to a real person.
Offer it to one person who might actually pay. Not a launch or a big announcement. One conversation, with one person whose name you already know.
That’s the whole first move. Everything after it gets easier.
I built a place for exactly this. It’s called Polywork, an intelligent platform and a community of women turning the experience they can’t quite explain into income they can name and sell. It’s the thing I wish I’d had when I started, instead of working it out alone over four years.
On July 13th, we’re running the first six weeks together as a group. The goal is simple: one income experiment, live. The thing you’re known for, named, priced, and put in front of a real person who might pay for it.
We start with how you’re wired, your Human Design, so the offer you build actually fits you, instead of being another thing you force yourself into and give up on.
From there, you build it, price it, and take it to someone real, with a room of women doing the same beside you.
There are 7 founding places.
PS. If you take nothing else from this, take the small move. Pick the one thing you're known for, put a price on it, and say it out loud to one person this week. You don't need to feel ready. That part comes after.
Polywork has 7 spots left before the pricing strucutre changes! While there’s still room, you can come in as a founding member: one payment, lifetime access. Once I’m full, Polywork moves to a monthly membership.
I’d love to welcome you in before it does.
If this landed, share it with someone who’s sitting on raw materials and doesn’t know what to do with it yet.
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