SHS #206: The Creator Advantage No One Talks About

Side Hustle Saturdays

April 11, 2026

SHS #206: The Creator Advantage No One Talks About

Reading time: 5 minutes

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Hi friend,

People think the creator advantage is:

  • creativity
  • virality
  • sounding smart
  • writing more than others

But the real advantage is something different:

Identity shift.

When you start creating publicly...even once a week - your identity shifts from consumer → creator.

This shift quietly shaped my entire journey from 2020 to now.

Here’s how:


1 / You start thinking in ideas

Starting 2020, everything became content:

  • the frustration with colleagues at work
  • the notes app on my phone has LOTS of ideas
  • conversations I had with people (and those I overheard outside 🙈)
  • my weight-loss discipline applying to real life (I spoke about this in my TEDx talk

All these area ideas.

To date - lots of the stuff I talk about are the things my husband doesn't like to listen to.

So I put it on LinkedIn 😂

2 / You work smart, not hard

When I tell people that they can use Upwork to get their first gig, I get the usual response:

"It's so saturated."

(As if the job market isn't, lol)

It is when you just open the feed and do not hear a response on your application.

However, my first few gigs + my ultra-high-paying clients came via Upwork using the following filtration system:

  • under 5 proposals
  • verified payment method
  • sort by recent to old posts

This helped me reach out to clients quickly instead of applying for gigs that have 50+ applications.


3 / People trust you because you’re visible

When I shared the story of my $130 freelance gig, or how I worked on writing during lunch breaks, or the accidental tweet → cohort moment…

People trusted me.

Not because I was an expert.

But because I was real.

Being real helps more than any other strategy. I have never tried to be an expert, I just share what I know, and sometimes it's 3 steps ahead of what others know.

And that's enough.

Growth is not always zero to ten.

Helping people from steps 3 to 4 is still growth.

4 / You make luck predictable

My first:

  • cohort
  • brand deal
  • $10K month

…all came from being visible.

None of them were planned.

All of them were a consequence of consistency + having fun.

You can increase the surface area of luck by showing up more often.

5/ You think in abundance, only.

The internet has more people on the lines of

"XYZ person doesn't deserve so much money."
"Life is so unfair, I am meant to be broke."
"That person's life is easier than mine."

Compared to

"YouTube has answers to most of my questions."
"I have it in my hands to build the life I desire and deserve."

Which one of the two wins?

Are you vibrating on the frequency of scarcity or abundance?

Two books I recommend to overcome this are:

  • Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
  • Mindset by Dr Carol Dweck

Finally

It's difficult to undo years of conditioning.

It's hard to

  • think that you'll win when everything looks noisy
  • build an abundance mindset when you've lived in scarcity
  • keep showing up even when numbers are low, and not moving

But it's harder to live a life that isn't aligned with your purpose.

I guess this is where I say - choose your hard.

Love,
N

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Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi

I write tips around side hustling, writing, and monetisation to 15,000+ superstars every Saturday.