🦕 This Is a Maturity Problem, Not a Money Problem

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Hey Reader,

I was on a call with my biz bestie Tonya last week when something came out of my mouth that stopped both of us mid-sentence.

She told me to talk about it more. 😛 So here we are.

Let me define "maturity" because I am not talking about age or experience or how many years you have been in business. I am talking about three very specific things:
1️⃣ emotional maturity,
2️⃣ strategic maturity, and
3️⃣ relational maturity.
You've heard me talk about these things before: the ability to stay regulated when everything is shifting, the ability to make decisions without perfect information, and the ability to build and maintain relationships that compound over time instead of burning them for short term gain.

What caught my attention is something that I'm watching happen in real time, and I say this with genuine love for every person this applies to:

A lot of people who were absolutely fired up during Covid have become completely frozen right now.

And the story they are telling themselves is that it is a money problem. That your cash flow is tight, the economy is weird, nobody is buying, the algorithm changed, and (everyone's favorite) AI is coming for everything. The usual catch all is that "the timing is bad."

I hear you and I also am girding my loins right alongside you. The point is: all of those external excuses are *not* the actual problem.

The actual problem is that the rate of change has exceeded the current level of maturity in the room. And that gap, not the money, is what is keeping people stuck.

I think about what it must have felt like to live through the Industrial Revolution. Society shifting from agrarian to urban and industrialized practically overnight in historical terms. People watching everything they knew about how work and community and daily life functioned get dismantled and rebuilt into something unrecognizable. I am pretty sure they had the same fears. The same paralysis. The same very loud voices insisting that this was the end of everything good.

But the people who were able to handle the rate of change? They did not just survive. They shaped the next several generations.

That is the only playbook that has ever worked during periods of massive disruption. It was not the people with the most money, or who got there first. I love reminding us all that no one is first to market, not even the AI tech bros. The people who were mature enough to stay in motion while everything was uncertain... those were the people that made today possible.

This week alone I watched the thesis prove itself across every layer of the media landscape simultaneously.

Amazon made their podcast ambitions unmistakably clear. Netflix's UI update this week showed exactly how they plan to use your screen real estate. These are not media companies dabbling in creator content. These are distribution infrastructures being built at a scale that will reshape what your audience expects from everything they consume, including your small business marketing content.

At Cannes, Seth Rogen said if you do not like writing and you are just using AI to do it, maybe you should not be a writer. Swap out writing for podcasting, video, or any medium you claim to love. If AI's speed is revealing that you do not actually love the work, that is not AI's fault. That is just a very fast, very bright mirror.

​Kristen Stewart sat in the same festival and described her plan to go make something on YouTube with her friends because she is done waiting for permission from a system that was never built for her. What she is describing is the creator economy. One of the most recognizable actors on the planet is heading for your space, and she is not alone. Every industry professional who cannot get a project greenlit right now is coming toward the indie space with skills and collaborators that will permanently raise the bar on what your audience expects.

And Gary Vee seems to be everywhere lately preaching on other people's podcasts that we are at the beginning of the end of social media as we know it. Short form is where people find things. It is not where they stay. The loyalty is being built in podcasts, newsletters, and long form, formats that ask something of an audience and give something real back.

All of this. 💨 At the same time. 💨 At a speed that has no historical precedent even though the pattern itself is ancient.

What you need to sit with is your freeze response:

The time you used to have to figure it out does not exist anymore.

I have watched enough extinction events in media and technology over the past two decades to recognize the pattern. And the difference between now and every previous wave is not the disruption itself... It is the speed. Everything that used to take five years to shake out is taking eighteen months. If it took eighteen months it's now taking six. The compression is real and it is not slowing down.

So when I see people I know have the talent, the ideas, the audience, and the genuine desire to build something, still frozen in the same conversation they were having two years ago, waiting for the money situation to resolve itself before they take action, I want to grab them by the shoulders with love and say:

This is not a money problem. This is a maturity problem.

🎯 Because maturity is what lets you move without perfect conditions.
🎯 Maturity is what lets you make a decision with incomplete information.
🎯 Maturity is what lets you stay in the game long enough for the compounding to kick in.
🎯 And maturity is what lets you look at a resource that could genuinely help you and say yes instead of filing it away for later while someone else builds what you said you wanted.

