What Should I Focus On? (The Answer Isn't More.)
Here's a scenario I see play out constantly inside my Creator's MBA Lab.
A creator comes to me overwhelmed and spinning. They have a solid idea for a digital product. They know they need to grow their audience. And they have a list — a long list — of things they "should" be doing: launch a podcast, run a virtual summit, set up an evergreen funnel, post consistently on LinkedIn, start a newsletter, run a webinar series, build a YouTube channel...
All good strategies. All things that have worked for someone, somewhere.
But here's the thing: doing all of them — or even three of them — at once is usually what's keeping them stuck. Not because they're lazy or unfocused. Because they haven't made the decision yet. The one that actually matters.
Which one of those things is going to move the needle most for them, right now, given their specific situation and resources?
That's what I help people figure out. And in a world where AI can generate fifty perfectly reasonable strategies in sixty seconds, I'd argue the ability to choose the right one — and confidently say no to the others — is becoming the most important skill a creator can have.
"The creator who wins isn't the one who does the most. It's the one who picks the right thing."
— Dr. Destini Copp, Creator's MBAWe Are Drowning in Good Ideas
The research on this is actually pretty clear. Columbia Business School professor Sheena Iyengar spent years studying what happens when people are given too many choices — and the short version is: more options usually means less action, not more. Her famous "jam study" found that customers were far more likely to buy when they were presented with six jam options versus twenty-four.
The same dynamic plays out in creator businesses every single day.
We have access to more strategies, more tools, more case studies, and more "here's what worked for me" content than any generation of entrepreneurs before us. AI has accelerated this tenfold. You can spin up a full content calendar, a launch plan, a funnel strategy, and a product roadmap before lunch — and still end the day having made zero real progress.
Because generating ideas is not the same as making a decision. And making a decision is not the same as executing the right decision.
What most creators are missing isn't more information. It's a clearer framework for choosing.
A Real Example: The Podcast Question
Let me walk you through something I worked through recently with one of my clients.
She came to me wanting to launch a podcast. She had a new venture — a pivot from her previous work — and she felt like a podcast was the obvious next step. A lot of people in her niche had them. It seemed like the thing to do.
So we sat down and actually looked at her situation. What was her goal? Build visibility and get in front of new audiences as quickly as possible. What resources did she have? Limited time, no existing audio audience, and a message that was still being refined.
What does launching a podcast actually require? Consistent production. Editing. Show notes. Distribution. And then the long game of building an audience from zero over months and years.
When we laid it all out, the answer became obvious: guest podcasting was the move.
Not her own show. Other people's shows.
Why? Because other podcasts already have the audiences she needs to reach. Guest spots get her in front of warm, relevant listeners in a fraction of the time — without the production overhead of running her own show. She could be on five podcasts in the same amount of time it would take to launch and sustain her own for a month.
We didn't abandon the idea of her own podcast forever. We just correctly identified it as a "Stage 2" move — the right strategy once she has a clearer message, a growing email list, and an audience who already knows her. Right now? Guest appearances give her 80% of the benefit with maybe 20% of the effort. That's not a compromise. That's leverage.
Why This Is So Hard to Do Alone
Here's what I notice when creators try to make these decisions without help: they evaluate options based on what sounds exciting, what they see working for others, or what they feel like they "should" be doing at their stage of business.
None of those are the right filter.
The right filter is: What is my actual bottleneck right now, and what's the most efficient way to address it?
That requires an honest audit of where your business actually is — not where you want it to be, not where someone else's business is. Where yours is, today, with your specific resources, audience size, and goals.
Most creators skip this step because it's uncomfortable. It means admitting what's not working. It means saying no to things that sound good. And it means committing to a direction without the certainty that it's the "perfect" choice.
But decision-making under uncertainty is exactly what separates the creators who grow from the ones who stay stuck in planning mode.
The Creator Growth Flywheel as a Decision Framework
One of the things I come back to constantly — both in my own business and with my clients — is the Creator Growth Flywheel. It's a five-stage model that maps the full journey from attracting new people to turning them into advocates who grow your business for you.
Attract → Engage → Nurture → Retain → Advocate
The reason I love it as a decision-making tool is this: every creator has a weakest link in that chain. And the right strategy is almost always the one that directly addresses that stage — not a different stage that you find more appealing or less scary.
Attract — "No one knows I exist"
If you're not bringing new people into your world, no amount of nurturing or retention work will compound. Your priority is visibility: guest podcasting, collaborations, SEO content, or paid traffic — whatever gets you in front of new audiences consistently.
Engage — "People show up but don't stick around"
Traffic without engagement is a leaky bucket. If people are finding you but not joining your email list, following you, or coming back, the fix isn't more content — it's a better lead magnet, a clearer value proposition, or a more compelling reason to stay.
Nurture — "My list doesn't buy"
If you have an audience that isn't converting, the problem is usually trust, relevance, or timing — not more volume. A consistent, value-driven email strategy that builds authority and stays top-of-mind is the fix here, not a new product or a bigger launch.
