Why the next generation of influencers people will have jobs.

The Wall Street Journal published an article this week titled “This Summer’s Hottest Arm Candy Is a Private Equity Boyfriend.” Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Olivia Rodrigo are apparently all hanging out with finance guys instead of the previous husbands and boyfriends they had who were “in the industry”. Somewhere along the way, apparently having a real job became hot again.

And I don’t think it’s only happening with men.

The women I find most interesting online right now aren’t traditional creators at all, they’re Chief Commercial Officers, CMOs, brand executives, investors and operators who have built real careers and are still in the office M-F, 9-5. And let’s be honest, everyone wants access to what they know, how they think and what they’re doing when the camera is off, because they are the ones building the $100M brands alongside the entrepreneurs that founded them.

But really, maybe that shouldn’t be surprising when you look at the numbers. On average, according to this article from Gettysburg College, people spend roughly 90,000 hours of their life at work, or about 1/3rd of their life. And that’s the average person clocking in at 9, leaving at 5 and presumably not answering emails all evening or working through the weekend, which, let’s face it, probably isn’t the majority of the HSR Angels.

For most, your job is your personality. Who you work for, and your “career” shapes a lot about what you know, who you meet, the rooms you get access to, the problems you learn how to solve and the experiences you have that someone outside of your industry probably never will. And up until 2010 with the rise of the creator economy, what someone did was one of the biggest things that made them interesting or influential. Until everyone wanted to become an influencer…

And I say that as someone who has built a huge part of my career on social media. I’m also not going to sit here and tell you the creator economy is dead and not something worth pursuing. I still think it is, if you do it the right way. But I wouldn’t have Hot Smart Rich without becoming a creator. TikTok completely changed my life for the better and gave me the ability to build an audience around things I was already interested in, like building early-stage consumer brands, angel investing, and VC.

But when everyone starts becoming an “influencer” and making the same types of videos, the content itself became less interesting….and not difficult to create.

This goes back to the thesis of last week and Variety’s article about being Alo’d out of influencers. You can only watch so many GRWMs, luxury un-boxings, and morning routines before they all start to blend together. There will obviously continue to be breakout lifestyle creators, like Alix Earle, who are exceptionally good at what they do and build enormous businesses because of it. But for everyone else, I think having an actual career (aka JOB) you’re passionate about might become one of the easiest ways to differentiate yourself online.

The next evolution feels even more obvious and is a huge opportunity for everyone who has a job (especially if its at a brand that people associate with being “cool”). And that might be you!!!

I’ve been thinking about it alot this week and am going to share:

So let’s get into it.