Why Most Content Creation Advice Will Kill Your Soul (And What to Do Instead)

The truth from two decades in the game

After two decades in this wild world of content creation, I've watched thousands of creators chase the wrong things. They obsess over thumbnails, posting times, and algorithm hacks whilst missing what actually moves the needle.

And I’m not surprised - almost all the growth-hacking, ‘do this to go viral’ advice is vapid at worst and surface-level at best.

Here's what I've learned, from running print magazines in the 00s to building a 500k+ subscriber YouTube channel in the 20s, what I know in my bones: content creation isn't about gaming algorithms or following formulas.

It's about one human being reaching across the void to touch something deep in another. It's about connection. It's about love, really, though we don't often say that word in business conversations.

The thing is, there's a framework to this magic, but almost all content creation advice never gets beyond the surface.

I’m going to lay out the 4 C's of content creation (which kinda makes it 6 C’s). They've changed everything for me.

Picture this: a pyramid surrounded by a circle. Curiosity at the base - the foundation of everything. Confirmation in the middle - proving you belong. Connection at the peak - where the real transformation happens. And surrounding it all, like a protective embrace, Cultivation - the daily practice that makes the other three work.

Let me take you inside each one. Let me show you what I've seen, what I've lived, what I've learnt in the trenches of this beautiful, brutal creative life. This is a deep dive into a decade of intense study, both strategic, and deeply personal. Let’s get into it.

Curiosity: Without This You Might As Well not Bother

Every piece of content that has ever stopped you in your tracks began here. Every video that made you pause mid-scroll, every headline that grabbed you by the throat, every story that pulled you in despite yourself.

All of it - every single piece - works on one fundamental truth: humans are curious creatures, and curiosity is the door through which all connection passes.

Without curiosity, your content dies in the digital graveyard where millions of hours of unwatched, unread, unloved work goes to rest. Ones and zeroes returning to ones and zeroes.

But provoke the right curiosity in the right people? One video, one article, one moment can change everything. I've seen it happen. I've lived it.

Finding Your Angle (Or How I Accidentally Built an Empire)

Most creators dive into saturated markets and wonder why they drown. Fitness, personal development, gaming - they enter these spaces and try to out-shout the noise with more noise.

But saturation isn't the enemy. Saturation is proof of life, proof that people care enough to consume. What you need isn't a new market - you need a new angle, a fresh way of looking at something people already love.

Let me tell you how I learnt this, how a moment of pure curiosity changed my life.

It’s December 2017. I'm thumbing through YouTube, looking for something to watch while I do the dishes, on one of those strange liminal days between Christmas and New Year.

I stumble across Lost In Vegas - two hip-hop heads filming their journey into metal and rock. Instant curiosity. What will these rap fans think when they hear Metallica for the first time?

That curiosity led me down a rabbit hole. Hours later, I'm thinking: what about the reverse? A metalhead discovering hip-hop? I couldn't find anyone doing that journey, and suddenly I'm buzzing with possibility.

Rock Reacts was born from that moment. "METALHEAD REACTION TO HIP-HOP" - not subtle, not clever, but when you're battling for attention in a world of infinite choice, subtlety is a luxury you can't afford.

Our first video, reacting to Logic, pulled 4,000 views overnight. For a brand new channel, that’s unheard of. Comments poured in, subscribers followed, suggestions multiplied. Four months later - 100,000 subscribers. Millions of views. By the middle of 2018, we were the most viral new channel in the UK, along with Niko Omilana.

Because we found an angle that provoked curiosity.

The Two Faces of Curiosity

But here's where it gets deeper, where most creators miss the plot entirely. Curiosity has two faces, and if you only tend to one, you'll lose your soul in the process.

There's audience curiosity - what we've been talking about. The hook, the angle, the thing that makes people stop and look.

But there's also personal curiosity - the flame that brought you to life in the first place. The reason you wanted to share your thoughts with strangers on the internet. Your curiosity about your subject, about life, about the world.

Lose that, and you fall into what I call the Beast trap. You start chasing bigger, more outrageous angles to top your last success. You become a slave to the algorithm, to the audience, to the endless hunger for more. It's the fastest way to burn out.

I've watched creators with millions of followers trap themselves in golden cages, hating the content they feel locked into making. They've outgrown their work but can't see a way out without losing everything they've built.

But here's the truth they're missing: your audience will grow with you if you let them in. If you trust them. If you remember that they didn't fall in love with your content - they fell in love with you.

