“We want to have a story about Americans being self-reliant, and that is the wave that Kahana is riding.” – Carl Nordgen (Entrepreneur, Novelist, and former Duke Professor)

There is so much information on the creator economy – much of it unfounded – it is easy to get lost in the noise. Because of this, it is important to find true experts. One such expert, Carl Nordgen, a creative consultant, entrepreneur, teacher, award-winning novelist, and speaker took the time to talk with me about Kahana and the state of the creator economy. Having been a creator, a lecturer, and much more, he has been following the growth of the Creator economy since the late '80's and is very knowledgeable.

In interviewing with Carl, we discovered two key ideas that explain the growing importance of the Creator Economy and Kahana itself:

1. Trend Towards Self-Reliance
2. Widespread Cultural Shift

Trend Towards Self-Reliance

Carl Nordgen describes the American story of being self-reliant. What sounds more American than bootstrapping your own success? From being able to cook instead of always eating out to having a car and not needing to take an Uber everywhere, self-reliance is the gold standard of our society.

Recently, this self-reliance movement has been expanded to a self-employment movement. Many of these newly self-employed people are part of the creator economy. The creator economy makes up over 100 Billion dollars of revenue and is only getting bigger.

The reason for this growth is simple. People want to be dependent on themselves to make their living not others. Better yet, people want to focus on their own goals and interests, not make other people more money.

Interestingly, this trend is not reserved for wealthy countries.

According to Nordgen, “in developing nations 70% of all employment is self-employment.”

In many ways, this is a result of necessity. Many times, jobs just don’t exist, so self-employment is the only option. The cultural differences are also important. In places like the U.S., many people apply their job titles to their sense of personal accomplishment. This too is changing.

Widespread Cultural Shift

The cultural shift is a result of everything from the increase in remote work opportunities to the growing percentage of the workforce made up of Millennials and Gen Z.

This cultural change was honestly the most shocking of Carl Nordgen’s revelations. The first point was that “around 50% of the next decade’s jobs don’t exist today”.

Beyond this, Nordgen pointed out that the “COVID Pandemic accelerated the realization that [many] people don’t want to go into the office.”

There are a few ways to view this. One could see this and be worried about their job security. A more valuable way of looking at this is as a crucible for innovation.

Our economy isn’t dying it is changing, this turmoil will, as Carl Nordgen put it, “build social entrepreneurs.”

Kahana not only believes this will happen, but we are also betting on it. We want to help these social entrepreneurs develop into the force that they know they will be.

Ways to Join the Creator Economy

After learning about the Creator Economy and the potential necessity for it one question is only natural …“So What Now?”

The Creator 101 Hub

Just another quick answer is checking out the Creator 101 Hub, developed by Adam:

Creator 101 Hub 🧙

Creator 101 is a free hub created and curated by creators for creators, including recommended free software for creators, free networking events, and lists of free marketplaces to post digital products.

Take me to this hub

The History of Kahana

In founding Kahana, Jonathan Gans and Adam Kershner sought to scratch their own itch by building the perfect creator and monetization platform. As content creators themselves, they recognize the most important barriers to both content creation and monetization. Adam described building Kahana, as “creating the tool that [he] wanted in [his] pocket.” Now it’s a tool available for use in everyone’s toolkit.

Kahana answers the most important question of “what do I need to focus on as a content creator?” In other words, what KPIs do content creators need to focus on?

Some of the most important creator KPIs that Jonathan and Adam, want to focus on are audience engagement, making your first dollar, making your first recurring revenue, and developing channels for generating traffic (i.e. collection of emails).

Jonathan and Adam want to emphasize to all creators that they are the expert. So many people hesitate to join the creator economy because “they aren’t an expert.” Most new creators fail to realize that for any interest or skill, we have the opportunity to be the expert for everyone that has less knowledge.

Kahana is the perfect companion tool for every part of the creator’s journey, starting with finding your niche until you have monetized and scaled.

The two most important and challenging parts of becoming a creator are the actual creation of a digital product and finding a way to get recurring revenue from said product. Kahana solves both of these problems:

• Kahana provides an easy-to-use powerful research tool that can be accessed on many different platforms for free.
• Kahana makes it easy to then monetize not only the content but also the research, through a subscription service.
• Bonus Benefit: Kahana is easy to use with other websites. And there are a bunch of websites that can help a creator join the creator economy.

Take advantage of the culture shift and use your knowledge to reach others and build your perfect career.

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