Was this sent to you? Subscribe here so you don't miss the next one.
Dept. Dispatch #003
Filed Under: The Creator Who Escaped the Course Cult and Discovered a Hidden Curriculum
Ring Light. Hot Coffee. Bad tase in mouth…strawberry wine?
YELO, Reader
Somewhere around Day 12 of my 100-Day Info Sprint, I did something suspiciously rare in creator land:
I… finished a content pillar.
Almost. (One essay is still in editing purgatory, but shh—we don’t talk about that.)
It wasn’t just any pillar.
It was a field report from deep inside the Creator Economy’s operating system.
A decoded message disguised as a casual essay series.
And it left me staring at the screen whispering:
“We’re all part of the same bait-and-switch.”
Let me explain.
This all started as a thought experiment:
“What if you treated your knowledge as infrastructure, not content?”
But the deeper I went, the weirder it got.
Everyone—and I mean everyone—was still selling knowledge like they were selling plumbing services in 1997.
And they were exhausted.
Not because they were lazy or under-skilled.
But because they were stuck inside the Service-Minded Knowledge Economy—
…where everyone builds a business like they’re still charging hourly, just with better lighting and an online checkout page.
It’s not their fault.
It’s ours.
We stopped teaching how to turn ideas into assets. We turned knowledge into yet another hustle trap.
So I did what any self-respecting overly-dramatic internet explorer would do.
I built a list of 10 invisible forces shaping the creator economy:
THE HIDDEN CURRICLUM OF CREATOR ECONOMY:
Including:
- Content Inflation
- Knowledge Leverage Gradient
- Burnout Loops
- …and 6 more laws from inside the Upside Down.
They’re weird.
They’re messy.
They’re more true than I’d like to admit.
I only managed to write down the ones I could decipher.
There are more.
Probably written in the margins of ghostwritten eBooks or trapped inside failed cohort courses.
but truth be told I stopped on Friday
To see where I’d want to explore next
Meanwhile, On The Ground…
On LinkedIn, I became that guy replying to every comment like a CIA analyst decoding market sentiment.
Because honestly, it’s the only way to understand where the collective attention is tilting.
The data in sight:
Findings so far:
- People want to monetize knowledge.
- But they’re haunted by info product fatigue.
- Selling knowledge became cringe.
Until you position it differently.
Until you stop treating it like fast food and start building it like architecture.
I realized there is a stigma both for-and-against selling information.
📊 DATA DUMP: From Thinkific’s “Expert Economy Insider” Report
As I was researching The Hidden Cost of Selling More Online Courses, I stumbled into this gem:
Only 40.7% of high-earning education businesses ($100k+) rely on course platforms anymore.
Read that again.
The gold rush is quietly over.
And the ones who stayed? They’re not making 7-figure Gumroad launches—they’re designing entire ecosystems.
And me?
Yeah, I fell for the classic trap.
Built a course. Launched it. Burned out.
Thought the next launch would fix it.
It didn’t. It just made the chaos look organized.
Turns out:
More launches ≠ More money.
More launches = More exhaustion + poor lifetime value + info-commodification spiral.
Most info products are built wrong.
Because nobody dares go deeper than “10 steps to build your first course.”
But there’s a deeper psychology. A structure. An economy.
So that’s where I’m heading next.
Into the forbidden zone: The Architecture of Premium Information Products.
Not just what they are.
But what they do to the people who create and consume them.
🌒 Transition Log: The Pillar is Dead. Long Live the Pillar.
So here’s where we’re at:
🗂️ Pillar 1: Hidden Curriculum – Complete (ish)
🔀 Bridge Essay: “The Monetization Myth Why Most Creators Sell the Wrong Type of Info Products” – Dropping Soon
📂 Next Pillar: INFO PRODUCT 101: Designing High-Agency Info Products – Starting Now
There will be data.
There will be rants.
There will be absolutely unhinged theories backed by 200-year-old economics papers and TikTok screenshots.
Let’s build some real info assets.
Not just content.
Cathedrals.
All Letters related to THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF CREATOR ECONOMY
💡 BIG IDEA SPOTLIGHT:
Here are some fantastic pieces of content that held me to my throat: from short form, to long form…I loved them so I anted to share them with you…cause why should I have all the fun
THE HIGH AGENCY SPECTRUM
What if the quietest person in the room
was the one you’d call from jail in Peru?
There’s an idea from George Mack’s essay “High Agency” that’s been living rent-free in my brain for weeks:
“The person you'd call from a 3rd world jail cell is the most high agency person you know.”
Not the smartest.
Not the loudest.
Not the most "optimized."
Just… the one you’d bet on when things go full chaos.
Honestly?
I never thought that person could be me.
I’m the overthinking, introvert-coded, anxiety-having creator who triple checks a DM before hitting send—and then drafts an apology for sending it.
But here I am, 15 days into an Info Sprint where I show up publicly, consistently, and chaotically…
Not because I feel brave.
But because I’ve started treating visibility like a live experiment.
A psychological jailbreak to see if I can replace overthinking with momentum.
Confidence didn’t show up.
But action did.
And somewhere along the way, I realized:
High agency isn’t a personality trait. It’s a choice you keep making—daily—despite the fear.
It’s thinking clearly.
Moving fast.
Disagreeing (even with your own internal critic).
It’s the tricycle George Mack talks about: Remove one wheel and you stall.
What I’m doing differently this time:
- Shipping before I feel ready
- Talking through the fear, not around it
- Treating everything like a potion, not a finished product
Turns out?
That quiet, anxious kid might still be the jailbreak call.
He’s just building the tools first—in public.
Your turn:
What’s one fear you’re trying to build through right now?
Here’s even more
This post is a gentle but powerful call to improve your communication hygiene—specifically, learning how to say “no” without guilt, drama, or explanation gymnastics.
It tackles the idea that we often over-explain or excuse our way out of things we don’t want to do, instead of just being direct. The post offers simple, respectful scripts for declining opportunities and reminds us: saying “no” isn’t selfish—it’s self-respect.
It’s about emotional clarity > emotional performance.
This post unpacks a tension every creator (especially info creators) is starting to feel: AI is an accelerant, not a compass.
It helps us do more, but it doesn’t dream bigger.
It feeds us what we already like—making us productive, but maybe… a bit duller? Less visionary? More addicted to dopamine loops than uncomfortable ideas?
She ends with a strong reminder: AI should execute. We lead.
It’s a call to stay uncomfortable, intentional, and weird in the age of algorithms.
Well that's it for today...
🗣️ Help Me Build This Thing
Let me know which direction to push this:
- More behind-the-scenes?
- More case-study heavy?
- More failures + frameworks?
- More spicy commentary on the creator economy?
Reply and say hi.
Until next time—
I’ll be somewhere between the creator underworld and a Google Doc, trying to decode how people are actually selling knowledge in 2025.
This is just Day 14 of 100. We’re building in the margins, not the mainstream.
Stay weird. Stay curious. Don’t sell your brain like it’s a burrito.
—Sudhanshu
PS - If you've gotten any value from this newsletter, I'd be honored if you'd leave a testimonial so others know this content is valuable.
Did someone forward this to you? Get the free invite here.