When those feelings creep in - the jadedness, the resentment, the sense that you're just going through the motions - don't push through. Don't grind it out. Stop. Breathe. Remember what you still love about this work and build from there.

Creating content from obligation breeds resentment, and that resentment isn't for your audience. It's for yourself. For lying to yourself every day, for being disingenuous to the people who trust you with their time and attention. And lying - especially to ourselves - literally weakens the body and taxes the nervous system.

The path forward isn't more content. It's more truth.

Confirmation: Proving You Belong

You've sparked curiosity. They clicked. Now what?

This is where dreams go to die, where most nascent creators stumble and fall. They hook people in but can't deliver. They make promises they can't keep.

Confirmation is about those crucial first moments. It's about proving that their curiosity was justified, that you deserve the gift of their attention.

Think back to Lost In Vegas - the channel that changed my trajectory. They won the curiosity battle with me, made me click. But then they had to prove themselves. Here's how they did it:

They delivered exactly what they promised. No bait and switch, no disappointment. The video was what the title said it would be.

They showed up with confidence and competence (so many C’s). They weren't metal experts, but they knew music. They could articulate their experience, their emotions, their journey. They spoke from knowledge and humility.

Most importantly, they were congruent. Everything about them felt real, aligned, authentic. No masks, no pretense. Just two people sharing a genuine experience.

And they made me laugh. Never underestimate this - make someone laugh once, and you have a friend for life.

The Three Pillars

I've come to see confirmation as resting on three pillars: confidence, competence, and congruence.

Confidence doesn't mean arrogance or bravado. It means being comfortable in your own skin, owning your space, speaking with conviction. If you seem nervous or closed off, people won't stick around. This might take practice - ten posts, a hundred posts - but it's essential.

Competence doesn't mean knowing everything. It means knowing something worth sharing, and being able to share it well. Interestingly, being willing to learn in public, to show authentic humility and curiosity, can be more compelling than fake expertise. People can smell pretense from miles away.

Congruence is the hardest to define but impossible to fake. It's the alignment between who you are and what you're presenting. When this is off - when you see a creator desperately trying to be something they're not - you can almost feel their discomfort through the screen. Think about those guys in their 30s still making content for 12 year olds. See the pain behind their eyes.

We're hardwired to detect inauthenticity. It's a survival mechanism. When something feels off about someone's motives, even when we can't name it, we run.

But when someone shows up fully themselves, when their curiosity is real and their competence is genuine and their confidence comes from a deep place? Magic happens.

The Gift of Feeling Right

Here's something beautiful about confirmation: our job as creators is to make people feel things. And the first feeling we can give someone is that they made the right choice. That they're smart for clicking, for stopping, for giving us their time.

That little hit of validation, that tiny dopamine release? It creates an instant bond. It says: you and I, we're on the same wavelength. We see something others miss.

And from that tiny seed of connection, everything else becomes possible.

Connection: Where the Magic Lives

This is it. This is where all those tactical "growth hack" articles and vids fall apart (‘feels illegal’ ‘guaranteed to go viral every time’).

This is where the real work begins, where the magic actually lives.

Every creator you love, every performer who's moved you, every writer who's touched your soul - they all understand one fundamental truth: connection is everything.

Not thumbnails. Not posting schedules. Not keyword optimisation.

Connection.

We are creatures built for connection. It's who we are, what we need, why we seek out stories and songs and shared experiences. The greatest creators don't just make content - they build bridges between hearts.

Finding Your Frequency

Here's something I want you to try. Think of one creator who really speaks to you. Someone whose work makes you feel something deep and true.

Now forget the tactics for a moment. Forget their thumbnails and their titles and their posting strategy. Drop into your body. Remember a specific moment from their work - a video, a post, a line that hit you.

Where can you feel it in your body? Just feel into it.

Can you name that feeling? Maybe they make you laugh. Maybe they inspire you. Maybe they make you feel seen.

Whatever that feeling is - the one you search for most in the content you consume - that's your frequency. That's the feeling you most likely want to create in others. That's where your magic lives.

When I watch those tactical growth videos, I always leave feeling the same way: not enough. I’m not doing enough, which translated to: I am not enough. But when I connect with creators I love? I feel full. Inspired. Alive.

That's the difference between content that grows numbers and content that changes lives.

How Connection Actually Happens

Connection happens through three channels: expression, openness, and story.

