The unconventional advice creator Michael Tchao swears by

Michael Tchao's content creation journey started with one essential thing: a business plan.

Before he ever hit publish, the food creator mapped out exactly what he wanted his career to look like — from making a full-time living through content creation to working with his dream brands. That sense of intention still shapes the way he approaches every opportunity today. As he puts it, creators can either "sit under the tree and wait for an apple to fall," or "find a way to climb the tree and pick that apple."

At VidCon 2026, Tchao sat down with Mashable Culture Editor Crystal Bell to discuss the strategy that's guided his career from the beginning: why he started pitching brands before he even had 2,000 followers, why he believes creators shouldn't wait for opportunities to find them, and why he's skeptical of one of the creator economy's most common pieces of advice: be more niche.

Conventional creator wisdom says to pick a lane and stay there. As social platforms become more crowded, marketers have increasingly gravitated toward niche creators with highly engaged audiences, and industry analysts predict demand for niche creators will continue to rise.

Tchao doesn't necessarily disagree with the premise, but he does question the long-term strategy.

"If you want to have short-term growth, I think niching is super smart," he says. "But a lot of times what I see with creators is they niche, niche, niche... and they get pigeonholed. They can't get out. And if you have other interests, like we all do, I think that's a recipe for burnout."

Instead, Tchao encourages creators to think less about locking themselves into a single content category and more about identifying the underlying value they provide. For him, that isn't simply "food" — it's making complicated cooking concepts easy to understand. That broader mission gives him the flexibility to experiment while staying recognizable to his audience.

He also reflects on the importance of finding community in a profession that can often feel isolating, why even a single conversation at an event like VidCon can change the trajectory of a creator's career, and the philosophy that guides every video he makes: "No one really cares about me," he says. "They care about how the content can help themselves as a viewer."

Watch the full interview above.