there's a pattern across social media that’s been pissing me off for years:

creators teaching shit they don’t know.

the productivity space is full of people sharing notion templates who haven't built anything notable with them. the writing space is crowded with "hook formulas" from people who've never published anything but a handful of tweets. marketing courses are sold by people who've only marketed the course itself.

i get it. this is how most of us start. it's how i started.

you learn something, you share it, people respond. the algorithm rewards it — 'how-to' content gets the engagement your actual work probably never will.

so you make more tutorials and your audience grows, but now you have a bigger problem.

your audience knows you as "the productivity person." or "the writing tips person." and pivoting to your real work — the thing you learned these skills to build — feels like starting over. you've built an audience that wants the appetizer, not the main course.

and each month you don’t serve the main course, your positioning hardens. your audience continues to grow, but it grows in the wrong direction. and you burn out — teaching the same beginner concepts when what you really want deep down is to do the work these skills were supposed to enable.

oh, the irony.

everyone's learning productivity so they can work on their life's work... but their life's work becomes teaching productivity.

everyone's learning to write so they can say something meaningful... but all they say is "here's how to write."

everyone's learning marketing so they can sell their real work... but the only thing they sell is marketing courses.

they never graduate from the tutorial level.

this trap hurts both creators and their audience.

for audiences, it's an endless loop of preparation without execution. you learn from someone who's one chapter ahead of you in the same beginner's guidebook. you collect another system, another framework, another hack. but you never see what these tools can actually build — a design studio, a finished book, a real business.

you end up with folders full of templates but no map for what comes next.

for creators, the trap is worse. your personal brand and your life's work are pulling in opposite directions. you came here to build something or say something but teaching the tools (or skills) became easier than using them. now teaching is your entire business.

you're not a creator. you're a student slinging your notes.

i keep thinking about david ogilvy.

ogilvy didn't start teaching advertising until he'd built one of the most successful agencies in history. he spent twenty years doing the actual work — writing campaigns for rolls-royce, hathaway, dove — and only then did he write confessions of an advertising man.

the book wasn't about how to learn advertising. it was about what he'd learned from doing the work at the highest level for decades.

he taught from the other side of accomplishment. not from the messy middle of figuring it out.

here's the question most avoid:

what are you learning these skills for?

because there's supposed to be something real on the other side. something you're building. something you want to say. but somewhere along the way, you forgot what the learning was really for.

the way out isn't complicated, but it'll cost you.

it means walking away from easy engagement. it means your actual work might not perform as well as "top 5 productivity hacks to get ahead of 99% of people" bullshit. it means potentially alienating an audience that followed you for the appetizers.

a principle isn't a principle until it costs you money.

— bill bernbach

this is the cost of making something that matters.

and most people won’t pay it.

the productivity space doesn't need another template. the writing space doesn't need another hook formula.

what they need is someone who's done the work. someone who can teach from the other side.

the scaffolding was never supposed to be the building.

<3 santi