How Karen X. Cheng is controlling her own creative future

Hi! I’m Karen X. Cheng, a visual effects creator and director. I share my work in a bunch of different places, but I recently started a Patreon to carve out my space. My algorithm-free, clickbait-free, pressure-free home for anything I want to try. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the state of social media and what creative freedom means to me. I recently shared this video with my followers on Instagram, and the below post with my Patreon community (come join us over there!). Now I want to share it with all of you...

Less, not more

For creators, there's a worship of more.

Look no further than Mr. Beast culture. He gave away a Tesla. How to top that? How about giving away 26 Teslas.

Everywhere you look, it's creators giving advice on how to grow bigger.

Scale your team. Stop editing your own videos. Hire someone to optimize your thumbnails. Spend $100k on a video. Spend $500k on a video.

More more more.

That's just not for me. I tried going down that path before...

Learning the hard way

Before I was a creator, or an 'influencer' (it's still so weird to me that I'm an 'influencer'), I ran a small video production agency.

I made product videos for tech companies. I hired a few employees, and it was the most stressful time of my life.

I spent all my time thinking about how to make payroll, how to manage their career satisfaction, how to structure the company to scale.

I read books about how to build great companies and how to manage people. I sought advice from executive coaches. I tried, I really tried. In retrospect, when trying my very hardest, I am a mediocre CEO at best. It's just not what I'm good at.

I made mistakes. I tried inspiring my employees with a vision of building the next great big marketing agency.

But why did I want to build the next big great marketing agency?

Turns out, I didn't.

Biggest regrets in life

On people's deathbeds, one of the biggest regrets they have in life is living life according to someone else's definition of success.

That's what I was doing. It's someone else's dream to scale a big company. It wasn't mine.

Why was I doing this?

I had to learn, the hard way, to stop getting seduced by more.

What actually makes me happy?

For me, it's

1) creative freedom

2) not being exhausted all the time, so I can actually enjoy the creative freedom

The trap of more

When creatives take on lots of employees, they have payroll to make. Then they have immense pressure to take on projects that aren't a creative fit. They might find themselves doing a bunch of projects that feel empty or cringe, just to get views or to make payroll.

If I wanted creative freedom, I needed to lower my costs.

Today, I don't have any full time employees.

I work with people part-time and I pay hourly or project-based. We have an understood arrangement that I hire only when I have work for them. This gives me the flexibility to hire the right person for each project, and I've had a chance to collaborate with some incredibly talented artists because of this.

Because I don't want employees, I've had to learn the discipline of saying no to more. This is why I don't have a course, or a podcast, or merch, and why I don't post videos that frequently.

Doing less gives me space to rest. If I'm feeling burnt out, I can take some time off - without everything falling apart, because I don't have employees who depend on me.

It gives me space to reflect, to think, to play, to not be 'on' all the time. If a project is not a creative fit, I have the luxury of declining.

I make less money this way, but the pay cut gives me a freedom in my life that is priceless to me.

Last thing - none of this is advice. These are just decisions that made sense for me based on my personality and life circumstances. And everyone's circumstances are different. I don't judge anyone who pursues more - I have a lot of respect for those who can pull it off while staying true to themselves.

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