The extinction is not coming. For some people, it is already here. The ones who will not be among them are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who learned how to surf the rate of change before the wave took them out.

That is what we build inside the Creator Economy Dojo. Not just content strategy. The whole picture. Because I will never let you drift from your bottom line and I will not lie to you about what this moment requires from you.

Next week I am going to get specific about what emotional maturity, strategic maturity, and relational maturity genuinely look like in practice right now, with all the source material from this week linked out so you can go as deep as you want.

But this week I just needed you to hear the thesis.

This is a maturity problem. Not a money problem.

And you already know which side of that equation you want to be on.

The most mature thing you can do right now is stop doing manually what a well-built system can do for you. Your time belongs on the work that moves your business forward, not on the content hamster wheel.

👉 Join us for our Claude Design workshop on Wednesday as a guest in the Creator Economy Dojo and start reclaiming that time immediately.

🤖 Your Promo Content Shouldn't Take This Long

Claude Design just dropped... and we're already putting it to work.

THIS WEEK: On May 27th, Everett Cento (my go-to AI engineer at Sasquatch Media Grounds) is teaching a live workshop on how to use Claude Design to generate polished, on-brand social content from your current brand assets.

Faster. Without the token-limit wall. Without starting from scratch every single time.

This is not a "here's what AI can do" hype session. This is hands-on, your-brand-in-the-tool, walk away with a working system in two hours + at least one (if not more) quality posts ready to schedule.

It's open to everyone 🎉 Dojo members, you already have this. Everyone else, tickets are $97 and the recording comes with it.

$97.00 Claude for Creators: Build Your Promo Machine A live workshop​ Wednesday, May 27 | 2–4pm PT (5–7pm ET) You didn't start a podcast (or newsletter, or channel) to spend... Read more Register Now ➡️

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Let's Hang Out Have you heard about Rec League? I'm low key obsessed. Honestly, anything that doesn't involve trying to take each other down with verbal machetes is a welcome change for a social app and this one reminds me of how Pinterest used to feel. But even better? Monetization is already built in so your followers won't get weird about some of your recommendations behind a pay wall. Give me a follow & let's have fun!

Participate + Join In: If traditional networking makes you want to fake an emergency exit, this one is different. The Awkward Handshake Collab Lab is a structured two-hour event designed around one radical idea: showing up with a real ask and a real offer instead of a stack of business cards and a rehearsed elevator pitch. Join Megan and me on May 28th in Vancouver, WA and spots are capped under 50 so it stays intentional.

🗞️ Gossip From the Creator Trenches

✂️ You Are Probably Comparing Yourself to a Team

Before you spiral about why your content is not performing like the accounts you watch while doom scrolling, do yourself a favor and look one layer deeper. There is a booming micro industry of people who clip long form content professionally, and some brands pay specifically to boost that content for engagement. What looks like one person crushing it is often an invisible production and distribution operation working behind the scenes. Strategic maturity means understanding the game you are actually playing before you decide you are losing it.
🔗 Peel back the covers​

👣 The Humans Want to Be in the Same Room Again

I do not need an old bro with a mic to validate this but since he has the reach and volume, consider this your message delivery service. The appetite for in person analog time together is real and it is growing. I will also say this is your Easter egg for the week: keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks when I open early bird doors to my live event this fall in Vancouver, Washington. Sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is get in a room with the right people and actually move.
🔗 The one time I agree with Gary Vee​

🎞️ The Most Valuable Line Item in Your Production Budget

If you have never spent time in production hallways the way I have, here is something worth knowing: the magic in any show lives in the edit. In film, many of your favorite movies were made great by a woman in the editing suite who never got the award because the director did, and those directors are overwhelmingly men. I will save that full rant for another day. What I want you to take into your next production conversation is this: your editing costs are your most valuable costs, and most people get this completely backwards. They over-invest in looking pretty and under-invest in the edit, and shitty editing will make even the most beautiful production look cheap. Do not skimp here. Pay your editor well and thank them while you are at it.
🔗 Thank your editor and pay them well​