Joseph Campbell’s seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces defined Hollywood storytelling for 75 years.

All of our favorite films, from Star Wars to Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money have relied on the same narrative arc, known widely as “The Hero’s Journey”.

The formula is so well-defined that the beats of our favorite films, movies, and brands adhere to the playbook almost down to the minute. And yet we still eat it up. Because it works.

Today, the independent creator and entrepreneur follows a similarly predictable archetype: The hustle with a thousand faces.

The hustle works like this:

Step 1. Carve out an area of the internet that has relatively low competition—it could be anything. Homemade Christmas ornaments? Yep. Hand painted DnD figurines? Yep. How to automate anything with AI and Zapier? Yep. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s a Blue Ocean.

Step 2. Gather a following online. It could be as few as 1,000 True Fans.

Step 3. Create a paid community and charge $50-100 per month for access. If you get 1,000 sign-ups, you’re now making $50k per month, easy peasy.

Now that you know the formula, you’ll recognize it everywhere. And yet it still works. The trick is just figuring out the current niche du jour.