How to become more audacious as a creator
letter #16: the secret between you and the people you admire
Hi friends,
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the idea of audacity, especially when it comes to showing up for your dreams. I’d never really understood what that word meant before, but since I’ve decided to show up for my creator dreams, I’m beginning to understand what it truly means.
I used to think that the people I admired, especially on social media, were more confident, more talented, or more special than me. But after being a creator for years now, and having observed so many people become successful in such a short period, I realized that the difference between them and me is their audacity.
For instance, one of my most recent inspirations right now is a creator named Mia McGrath. I found her page sometime last year, and have been obsessed with her brand. She mixes financial intelligence with her fashion background, which I thought was really cool. I’m personally not interested in the fashion side of her content, but I love the personal finance aspect.
She documented her journey to a 6-figure net worth at age 24 and built a huge following as a Frugal Chic—someone who’s building wealth without sacrificing style. I’m 30 now, have about $150K+ saved up in my investment portfolio, and I didn’t really think what I did was impressive. But looking at Mia’s documentation of her personal finance journey, maybe it actually is impressive?
Often enough, I watch her and many other personal finance creators and wonder, “How are they doing that? How do they talk so confidently about such a taboo or scary topic?” In real life, I love talking about money—my whole world lights up when I can teach my real friends and family about saving, investing, and earning more.
While reading The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron discussed shadow artists—people who want to be artists but, instead of pursuing their creative dreams wholeheartedly, they take an adjacent role. Instead of pursuing their dream of becoming a photographer, they become a photographer’s assistant. Instead of being a fashion designer, they opt for being a personal shopper. Shadow artists do this because they’re terrified of pursuing their creative dreams. Julia explains that the artists we admire aren’t necessarily more talented than us. They just had more audacity to show up for their creative dreams.
It resonated because it felt like I’ve always admired creators but never really believed I could be a successful one.
As a result, after all these years, I learned to hide and play small. I created trendy videos instead of publishing the real thoughts I have in my drafts. At the core of it, I didn’t have the audacity. Every time I see a creator who’s way more successful than I am, I think to myself, “Oh, they’re successful because they’re special.”
But now I realize, no. They’re successful simply because they had the audacity to go after their dreams.
Anyways, once I learned this about myself, I decided to take a different action. I decided to take more audacious actions as a creator (mostly on Instagram because that’s the platform I have the most complicated relationship with).
It’s only been a month of being audacious, but I’m already starting to see some shifts both internally and externally. Internally, I feel at peace with my creative endeavours, I have fun showing up (which I feel like is the most important thing), and I actually 100% believe that I’ll be successful in what I’m doing.
The last part is honestly the one thing I had to work through the most because believing 100% in something you have no evidence for is the scariest, most ridiculous thing, but also 100% necessary if you want to succeed.
Externally, my metrics have been the best they’ve ever been. I used to post one reel every single day, only to get hundreds of views, but now, I’m consistently breaking the 1K to 10K views by simply being myself and posting only 3 times a week.
I refuse to do the fast-paced editing on Instagram, so I’m actually pulling from my YouTube background: creating talking head videos on topics I actually care about: money, self-improvement, and travel.
In the last 2 weeks, I’ve posted about 6 “audacious” videos on Instagram, and it’s brought me the most saves, shares, and followers I’ve had without trying to be someone else. As someone who struggled to speak on camera on Instagram, this is a huge win for me.
So as you can see, having more audacity actually works.
In this letter, I’m sharing:
how to actually be more audacious as a creator
curated content diet
How to be more audacious as a creator (with practical tips)
Take yourself seriously
For a long time, I treated content creation as a fun hobby instead of a viable career path. I struggled with the idea that my job title would be a content creator, so I showed up to my dreams half-heartedly.
