Welcome back to the Creator Economy NYC newsletter, your weekly dose of insights and strategies to help you build, monetize, and scale as a creator.

Hope everyone's staying safe and warm out there - if this blizzard gives you an excuse to sit down and read today's newsletter, I'll take it.

This week: what 1,000 consecutive days of posting on Reels actually looks like. The real numbers, the frameworks, and the mindset that got one creator from zero to 1M+ followers - and how you can too.

Let's get into it.

What 1,000 days of posting reels taught this creator

Every creator will tell you that consistency matters when building your brand.

But what does that actually look like in practice? What does it look like when someone fully commits to the game, doesn't miss a day, and builds a real business off the back of it?

I sat down with Oren John (@orenmeetsworld) — who goes by the Internet's Creative Director — for a live conversation during the Stan Dare to Post challenge.

Oren has posted a Reel every single day on average for over 1,000 days straight.

He's amassed more than 1M followers across platforms, built a creator training program (Cut30) with 2,000+ participants, landed brand deals with the likes of Timberland, Amazon, Cash App and more, and now serves as an operating partner at a private equity firm where he runs creative strategy across a portfolio of brands.

The man is busy, yet he keeps going. So if you're sitting there thinking "I don't have the time" or "I'm too late"... respectfully, your excuses just got dismantled.

Here are some of the top things I learned from Oren in our conversation. 

Stop telling yourself quality doesn’t matter. It does.

When he was just starting out, a friend told him: slow down, talk like you're on a date, and for the love of God, care about how you look on camera.

His words: if you care about how you're reflected on screen, people are magnetically drawn to that.

It doesn't mean you need to be some polished TV host. ‘F*ck It, Create It’ applies here.

But lighting, what you're wearing, the way you present yourself - that stuff registers immediately, even subconsciously. People want to look at things that look intentional.

His minimum bar before you post anything: get a mic and figure out your light.

A wired Apple headset mic works. A window with natural light on your face works. A $60 Rode mic and an Amazon ring light works. 

If you’re not flopping, you’re not trying. 

Oren's rule is that if he doesn't have at least one flop per week, he's not experimenting enough.

He was stuck at 300,000 followers for a while. What broke him through to 500K+? Adding travel content, which was a format he'd never tried before. 

He started filming in China, Japan, London, all through the lens of brand building and design (his niche). If he'd never taken that risk on a completely new format, he never would have unlocked that next level.

And here's the thing: those flops don't hurt you.

Oren has 10K and 20K view posts sitting right next to videos with hundreds of thousands of views. The algorithm doesn't punish you for experimenting. But playing it safe will cap your growth.

So allocate a percentage of your weekly output to deliberate experimentation. Even when you find a format that works, keep pushing the boundaries. 

Consistency over time + experimentation + double down on what’s working well = what leads to growth. 

Treat your social content like a funnel. 

This is where Oren's CMO brain kicks in. He runs a 2-3-2 weekly content mix:

2 top-of-funnel posts: These are his broad-appeal videos. Product reviews, cultural commentary, comparisons. The goal is reach and views. He's casting a wide net to pull in anyone who's making intelligent decisions about what they buy based on taste or function. His biggest videos are almost always these.

3 middle-of-funnel posts: These are his educational, expertise-driven pieces. Think: how to compete in a world of AI marketing, the state of influencer marketing in 2026, deep-dive industry analysis. The goal here is mainly saves and shares. He wants this content shared in Slack channels and team chats.

2 bottom-of-funnel slots: Reserved for brand deals or owned products. These are his monetization plays, and the entire funnel feeds into making these valuable.

He measures each tier differently. He doesn't judge educational content by views, and he doesn't judge top-of-funnel by saves. 

If you're evaluating every post with the same metric, you're going to misdiagnose what's working and what isn't. Different content serves different jobs. Treat it that way.

Every second is a battle for attention (here’s how to win it). 

Oren thinks about every video as a four-part problem: get them to stop, keep them watching, reset their attention, and make them come back. Here's how he approaches it:

1. The hook: Earn the stop

Every hook has three components working simultaneously:

• Audio: what they hear first

• Visual: what they see first 

• Text: what they read on screen first

All three need to fire together to build what Oren calls a curiosity gap and if someone isn't curious enough to need to see what happens next, they're gone.

2. The format: Earn every second

Once they stop, you have to keep them. Oren shared that right now, 90 seconds to 2 minutes is the sweet spot. The algorithm is rewarding long, intellectual, visually rich content. Don't be afraid of length, but you need to earn every second of it.

The format that's crushing it across niches right now is what Oren calls the Graphic Yap: talking head with graphics overlaid on screen while you tell the story. His specific math:

Sounds insane. He says it takes about 30 minutes of sourcing. The point: just talking to the camera in the same frame for two minutes doesn't retain people anymore. You need to visually illustrate the story.

​​3. The re-hook: Reset their attention

Here's the advanced move. A 2-minute video isn't one video… it's three 40-second videos stitched together, each with its own curiosity gap.

Think of it like this:

You can see an example of how he does this in this video here.

Look at your script and find the spots where people would leave. Where it gets dull, where you're explaining too much, where energy dips. That's exactly where you drop a re-hook - another curiosity gap that pulls them into the next 40 seconds.

Treat your content formats like products

One of Oren's sharpest moves: he names his recurring content formats like they're brands. "Product vs. Brand." "Rate the Rebrand." "The Status of Hot." This is intentional.

When a video hits, the named format becomes a series.

His "Status of Hot" video cracked a million views, so now it's a recurring franchise. And "Rate the Rebrand" comes back every time there's a wave of corporate redesigns. The snappy, branded title creates audience recognition because people know what to expect when they see it.

When you land on a format that works, name it. Make it repeatable. Make it recognizable.

Oren’s story is a case study of how you can create content around what you love and the power of staying consistent even when things feel hard. 

You can't fake that for 1,000 days. So build something you actually give a damn about. And then don't stop.

Follow Oren here.

Next event: coming soon

We’re gearing up for our next community event in early April with an incredible partner.

This early RSVP is an application to attend. It helps us curate the room while details come together, and those who apply will be the first to receive updates as things are finalized.

If you’re a creator who wants to level up in the new year, start here

The F*ck It, Create It Workbook is the thing that finally gets you off the sideline.

It’s a guided system — with companion videos — that walks you through the exact mental blocks keeping you stuck and forces you to ship your first piece of content, product, event… whatever you’ve been sitting on.

Overthinking it. Waiting until it's perfect. Telling yourself you'll start Monday.

This kills that.

Two free tools top creators use to keep themselves moving

The Creator Goal Setting Guide (FREE): A simple but powerful document to help you declare who you want to BECOME in 2026. Get it here.

The Creator Accountability System (FREE): Your visual companion for consistent creation in 2026. Get it here.

Thanks for reading! If Oren's story doesn't convince you to start posting, I don't know what will. I'll see you next week.

F*ck It, Create It,

Brett