As a content creator, you define your own success

There are plenty of benefits to choosing the path of a content creator -- getting to make content you enjoy making, and ideally making some money while doing that being the top contenders. But there are also a ton of drawbacks -- one of them being that there really is no easy endpoint.

In business, you can ideally climb the corporate ladder until you reach the top. In sports, you can train and work day after day until you win the most prestigious award available to you. But in content creation, the most common endpoint -- aside from being able to do the work full-time -- seems to be "more followers than most other creators in your niche."

And now that follower counts don't mean nearly as much as they used to, what does it mean to be "successful" as a content creator? It turns out the answer is almost entirely up to you.

That's probably not the answer you were looking for, but hear me out. As a content creator, you are free not only to set your own hours and boundaries, but you get to set your own goals as well. And those goals can be catered entirely to you, the kind of life you want to live, and the dreams you want to fulfill as a result of the things you make.

These are things that will be entirely different for everyone. And it's very important that you don't try to set goals other creators are setting just because other people are doing it. Think about what you really want, not what other people want to have. Think about your why, about what gets you out of bed in the morning and motivated to hit the ground running. What does success look like for you specifically -- and what can you do, within your means, to make it happen?