What do you do if your strategic goals as a creator clash with your personal values?

A creator needs to maintain authenticity. It's an essential attribute that helps one stay connected with the audience. Whether it's about acquiring new followers or retaining existing ones, staying true to them in terms of the offering is important. Maintaining one's core value set not only helps in delivering on promise but also consistently. Compromising your core values for short-term gains can be quite detrimental in building a long-term brand for an individual as a creator.

Remember, it's okay to say no and pass on a deal if it doesn't align with your values. The best content requires authenticity.

In 2020, I faced a significant dilemma. My agency, which specializes in production for various YouTubers, had two creators focusing on kids' content. These were our most profitable clients, contributing $10,000 per month in revenue and about $5,000 in profit. However, upon learning more about the potential negative impacts of this content on children, I realized that continuing our relationship with these clients contradicted my personal values. Making the tough decision, I chose values over profit and let these clients go. I firmly believe that aligning with one's personal values is the only way to build a career that is fulfilling long-term. Looking back with pleasure after retirement hinges on these alignments.

Authenticity is paramount for creators, whether working solo or in collaboration. It's vital to align your strategies with your core values, even if it means navigating a more challenging path. Being authentic not only resonates with your audience but also inspires and influences them positively. As a creator, you have the power to inspire and shape others, so staying true to yourself fosters a genuine connection with your audience and encourages them to embrace their authenticity?too.

Pursuing a strategy that contradicts your personal values is both a bad personal and business decision. It can create a life you regret and negatively impact your contributions to the world. For example, if I had continued working with those kids' content clients despite knowing the harm it caused, it would have compromised my values and made me look bad to my team, because I would appear to lack values and only focus on profit. This not only risks my reputation within the team but also in external circumstances. Prioritizing values over profit is crucial for maintaining integrity and trust.

Seeking advice from peers in the industry can be helpful, however, a lot of them are going to be thinking through the same lens as you in terms of what is successful and what is good to do. Seeking advice from family is particularly helpful. They have an external perspective and a grounded perspective in what values you hold in life beyond work. I think that it is really helpful to be broad in decision-making when deciding if you're going to change paths because of values or contradictions in your career.

When strategic goals clash with personal values, it's common in diverse environments where opinions differ. Seeking advice from mentors or peers within your community can provide invaluable insights and alternative approaches that align with your values. Engaging in these conversations helps navigate the complexities of the creator economy while staying true to integrity and authenticity. Encouraging seeking help or advice from peers and mentors without hesitation, as it can lead to valuable solutions and?perspectives.

When you realize you're contradicting your values, it can be easy to dismiss it. In 2020, I initially dismissed the idea of firing our kids' content clients despite the harm their content caused because the profit was significant. I thought I could reinvest that profit for social impact, but causing harm to help the world later isn't a good idea. Don't harm the world to begin with. It's important to be mindful of alternative paths and not make excuses. Finding alternative ways to make the same money will take effort, but if you truly care about having values as a human being, you will make that sacrifice of energy and cognitive effort to live a better life if you deeply care about living a fulfilling life.

Another way to be confident in making judgment calls and making tradeoffs between values and career success is through long-term vision. The more someone can align with certain values and consistently operate with them, the more they build a reputation for being a certain type of person in an industry. From my experience of building YouTube channels that are considerate of the audience's time and educate them, long-term vision attracts talent and people who want to work with me. This is valuable because scaling requires fantastic talent, which necessitates a strong reputation built through consistency. The more long-term vision you have, the more you realize that aligning with personal values is a beneficial business decision.