By the end of January of this year, I had decided to pursue option #1 over option #2 — build an online directory of solopreneurs in the health and wellness vertical of solopreneurs.

A year ago, March 2022, I started thinking about what my future would look like if I were to leave Getty Images after its return to the public market in five months time.

I studied psychology in college, am a certified rape crisis counselor, and wanting to help people - especially women - has always been a core feature of my identity. Still, year-after-year, I talked myself out of pursuing a career in psychology as I watched the industry fumble to figure itself out.

It’s wild to think that the same handful of social media platforms that I grew up alongside of are still the same set of centralized companies that exist today.

I stumbled upon a note I wrote in 2014, almost a decade ago when I was 22.

I remember writing this vision down unaware whether or not the current state of tech would allow for any of it (turns out it didn’t, not really, as crypto was (and still is) nascent). I describe a future vision where creators could get paid for their posts, one where it’s easier to curate and discover, democratize data and communication, and ensure authenticity and source truth.

Now, today, the technology exists to take what I wrote 8 years ago and make it a reality.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in:

• technology and its future

• humans and our future

• good experience design

• relationships

• content creators and social tech platforms

I’m working on an idea in the creator economy space and have thought a lot about who exactly I’m building for and realized that there are many different types of “content creators” and “influencers” with nuanced differences between them.

And although many share the same pain points, influencers and content creators who have amassed large digital followings tend to differ in how they build community, produce content, and make money.

I’m a product person turned Chief of Staff and now an entrepreneur—but there’s more to that story.

I wasn’t one of those kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up and still didn’t know as I was graduating from Northwestern University. Since then, I’ve had 4 different jobs over the past 8 years.

In 2020 I started posting on TikTok and quickly amassed a following. I noticed a few other women in New York doing the same, all of whom were strangers, and asked if they wanted to get dinner together. There’s something special about sharing shared experiences and these women, at least online, seemed intelligent, funny, and thoughtful in their delivery. But who were these women outside of their niche? And did they have plans on turning this newfound attention into a full-time career? I had questions they agreed to help answer.

I spent my twenties working for people in charge (3 CEOs and a GM). Here are some things I learned:

• you have to lead with integrity first and foremost

• there is often no playbook—there are many things even the best business schools can’t prepare you for

running notes on recent tech thoughts or observations, with my most recent at the top

If you have created a devoted digital community online (tiktok, IG, youtube, substack, masterclass, patreon, or wherever), I’m writing this to you in hopes of encouraging you to try (or at least think about!) something new.

Pain points you’re probably feeling as a creator in 2022:

• burned out from the upkeep of consistently producing content

I asked everyone on IG the other day, “what’s the name of this era we’re living in called?”

Some of the answers: “Whatever the opposite of the golden era is,” “hell,” “the end of times,” “Anthropocene or Capitalocene,” “Postmodernity,” “Late-stage capitalism,” “Disinformation Age,” “Just feels like an ever-increasing age of ‘noise.”

The invention of crypto and what has matured into “web3” allows us to completely reimagine the way things are currently done. What if our payments, policies, institutions, and societies didn’t have to be organized as they are now?

I saw the significance of DeFi, the value in NFTs (at least from an IP perspective), and have had every version of the Oculus Quest. But none made such immediate sense to me the way DAOs did when first introduced to them 2 months ago.

It was 2012 I was in college at Northwestern taking a course called “New Media and Popular Culture.” Our group project was designed around studying what “virality” meant. Instagram hadn’t yet been invented.