The Honest Conversation Every Creator Needs to Hear: ‘I Don’t Want to Live on the Internet Forever’

You know that point where you’re still technically “doing well,” but deep down you’re starting to feel like the internet is chewing through your life force for content? You’re saying yes to everything, answering every email, posting through the exhaustion, and still wondering why it feels like everyone else is getting the opportunities you want. 

On She’s So Lucky, Les Alfred talks to creator Alex Hill about building a business around your talent without letting brands, algorithms, or your own scarcity mindset play in your face. The conversation is full career advice, part internet survival guide, and very much for anyone trying to turn creativity into actual leverage.

Feeling scared doesn’t mean don’t do it

Hill didn’t quit her full-time job on a whim. After a panic attack in January 2021, she realized the pace she was keeping wasn’t sustainable. But even then, she didn’t just blow her life up and hope for the best. She set a goal to save $25,000 first, kept taking partnerships to get there, and only then made the jump.

“I just had to feel the fear and do it anyway,” she says.

That part matters. A lot of people wait to feel perfectly ready before they make a move, and that moment rarely comes. Sometimes the window is open, the train is moving, and the only real option is to trust yourself enough to get on.

Saying yes got you here. Saying no gets you further

For a long time, Hill said yes to everything. “I was in a scarcity mindset,” she says. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m just going to take it because this is the first thing they offered me.’”

That started to shift once she began working with a manager who understood where she was trying to go. Instead of automatically accepting every opportunity, she started pushing back. “She was like, ‘No, we can push back. Your following has grown.’”

Along the way, Hill also figured out something just as important: what she doesn’t want to do. “I catered something last January,” she says. “I cried in the car. And I said, ‘I’m not a caterer and that’s okay.’” Alfred says she’s going through a similar evolution with her own career. “I am not a wellness influencer anymore,” she says. “I know that I was for a very long time, but that’s no longer what I’m here to do.”

Both of them agree that in the beginning you say yes to everything because you’re just trying to get the thing moving. But eventually you realize not every opportunity deserves your time…even if it sounds good on paper.

You can’t be the talent and the accounting department forever

“You can’t be the creative and the talent and also invoice,” Hill says. And honestly, that line alone could probably save a lot of people six months of burnout.

Being good at the work isn’t the same thing as being good at running the business around the work. Hill says it took her time to figure out budgeting, systems, and what support she actually needed. “In the past two years, now I’m finally in a groove,” she says. “I have my accountant. I know what to write off. I have my budget.” 

A lot of solopreneurs learn this the hard way. Just because you can do every part doesn’t mean you should keep doing every part forever.

The internet is a tool, not the end goal

Hill loves what content creation has opened up for her, but she’s also very clear that she doesn’t “want to be held to the algorithm” for the rest of her life. She wants cookbooks. A coffee shop. Real-life community. Work that can live offline.

“I don’t want to live on the internet,” she says.

That doesn’t mean the internet is useless. It means it’s the launchpad, not the final form. “Content creation is what I’m called to do now,” Hill adds. “But I don’t want to do this forever.” Which is a good reminder to zoom out once in a while and ask yourself what this whole thing is leading to. The internet might be the door that opens the opportunity, but it doesn’t have to be the room you live in forever.

Rejection is protection, even when it feels personal

Hill shares that after getting ghosted and hitting dead ends while trying to find a literary agent, she was ready to give up. Then one friend made an introduction, she followed up, and everything clicked into place fast. The right person showed up after the wrong ones didn’t.

That’s the frustrating part about rejection. It almost never feels helpful while it’s happening. It just feels like somebody is playing in your face. But sometimes the no, the ghosting, the missed opportunity, or the thing that went to someone else is clearing the path for a better fit.

And sometimes the real lesson is less mystical than that. Sometimes it’s just this: ask for help, follow up, and stop assuming silence means you should disappear.

Want to hear the full conversation? Tune into She’s So Lucky, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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