Retain — "Customers buy once and disappear"
If acquisition is working but retention isn't, you're on a treadmill. The lever here is community, continuity offers, and customer success — getting people to stay, upgrade, and come back. This is often where memberships and ongoing programs earn their keep.
Advocate — "Nobody refers me"
Word-of-mouth is free, compounding growth. If your customers love you but aren't telling anyone, you may not be making it easy enough for them to share — or you haven't built a referral mechanism into your ecosystem yet. This is high-leverage work that most creators completely ignore.
The point isn't to work on all five of these. The point is to figure out which one is costing you the most growth right now — and put your energy there first.
The Decision Filter I Use With Clients
When someone comes to me with a list of things they're considering, here's the quick filter I run them through:
1. What stage of the Flywheel is your primary bottleneck? Be honest. Not where you want to focus — where you're actually stuck.
2. Does this strategy directly address that bottleneck? If someone's problem is Attract but they're excited about building a membership community, that's a mismatch. A membership doesn't attract new people — it retains existing ones.
3. What's the time-to-result ratio? Some strategies are high effort, long payoff (starting a podcast from scratch). Others are lower effort, faster feedback (guest appearances, newsletter growth, strategic collaborations). When resources are tight, shorter feedback loops matter.
4. Could you get 80% of the result with 20% of the effort through a different approach? This is the guest-podcasting question. Almost always, there's a more efficient path to the same outcome. Finding it requires stepping back from "what everyone else is doing" and asking what actually makes sense for your situation.
5. What's the opportunity cost? Every yes is a no to something else. If you launch a podcast, you're not doing guest appearances, or SEO content, or virtual summits. Make that trade-off consciously.
"In a world where AI can generate fifty good strategies before lunch, the skill that matters most is knowing which one is yours."
— Dr. Destini Copp, Creator's MBAThe Permission to Choose Less
I want to say something directly, because I think a lot of creators need to hear it:
You do not have to do everything. You are not falling behind by saying no to things that don't fit where you are right now. Choosing one strategy and doing it well for 90 days will almost always outperform five strategies done halfway for 90 days.
The most successful creators I know are not the ones running the most complex operations. They're the ones who got really good at identifying the highest-leverage move and doing that one thing until it worked.
That's not a lack of ambition. That's smart business.
And here's the other thing worth saying: the right answer changes. What's the best move at six months in your business is not the same as what's best at two years in. That's exactly why my client isn't launching a podcast right now — but she might in a year. The goal is to make the right decision for right now, not the perfect decision for all time.
Where to Start
If you're sitting with a long list of strategies and no clear sense of where to start, here's the most honest advice I can give you:
Before you plan your next launch, your next platform, your next product — figure out where your business is actually stuck. Not where it looks stuck from the outside. Where the real constraint is.
That's the move. Everything else is noise until you know that.
If you want a structured way to do this, the Creator Business Scorecard is a free diagnostic tool I built specifically for this. It walks you through each stage of the Creator Growth Flywheel, identifies where you're leaking the most growth, and gives you a prioritized action list based on your actual situation — not a generic checklist.
It takes about five minutes. And it's the kind of clarity that most people pay for in a coaching call.
Find Your Biggest Growth Bottleneck
The Creator Business Scorecard maps your business against all five stages of the Growth Flywheel and tells you exactly where to focus first. Free. Five minutes.
Take the Free Scorecard →Frequently Asked Questions
Start by asking which activity has the highest leverage for where you are right now — not where you want to be in three years. The right move depends on your stage: if you need visibility, prioritize activities that get you in front of existing audiences (like guest podcasting or collaborations). If you have an audience but aren't monetizing it, work on your offer stack instead. The key is matching the action to your actual bottleneck.
For most creators in growth mode, guest podcasting is the smarter first move. It gets your voice and message in front of established, warm audiences without the overhead of producing, editing, and marketing your own show consistently. Once you have a clear audience, validated messaging, and some momentum, launching your own podcast becomes much more strategic — and you'll already have a list of potential listeners.
Trying to do everything at once. With AI and more tools than ever available, it's easy to generate 20 good ideas in an afternoon — but executing all 20 in parallel is a fast path to burnout and mediocre results. The creators who grow fastest tend to pick one or two high-leverage strategies, execute them well for 90 days, and then evaluate before adding more.
Run it through a simple filter: Does this move the needle on my primary constraint right now? Is this the most efficient way to solve that problem given my time, money, and audience size? And could I get 80% of the result with 20% of the effort doing something else? If an activity doesn't pass all three, it's probably worth deferring — even if it sounds exciting.
Build a simple decision framework you return to every time: What stage of the Creator Growth Flywheel am I currently weakest at? What's the one action that most directly addresses that weakness? That alone eliminates most of the noise. You can also use a free diagnostic tool like the Creator Business Scorecard at scorecard.destinicopp.com to identify where your business is leaking growth.
