Welcome to Issue 35 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to use storytelling to grow your brand. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.)

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Hello Reader,

I can honestly say my first job was my favorite.

I was fifteen years old, guiding snorkeling tours through a turquoise lagoon in the Mexican Caribbean. At that time, no one had phones or selfie sticks. Just fins, a snorkel, and the thrill of discovering underwater caves and ancient fossils with wide-eyed tourists who, for a brief hour, gave in to wonder.

It's hard for me to believe that that was nearly 24 years ago.

Last week, I went back to that place. This time with my daughters.

I smiled. “The food is as good as I remember.”

It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the full truth either.

Looking out over the water, the view is still as perfect as a postcard. But in the water and on the ground, the whole experience is changed.

There are more rides now—like the hundred-foot water slide you can see from just about anywhere in the park. There are fewer fish. No guides in the water pointing out fossils or coral. And no restrictions on reef-damaging sunscreens that used to be banned to protect the ecosystem.

But the biggest change isn’t ecological. It’s behavioral.

Everyone—and I mean everyone—was wearing their phone around their neck in a $40 waterproof case. That case is the new bestseller at the gift shop.

As a result, people are swimming into caves not to marvel at the limestone formations or notice the fossils hidden in the walls, but to capture the shot. For the feed. For the proof.

People used to go there to feel something. Now they go there to post something.

A Good Observation

I don’t have a personal Instagram anymore. I mean, it's still there. But I don't use it unless I'm doing research for work. I left years ago, partly because I was tired of the noise, but mostly because I was tired of confusing sharing with living.

This trip to Mexico reminded me of why I left and what I’ve been working to reclaim since.

The problem, as I see it, is that we’ve become a nation of consumers. Not just of stuff, but of experiences and content.

We’ve stopped paying attention to what’s right in front of us. More than that, we don't take the time to live it before we capture it, sit with it, and make meaning of it.

Noticing is no longer a default. It’s a decision.

It takes effort now to see something—really see it—without immediately thinking about how to frame it or how it’ll look to others.

The story used to be the experience. Now the story is the photo.

And the irony is that everyone ends up sharing the same one, whether we're talking about travel or content online.

But if you, like me, are one of the more than 86 million people choosing to build a business rather than work in one, you can't afford to be just another passive consumer or shallow contributor.

To thrive in this brave new world, we need more than skills and expertise—we need a creator’s mindset.

By that, I mean actively training ourselves to go from passive consumption to conscious, curious curation and creation. (I see a 4 c's framework in the making here.)

While we can find inspiration in the scroll, more often we need to turn away from it and ask:

What do I want to say? What do I want to make? And what am I contributing to the conversation that brings in my unique perspective?

A Good Takeaway

According to Sahil Lavingia, the founder of Gumroad, of all the people on the internet:

1% create,
9% contribute and,
90% consume.

If that's the case, he argues, all it takes to build a business online is to start contributing. Automatically, you'll have a 10x advantage over everyone else. Create and it'll be 90x.

Sure. But as we all know, it takes more than just contributing and creating. It takes contributing and creating in a way that captures attention, differentiates you from the thousands of others doing the same thing, and builds trust over time.

If you're reading this newsletter, I assume you're already on this train and navigating how to most effectively do that through your stories and unique perspective. Or maybe you want to be, but need the push.

To that end, writer and creator John Spencer has a framework I love—seven stages to move from consuming to creating. It goes like this:

1. Awareness — What are you actually taking in? Why?
2. Active Consuming — Seeking out quality inputs on purpose. If some of what you're consuming isn't serving you, can you make different choices?
3. Critical Consuming — Being selective about what sticks. (And noticing why.)
4. Curating — Gathering the pieces that matter and building a system to keep track. (I've written about that here.)
5. Copying — Letting influence shape you (you know, that whole "Steal like an Artist" concept).
6. Mash-ups — Tweaking those things to make them yours.
7. Creating from Scratch — Making something that didn’t exist before, with your voice and your fingerprints all over it.

It’s a spectrum, not a switch.

But once you start moving along it and start seeing the world not just as something you passively experience or thoughtlessly post, but as raw material for what you might make, everything shifts.

At the end of the day (and I mean every day), none of us is short on inspiration. And sometimes the hardest thing isn’t creating—it’s making space to create.

It’s looking up from your phone or computer long enough to notice how and why the experience or thing is impacting you. Then, it's closing the tab, the app, the loop, and starting something of your own.

So here’s what I’m asking you to do this week:

It can be a thought, a sentence, a story, or a list. Whatever it is, make it yours.

Because the future belongs to creators. But only if we look up.

A Few Good Resources

1. Speaking of creating from a place of conscious curation, Kaleigh Moore makes a great case for why you should take a more journalistic approach to content. And she put together this resource for freelance writers.
2. I've been on a big podcast spree to talk about (surprise, surprise) storytelling to build your business. Here's the latest.
3. ​Loved this piece from Jay Acunzo on what voices who resonate do differently.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee