I Filmed This in My Garage, Surrounded by Tools
Literally. Power tools, hand tools, half-finished projects everywhere. Because that’s exactly what we do when creative work feels stuck, isn’t it? We buy another tool.
A better CMS. A smoother approval workflow. An AI assistant to “speed things up.” A new platform to “finally get everyone aligned.” And yet the work still takes forever, ideas still get watered down, and your team still feels exhausted.
Here’s the truth: You don’t have a tooling problem. You have a Creator Experience problem.
Watch a Great Idea Die in Real Time
Every creative project starts with a spark. One person, one clear idea, momentum building. Then the feedback starts rolling in.
Marketing wants it “on brand.” Legal wants to remove anything remotely interesting. The VP wants to “make sure we’re covering all bases.” Everyone means well, and everyone has legitimate concerns. But by the time it ships, that spark is gone.
What you’re left with is something fine, professional, and polished—but completely forgettable. Nobody hates it, but nobody remembers it either. And somewhere along the way, your creator stopped taking risks and learned to color inside the lines. That’s when creativity dies.
The Hidden Bottleneck: Creator Experience
At Ndevr, we talk about the 3E Framework: Audience Experience, Developer Experience, and Creator Experience. Most people get the first two immediately. Audience Experience is what your users see and feel. Developer Experience is how efficiently your tech team builds and ships.
But Creator Experience? That’s the bridge between them, and it’s where most teams are bleeding energy. It’s your marketing team’s daily reality—how they create content, how they publish it, how they measure what’s working, and how much soul-crushing friction exists in between.
If your team spends more time in approval loops than actually creating, you don’t have a creativity problem. You have a Creator Experience problem.
Tools Can’t Replace Trust
There’s no shortage of solutions promising to fix this: approval platforms, collaborative editors, automated workflows, AI writing assistants. But here’s what they can’t fix—a culture that doesn’t trust its creators.
Every new approval layer says “we’re ensuring quality,” but what it actually ensures is delay. And every delay drains creative momentum. A great Creator Experience does three things well.
First, it empowers creators to own outcomes. They understand the brand, the audience, and the goal—so they can make decisions without a meeting. Second, it eliminates unnecessary checkpoints. Not every blog post needs executive review, and not every Instagram caption needs a committee. Third, it protects creative energy by giving people space to think, experiment, and breathe instead of living in permanent revision mode.
Try This Simple Experiment
Here’s a challenge for you: Pick one piece of content—a blog post, a landing page, whatever. Cut your approval chain in half and let the creator ship it with minimal oversight. Then watch what happens.
I’m willing to bet it goes live faster, the message is clearer, the team feels lighter, and nothing catches fire. That’s momentum, and momentum scales way better than micromanagement ever will.
Signs Your Creator Experience Is Broken
Does any of this sound familiar? It takes longer to approve content than to create it. Your best ideas die in Slack threads. Creators ask “Should I wait for feedback?” instead of “Can I ship this?” Every launch feels exhausting instead of exciting, and that new tool you bought actually added more steps.
If you’re nodding along, you’re not alone. This is how most modern marketing teams operate. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
What Leadership Actually Looks Like
Your job as a leader isn’t to review every word. It’s to build a system that consistently produces great work. That means setting clear guardrails instead of writing encyclopedias of guidelines, hiring people you trust and then actually trusting them, and giving creators visibility into results so they learn from data instead of endless revision cycles.
When teams feel trusted, something magical happens. They move faster, take smarter risks, and create work that feels alive again.
How This Connects to Everything Else
Creator Experience doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it impacts your entire digital ecosystem. Good Creator Experience leads to better Audience Experience because you’re shipping faster, fresher, more authentic content that actually resonates. It also improves Developer Experience by reducing last-minute chaotic requests, less thrash, and more predictable workflows.
The result? A website, a team, and a workflow that all move at the same speed.
Stop Buying Tools. Start Building Trust.
If creativity feels slow or heavy in your organization, resist the urge to shop for another platform. Start by removing friction and rebuilding trust instead.
Because the best tool your team will ever have is permission—permission to create, permission to ship, and permission to learn. Give them that, and watch how fast things change.
Let’s Talk About Your Creator Experience
If you’re ready to diagnose what’s slowing your team down or build systems that scale creativity without crushing it, I’d love to help. Connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out at ndevr.io/contact.
Let’s build creative systems that work as hard as your team does.