Expression means letting your full self be seen. Not every private detail of your life, but your authentic energy, your real personality, your genuine perspective on the world. No masks, no personas. Just you.

Openness means inviting people in. Making them feel like friends, not strangers. Creating space for them in your world, speaking to them like they're sitting across from you at your kitchen table, down the pub, or however you want that dynamic to feel.

Story means giving shape to experience. Using the rhythms of narrative - problem, tension, resolution, learning - to make sense of what you've lived and learned.

Imagine watching someone with closed-off body language, speaking in monotone, just listing facts. Doesn't matter how good their thumbnail is or how much they know - you're gone.

You don't need to be larger than life or share your deepest secrets. You just need to be genuinely, authentically, unapologetically yourself.

Because here's what I've learned: the creators we admire didn't earn our loyalty through clever tactics. They might have caught our attention that way, but they kept it through something deeper. Through letting us see who they really are.

Cultivation: The Circle That Holds Everything

This doesn't sit on top of the pyramid. It surrounds the whole thing, holds it together, makes it possible. Cultivation is what you do when the cameras are off, when no one's watching, when it's just you and the work of becoming.

Like everything else, cultivation has two faces.

Cultivating the Work

There's the business side - building email lists, creating communities, learning to turn attention into sustainable income. This is where you step into your value and stop apologising for wanting to be paid for work that changes people's lives.

That might sound mercenary, but only if you think money is dirty. When the exchange is real - when you're genuinely helping people and they're genuinely grateful to pay you for it - it becomes something beautiful. A handshake between souls.

Cultivating Yourself

But all of this - the curiosity, the confirmation, the connection - only works if you're cultivating yourself. If you're doing the inner work to find that resonance within, so you can project that resonance out into the digital ether.

Content creation is brutal. It's isolating and demanding and the platforms seem designed to make you feel inadequate. Like you're not doing enough, like you're not enough.

But here's the paradox: the only way to truly connect with others is to know, deeply, that you are enough. That your value isn't conditional on views or likes or subscribers. That what you bring to the world is inherent and infinite.

The Daily Practice

Ten minutes of gratitude every morning. Not to post about it, but to feel it. To let appreciation fill your body like warm light. List what you're grateful for if you want, but feeling it - actually feeling it in your heart - that's where the true resonance happens.

Meditation, even just ten minutes a day. If you don't know how, there are beautiful teachers online waiting to guide you. Find one that feels right and start there.

And here's something that might feel uncomfortable but changed everything for me: place your hand on your heart and tell yourself, "I love you." Out loud. Ten times.

Notice how it lands. If it feels awkward or false, that's just resistance. Keep going.

Because here's what took me years to understand: every person walking this earth has infinite, inherent value. You don't need to achieve more or do more or be more productive. You are already valuable beyond measure.

That essence, that you-ness? That's what people are looking for. That's what they connect with. That's what changes everything.

The Circle Complete

These four elements aren't separate things. They're facets of one truth: human beings are meant to connect, and content creation is just the latest (and most immediately, almost impossibly powerful) way we've found to do it.

Curiosity brings people to the dance. Confirmation proves you belong. Connection is why they stay, why they come back, why they tell their friends.

And cultivation? That's what makes you the kind of person worth dancing with in the first place.

The creators who last, who build real audiences, who create actual change in the world - they embody this, even if they don’t understand it. Beneath all the tactics and strategies and growth hacks, it's always been about one thing:

One human being reaching out to touch the heart of another.

That's the real magic. That's what changes everything.

And it's available to you right now.

PS

If you're ready to go deeper.

This framework - these 4 C's - they're not just theory. They're a living system I've used to transform my own creative practice and the practices of the creators I work with.

Like Tim, who has gone from 20k to 90k subscribers, created significant monthly income, partly through tactics, but in whole by stepping into his true value. And what a pleasure it is to work with him.

I work with a small number of established creators and entrepreneurs who've already built something meaningful but sense there's a deeper level of creation available to them - one that feels more aligned, more sustainable, more alive.

This isn't for beginners or dreamers. It's for creators who've proven they can build an audience but want to build something that lasts. Something that feeds their soul while it feeds their bank account.

If you're running a channel with real reach, if you understand the value of high-level guidance, if you're ready to invest seriously in becoming the creator you know you can be - then either reply to this email or fill in this very short form, and I’ll get back to you with the details.

Yes, I'm ready to go deeper into this work

See you soon

Jon